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They’ve just come out of deceleration and they won’t have their space-legs yet." Santos reported. "They’re breaking up into groups of two. Three are guarding the snapper-boats. One is the man with the chattergun." "Are their belt lights on?" "Yes." "Then keep out of the beams. Don’t let them walk into you. Keep low, and keep moving. Stay over on the dark side."
"Thanks for small blessings," Jason said, rubbing his wrists. Deceleration jumped on them, kicked the air from their lungs in uncontrollable gasps, sank them deep into the yielding couches. Mikah's gun was pressed into his chest, too heavy to lift. It made no difference, Jason could not stand nor move. He hovered on the border of consciousness, his vision flickering behind a black and red haze.
High in the sky, came the whining whistle of an approaching ship, coming at terrific velocity. It came nearer the field, darting toward the ground at an unheard of speed, flashing down at a speed of well over three thousand miles an hour, and, only in the last fifty feet slowed with a sickening deceleration. Even so it landed with a crash of fully two hundred miles of speed.
Now Arcot's wizardry at the controls came into play, for by altering his space field constants, he succeeded in reaching a condition that slowed the ship almost instantly to a speed of but a mile a second, yet without apparent deceleration. High in the white Ortolian sky was a shining point bearing down on the now-visible city.
Stubby wings, useful for the ticklish operation of skip-glide deceleration and re-entry into the atmosphere, slid out of their sheaths. Little, lateral jets turned the vehicles around. Their main engines flamed lightly; losing speed, they dipped in their paths, beginning to fall.
The nuclear drive cruisers, which could approach almost half the speed of light, had brought even distant Pluto within easy reach. The inner planets could be covered in a matter of minutes on a straight speed run, although to take off from one and land on the other meant considerable time used in acceleration and deceleration. The Planeteers were used to such speed.
He knew the acceleration and deceleration rates of cruisers of this class measured in terms of time, and part of his daily routine on the space platform had been to examine the daily astro-plot which gave the positions of all planets and other large bodies within the solar system. There was only one possible destination: Mars. Rip’s pulse quickened. He had always wanted to visit the red planet.
But the ship was still decelerating, and he would have to wait. He put his head against the chair rest and settled down to wait as patiently as he could. Brennschluss was a long time coming. When the deceleration finally stopped, Rip didn't wait for gravity. He hauled himself out of the chair and the squad room and went down the corridor hand over hand.
Counting how much easier it'd be to get back, with atmosphere deceleration, I could make a trip, land, take observations, pick up mineral specimens, and get back all in a sixty-ton rocket. That's just ten per cent of what it'd cost to take a full-sized man one way!" He stamped his foot. Then he said coldly: "Haney, sittin' still you're a sittin' duck!" The comment was just.
He knew the acceleration and deceleration rates of cruisers of this class, measured in terms of time, and part of his daily routine on the space platform had been to examine the daily astroplot, which gave the positions of all planets and other large bodies within the solar system. There was only one possible destination: Mars. Rip's pulse quickened. He had always wanted to visit the red planet.
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