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. "Pipe down. Bill;
we're busy!" Altimeter showed eighty something- how long did it take to fall
eighty klicks in a one-sixth gee field? Switch on the pilot computer again and
ask it? Or do it in my head? Could I trust the pilot computer not to switch on
the jet again if I fed it juice?
Better not risk it. Would a straight-line approximation tell me anything?
Let's see- Distance equals one half acceleration multiplied by the square of the
time, all in centimeters and seconds. So eighty klicks is, uh, eighty thousand,
no, eight hund- No, eight million centimeters. Was that right?
One-sixth gee- No, half of one sixty-two. So bring it across and take the
square root-
One hundred seconds? "Gwen, how long till impact?"
"About seventeen minutes. That's rough; I just rounded it off in my head."
I took another quick look inside my skull, saw that in failing to allow for
forward vector-the "fall-around" factor-my
"approximation" wasn't even a wild guess. "Close enough. Watch the doppler;
I'm going to kill some forward motion. Don't let me kill all of it; we'll need
some choice in where to put down."
"Aye, aye. Skipper!"
I switched power to the computer; the jet immediately fired. I let it run
five seconds, cut power. The jet sobbed and quit. "That," I said bitterly, "is
one hell of a way to handle the throttle. Gwen?"
"Just crawling along now
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