Seventy kilometers per second. Position matching was no problem, but "Matching velocities will cost us time, Sir Pham." Pham's stare turned on Blueshell. "We talked this out with the locals three weeks ago, remember? You managed the burn." "And you checked my work, Sir Pham. This must be another nav system bug ... though I didn't expect anything was wrong in simple ballistics." A sign inverted, seventy klicks per second closing velocity instead of zero. Blueshell drifted toward the secondary console. "Maybe," said Pham. "Just now, I want you off the deck, Blueshell." "But I can help! We should be contacting Jefri, and rematching velocities, and --" "Get off the deck, Blueshell. I don't have time to watch you anymore," Pham dived across the intervening space and was met by Ravna, just short of the Rider. She floated between the two, talking fast, hoping whatever she said would both make sense and make peace. "It's okay, Pham. He'll go." She brushed her hand across one of Blueshell's wildly vibrating fronds. After a second, Blueshell wilted. "I'll go. I'll go." She kept an encouraging touch on him -- and kept herself between him and Pham, as the Skroderider made a dejected exit. When the Rider was gone,
复件 (21) air max1, she turned to Pham. "Couldn't it have been a nav bug, Pham?" The other didn't seem to hear the question. The instant the hatch had closed, he had returned to the command console. OOB's latest estimate put the Blight's arrival less than fifty-three hours away. And now they must waste time redoing a velocity match supposedly accomplished three weeks earlier. "Somebody,
复件 (79) air max, something, screwed us over ..." Pham was muttering,
复件 (31) air max, even as he finished with the control sequence, "Maybe it was a bug. This next damn burn is going to be as manual as it can be." Acceleration alarms echoed down the core of the OOB. Pham flipped through monitor windows, searching for loose items that might be big enough to be dangerous. "You tie down, too." He reached out to override the five minute timer. Ravna dived back across the deck, unfolding the free-fall saddle into a seat and strapping in. She heard Pham speaking on the general announce channel, warning of the timer override. Then the impulse drive cut in, a lazy pressure back into the webbing. Four tenths of a gee -- all the poor OOB could still manage. When Pham said manual,
复件 (9) 复件 air max, he meant it. The main window appeared to be bore-centered now. The view didn't drift at the whim of the pilot, and there were no helpful legends and schematics. As much as possible, the were seeing true view along OOB's main axis. Peripheral windows were held in fixed geometry with main. Pham's eyes flickered from one to another, as his hands played over the command board. As near as could be, he was flying by his own senses, and trusting no one else. But Pham still had use for the ultradrive. They were twenty million klicks off target,
ghd iv styler, a submicroscopic jump. Pham Nuwen fiddled with the drive parameters,
复件 (78) air max2, trying to make an accurate jump smaller than the standard interval. Every few seconds the sunlight would shift a fraction, coming first over Ravna's left shoulder and then her right. It made reestablishing comm with Jefri nearly impossible. Suddenly the window below their feet was filled by a world, huge and gibbous, blue and swirling white. The Tines' world was as Jefri Olsndot advertised, a normal terrestrial planet. After the months aspace and the loss of Sjandra Kei, the sight caught Ravna short. Ocean, the world was mostly ocean, but near the terminator there were the darker shades of land. A single tiny moon was visible beyond the limb.