Tulan Part 4

"Ships ... people can live a long time in ships."

"Not that long."

"There must be something! The power we've got, and this hypers.p.a.ce thing."

Kliu shook his head. "I can guess what you're thinking; we've been all over it. There's no way to get to the stars, and no way to move a planet out of its...o...b..t. Don't think we haven't been pounding our skulls, but the figures are hopeless."

Tulan stared at the ulcerous image on the screen, built up by infra-red probing through the opaque atmosphere. "She looks ready to fall apart right now. How much of her could you blast off?"

Kliu smiled wearily and without humor. "We've worked that idea to the bone, too. If you could build a big enough projector, and mount it on an infinitely solid base, you could push something deep enough and accurately enough to throw off stuff at escape velocity, but it's a matter of energy and we can't handle one percent of what we'd need. Even if you could generate it fast enough, your conduits would melt under the current." He got up and walked a few steps, then sat down again.

"Ironic, isn't it? All we can do is destroy ourselves."

Tulan's mind couldn't accept it; he was used to thinking that any amount of energy could be handled some way. "There must be something," he repeated, feeling foolish as he said it.

He went over the figures he knew so well; the acceleration and the total energy necessary to drive a ship to the nearest stars. Even a ship's Pulsors, pouring energy out steadily, were pitiful compared to that job.

Schoolboys knew the figures; mankind had dreamed for generations ...

He sat up abruptly. "This hypers.p.a.ce; didn't you tell me there were such things as velocity and momentum in it?"

Kliu's eyes focussed. "Yes; why?"

"And that a projector could be built to put an entire ship into hypers.p.a.ce?"

Kliu stared at him for a second. "Kinetic energy! Built up gradually!"

He jumped to his feet. "Come on! Let's get to the computers!"

Several hundred hours later Tulan lay watching the pinpoint on his viewscreen that represented Sennech. He'd been building up speed for a long time; he ached from the steady double-gravity. The ship, vastly beefed up, was moving at a good fraction of the speed of light. It wouldn't be much longer.

The cargo of carefully chosen matter, shifting into hypers.p.a.ce at the right instant, would be taken deep into Sennech by the momentum he'd acc.u.mulated in normal s.p.a.ce. If the calculations were right, the resulting blast would knock a chunk completely out of the planet. Each of the thousands of other ships tied to him by robot controls would take its own bite at the right time and place. Providing the plan worked.

The Solar System would have a few hot moments, and would be full of junk for a long time, but the threatening fissionables inside Sennech would be hurled far apart, to dribble away their potence gradually. Kliu admitted no one could calculate for sure even how much, if any, of Sennech would remain as a planet, but Teyr, at least, with her thick atmosphere, should withstand the rain of debris.

He wondered about his family, and Jezef. Kliu had tried to get word, but the tragically few refugees were scattered.

He smiled, recalling how severely he'd had to order his staff to abandon him. He was proud to remember that much of the fleet would have come along, if he'd let them; but live men were going to be at more of a premium on Teyr than heroic atoms drifting in s.p.a.ce. Machines could handle this a.s.sault. He himself had not had to touch a single control.

The indicators began to flash, and, sweating with the effort, he hauled himself erect to attention. It was good to be winding up here in his own command room, where he'd lived his moments of triumph. Still, as the red light winked on, he couldn't help thinking how very quiet and lonely it was without Jezef and the staff.

THE END