United States or Niger ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Merchantmen are indeed still useful in war for transport and auxiliary service, but it is no longer true that men in the merchant service are trained for man-of-war service. The difference between them has widened as the battleship of to-day differs from a merchantman of to-day. Nor can a merchantship be transformed into a cruiser, as in the American navy of a hundred years ago.

Hitting a ship in space at ultralight velocities was something else again. Young Kraybo could play baseball blindfolded, but he wasn't yet capable of making the master guesses that would protect a merchantship like the Naipor. But what was the matter with him? He had, of course, a fire-control computer to help him swing and aim his guns, but he didn't seem to be able to depend on his guesswork.

To a merchantship in war time such a signal is peremptory. It means slow up or else take the consequences. There were two possibilities that presented themselves to the commander of this particular merchantship. One was that he had met an American warship And the other! It was far less probable, but it was possible, and terrible. They might have fallen into the hands of the enemy.

The captain of a merchantship disposed of her at will; she has thrown herself into my arms, although she knows I have nothing; and my merit with which she cannot be acquainted, can be to her no inducement. In this there is something inconceivable.

The captain of a merchantship disposed of her at will; she has thrown herself into my arms, although she knows I have nothing; and my merit with which she cannot be acquainted, can be to her no inducement. In this there is something inconceivable.

And at dawn before them as they journeyed rose Athos, the Thracian mountain, which with its topmost peak overshadows Lemnos, even as far as Myrine, though it lies as far off as the space that a well-trimmed merchantship would traverse up to mid-day. For them on that day, till darkness fell, the breeze blew exceedingly fresh, and the sails of the ship strained to it.

Meanwhile Calypso had brought him an augur, and he bored the timbers, and fitted them together, and fastened them with bolts and cross-pieces. So the raft grew under his hands, broad as the floor of a stout merchantship. And he fenced her with bulwarks, piling up blocks of wood to steady them.

The great merchantship Naipor settled her tens of thousands of tons of mass into her landing cradle on Viornis as gently as an egg being settled into an egg crate, and almost as silently. Then, as the antigravs were cut off, there was a vast, metallic sighing as the gigantic structure of the cradle itself took over the load of holding the ship in her hydraulic bath.