JК
Crashlander :: Нивен Ларри
Страница: 25 из 199Otherwise … «Most of it looks like hyperdrive motors. But that's silly. Unless you've thought of a good reason for moving moons around.»
«At one time you were a commercial pilot for Nakamura Lines. How long was the run from Jinx to We Made It?»
«Twelve days if nothing broke down.» Just long enough to get to know the prettiest passenger aboard, while the autopilot did everything for me but wear my uniform.
«Sirius to Procyon is a distance of four light-years. Our ship would make the trip in five minutes.»
«You've lost your mind.»
«No.»
But that was almost a light-year per minute! I couldn't visualize it. Then suddenly I did visualize it, and my mouth fell open, for what I saw was the galaxy opening before me. We know so little beyond our own small neighborhood of the galaxy. But with a ship like that —!
«That's goddamn fast.»
«As you say. But the equipment is bulky, as you note. It cost seven billion stars to build that ship, discounting centuries of research, but it will move only one man. As is, the ship is a failure. Shall we go inside?»
II.
The lifesystem was two circular rooms, one above the other, with a small air lock to one side. The lower room was the control room, with banks of switches and dials and blinking lights dominated by a huge spherical mass pointer. The upper room was bare walls, transparent, through which I could see air— and food-producing equipment.
«This will be the relaxroom,» said the puppeteer. «We decided to let the pilot decorate it himself.»
«Why me?»
«Let me further explain the problem.» The puppeteer began to pace the floor. I hunkered down against the wall and watched. Watching a puppeteer move is a pleasure. Even in Jinx's gravity the deerlike body seemed weightless, the tiny hooves tapping the floor at random. «The human sphere of colonization is some thirty light-years across, is it not?»
«Maximum. It's not exactly a sphere —»
«The puppeteer region is much smaller The Kdatlyno sphere is half the size of yours, and the kzinti is fractionally larger. These are the important space-traveling species. We must discount the Outsiders since they do not use ships. Some spheres coincide, naturally. Travel from one sphere to another is nearly nil except for ourselves, since our sphere of influence extends to all who buy our hulls. But add all these regions, and you have a region sixty light-years across. This ship could cross it in seventy-five minutes.
«At one time you were a commercial pilot for Nakamura Lines. How long was the run from Jinx to We Made It?»
«Twelve days if nothing broke down.» Just long enough to get to know the prettiest passenger aboard, while the autopilot did everything for me but wear my uniform.
«Sirius to Procyon is a distance of four light-years. Our ship would make the trip in five minutes.»
«You've lost your mind.»
«No.»
But that was almost a light-year per minute! I couldn't visualize it. Then suddenly I did visualize it, and my mouth fell open, for what I saw was the galaxy opening before me. We know so little beyond our own small neighborhood of the galaxy. But with a ship like that —!
«That's goddamn fast.»
«As you say. But the equipment is bulky, as you note. It cost seven billion stars to build that ship, discounting centuries of research, but it will move only one man. As is, the ship is a failure. Shall we go inside?»
II.
The lifesystem was two circular rooms, one above the other, with a small air lock to one side. The lower room was the control room, with banks of switches and dials and blinking lights dominated by a huge spherical mass pointer. The upper room was bare walls, transparent, through which I could see air— and food-producing equipment.
«This will be the relaxroom,» said the puppeteer. «We decided to let the pilot decorate it himself.»
«Why me?»
«Let me further explain the problem.» The puppeteer began to pace the floor. I hunkered down against the wall and watched. Watching a puppeteer move is a pleasure. Even in Jinx's gravity the deerlike body seemed weightless, the tiny hooves tapping the floor at random. «The human sphere of colonization is some thirty light-years across, is it not?»
«Maximum. It's not exactly a sphere —»
«The puppeteer region is much smaller The Kdatlyno sphere is half the size of yours, and the kzinti is fractionally larger. These are the important space-traveling species. We must discount the Outsiders since they do not use ships. Some spheres coincide, naturally. Travel from one sphere to another is nearly nil except for ourselves, since our sphere of influence extends to all who buy our hulls. But add all these regions, and you have a region sixty light-years across. This ship could cross it in seventy-five minutes.