Right. Sorry, Garol. I’ll do a scan on them. You go stow for vector transit, why don’t you.”
Undivided attention on vector calculations was a good thing. Garol was all in favor of enabling it on Jils’s part, so he went off to lock things down. It wasn’t that a ship risked losing its gravity during a vector transit, or at least not usually; but it was easier to recover from an accidental lapse in gravity if a person had taken measures to minimize the potential mess beforehand.
Jils had documents strewn from one end of the aft cabin to the other. Incident reports on raids at Sonder, Penyff, Tershid, Okidan, Tyrell. Forensic manifests, where available. Cause of death. Body counts.
Garol didn’t like the picture that was forming. It didn’t fit the Langsarik pattern; and how could the Langsariks have managed?
He’d have to get Jils’s thoughts about it. Once they had the vector, maybe.
After the aft cabin was as thoroughly stowed as it could get, Garol went back forward. Jils was finishing a countercheck reconciliation, but everything looked pretty stable. He didn’t see where she’d had to correct anything he’d done.
He waited until she’d completed the countercheck before speaking to her. “How’s it look?”
Scanning the calculation set from start to finish one last time, Jils nodded. “You’re solid, Garol, you can calculate vector transits for me anytime. Good to go. Let’s do it.”
And Jils was good. Methodical, precise, and much better at details of a certain sort than he was. If Jils said the calculation set was solid, it was solid.
“Strap yourself in, then, and let’s go.”
No time like the present.
He had set the ship’s environmentals to low normal, so there were no artificially generated somatic signals that would indicate a change in their rate of speed; but the forward visual screens were in working order. Excellent working order. Really rather amazingly good working order, and worth almost the entire price the Bench had paid to get them from Combine shipyards.
Garol hit the sequence initiate instruction, and space on the forward visual screens started to spin, the status markers on the ship’s vital signs creeping upward as the ship gained speed.
The courier ran for the vector like a child’s playing sphere fired along the lip of a great funnel, gathering momentum as it got closer and closer to the funnel’s mouth. Garol closed his eyes: looking at the forward screens was dizzying. He thought Jils looked a little green, as well, but he was in no shape to mention it.
With the ship’s gravities set as low as they were, he could begin to feel the approach as pressure in his ears, like the sensation of spinning around in a chair until his head swam. He opened his eyes, swallowing back the sharp acid taste of bile that rose from his stomach as the nausea born of perturbations in the vestibular apparatus in his ears threatened to overwhelm him.
It was a clear, short approach to the vector transit for Rikavie. It was. Clean, sweet, easy, and nearly overdue, and Garol was anxious in spite of his faith in Jils’s evaluation.
Any time now , Garol told the courier ship in his mind, trying not to focus on the unnatural whirling of light objects on the screens in front of him. You can make the vector any time you’d like. In fact the sooner the better, for my money at least.
The mad rotation of stars on-screen tightened and condensed to one bright spot of light that vibrated ever more quickly as the intensity of the light increased. They were close now. The glowing center of the visual display tightened and brightened and tightened moment by moment, gaining in intensity of brilliance as it shrank in size until it was almost too bright to bear; and then the screens blanked.
There would be nothing more to see until they reached Rikavie, and dropped out of the vector like a stone.
“We have the Garsite vector.” Garol made the announcement with relief he didn’t mind sharing
Undivided attention on vector calculations was a good thing. Garol was all in favor of enabling it on Jils’s part, so he went off to lock things down. It wasn’t that a ship risked losing its gravity during a vector transit, or at least not usually; but it was easier to recover from an accidental lapse in gravity if a person had taken measures to minimize the potential mess beforehand.
Jils had documents strewn from one end of the aft cabin to the other. Incident reports on raids at Sonder, Penyff, Tershid, Okidan, Tyrell. Forensic manifests, where available. Cause of death. Body counts.
Garol didn’t like the picture that was forming. It didn’t fit the Langsarik pattern; and how could the Langsariks have managed?
He’d have to get Jils’s thoughts about it. Once they had the vector, maybe.
After the aft cabin was as thoroughly stowed as it could get, Garol went back forward. Jils was finishing a countercheck reconciliation, but everything looked pretty stable. He didn’t see where she’d had to correct anything he’d done.
He waited until she’d completed the countercheck before speaking to her. “How’s it look?”
Scanning the calculation set from start to finish one last time, Jils nodded. “You’re solid, Garol, you can calculate vector transits for me anytime. Good to go. Let’s do it.”
And Jils was good. Methodical, precise, and much better at details of a certain sort than he was. If Jils said the calculation set was solid, it was solid.
“Strap yourself in, then, and let’s go.”
No time like the present.
He had set the ship’s environmentals to low normal, so there were no artificially generated somatic signals that would indicate a change in their rate of speed; but the forward visual screens were in working order. Excellent working order. Really rather amazingly good working order, and worth almost the entire price the Bench had paid to get them from Combine shipyards.
Garol hit the sequence initiate instruction, and space on the forward visual screens started to spin, the status markers on the ship’s vital signs creeping upward as the ship gained speed.
The courier ran for the vector like a child’s playing sphere fired along the lip of a great funnel, gathering momentum as it got closer and closer to the funnel’s mouth. Garol closed his eyes: looking at the forward screens was dizzying. He thought Jils looked a little green, as well, but he was in no shape to mention it.
With the ship’s gravities set as low as they were, he could begin to feel the approach as pressure in his ears, like the sensation of spinning around in a chair until his head swam. He opened his eyes, swallowing back the sharp acid taste of bile that rose from his stomach as the nausea born of perturbations in the vestibular apparatus in his ears threatened to overwhelm him.
It was a clear, short approach to the vector transit for Rikavie. It was. Clean, sweet, easy, and nearly overdue, and Garol was anxious in spite of his faith in Jils’s evaluation.
Any time now , Garol told the courier ship in his mind, trying not to focus on the unnatural whirling of light objects on the screens in front of him. You can make the vector any time you’d like. In fact the sooner the better, for my money at least.
The mad rotation of stars on-screen tightened and condensed to one bright spot of light that vibrated ever more quickly as the intensity of the light increased. They were close now. The glowing center of the visual display tightened and brightened and tightened moment by moment, gaining in intensity of brilliance as it shrank in size until it was almost too bright to bear; and then the screens blanked.
There would be nothing more to see until they reached Rikavie, and dropped out of the vector like a stone.
“We have the Garsite vector.” Garol made the announcement with relief he didn’t mind sharing
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