Even as he flew the velocity match, Pham was working the ultradrive. This would save them hours of fly back time, but it was a chancy game, one the ship had never been designed for. OOB bounced all around the solar system. One really lucky jump was all they needed. (And one really unlucky jump,
复件 (83) air max1, into the planet, would kill them. A good reason why this game was not normally played.) After hours of hacking the flight automation, of playing ultradrive roulette, poor Pham's hands were faintly trembling. Whenever Tines' World came back into view -- often no more than a far point of blue light -- he would glare for a second at it. Ravna could see the doubts rising within him: His memories told him he should be good with low-tech automation, yet some of the OOB primitives were almost impenetrable. Or maybe his memories of competence, of the Qeng Ho, were cheap ########s. "The Blighter fleet. How long?" asked Pham. Greenstalk was watching the nav window from the Riders' cabin. It was the fifth time the question had been asked in the last hour, yet her voice came back calm and patient. Maybe the repeated questions even seemed a natural thing. "Range forty-nine light-years. Estimated time of arrival forty-eight hours. Seven more ships have dropped out." Ravna could subtract: one hundred and fifty-two were still coming. Blueshell's voder sounded over his mate's, "During the last two hundred seconds, they have made slightly better time than before, but I think that is local variance in Bottom conditions. Sir Pham,
mbt chapa, you are doing well,
复件 (25) air max2, but I know my ship. We could get a little more time if you only you'd allow me control. Please --" "Shut up." Pham's voice was sharp, but the words were almost automatic. It was a conversation -- or the abortion of one -- that occurred almost as often as Pham's demand for status info on the Blighter fleet. In the early weeks of their journey, she had assumed that godshatter was somehow superhuman. Instead it was parts and pieces, automation loaded in a great panic. Maybe it was working right, or maybe it had run amok and was tearing Pham apart with its errors. The old cycle of fear and doubt was suddenly broken by soft blue light. Tines' World,
复件 (8) 复件 air max1! At last, a wondrously accurate jump, almost as good as the shocker of five hours before: Twenty thousand kilometers away hung a vast narrow crescent, the edge of planetary daylight. The rest was a dark blot against the stars, except where the auroral ring hung a faint green glow around the south pole. Jefri Olsndot was on the other side of the world from them,
复件 (73) air max, in the arctic day. They wouldn't have radio communication until they arrived -- and she hadn't figured out how to recalibrate the ultrawave for shortrange transmission. She turned back from the view. Pham still stared upward into the sky behind her. "... Pham, what good is forty-eight hours? Will we just destroy the Countermeasure?" What of Jefri and Mr. Steel's folk? "Maybe. But there are other possibilities. There must be." That last softly. "I've been chased before. I've been in bigger jams before." His eyes avoided hers. .Delete this paragraph to shift page flush CHAPTER 38 Jefri hadn't seen the sky for more than an hour in the last two days. He and Amdi were safe enough in the great stone dome that sheltered the refugee ship, but there was no way to see outside. If it weren't for Amdi,
复件 (75) air max1, I couldn't have stood it a minute. In some ways it was worse even than his first days on Hidden Island. The ones who killed Mom and Dad and Johanna were just a few kilometers away.
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