They had penetrated into the galaxy as far as was safe, using half
speed; then, at lower speeds, they worked toward the local cluster.
Arcot cut the drive several light years from the nearest sun. "Well,
we're where we wanted to be; now what do we do? Morey, pick us out a G-0
star. We await your royal command to move."
After a few minutes at the telectroscope, Morey pointed to one of the
pinpoints of light that gleamed brightly in the sky. "That one looks
like our best bet. It's a G-0 a little brighter than Sol."
Morey swung the ship about, pointing the axis of the ship in the same
direction as its line of flight. The observatory had been leading, but
now the ship was turned to its normal position.
They shot forward, using the space-strain drive, for a full hour at
one-sixteenth power. Then Arcot cut the drive, and the disc of the sun
was large before them.
"We're going to have a job cutting down our velocity; we're traveling
pretty fast, relative to that sun," Arcot told the others. Their
velocity was so great that the sun didn't seem to swerve them greatly as
they rushed nearer. Arcot began to use the molecular drive to brake the
ship.
Morey was busy with the telectroscope, although greatly hampered by the
fact that it was a feat of strength to hold his arm out at right angles
to his body for ten seconds under the heavy acceleration Arcot was
applying.
"This method works!" called Morey suddenly. "The Fuller System For
Finding Planets has picked another winner! Circle the sun so that I can
get a better look!"
Arcot was already trying vainly to decrease their velocity to a figure
that would permit the attraction of the sun to hold them in its grip and
allow them to land on a planet.
"As I figure it," Arcot said, "we'll need plenty of time to come to
rest. What do you think, Morey?"
Morey punched figures into the calculator. "Wow! Somewhere in the
neighborhood of a hundred days, using all the acceleration that will be
safe! At five gravities, reducing our present velocity of twenty-five
thousand miles per second to zero will take approximately twenty-four
hundred hours--one hundred days! We'll have to use the gravitational
attraction of that sun to help us."
"We'll have to use the space control," said Arcot. "If we move close to
the sun by the space control, all the energy of the fall will be used in
overcoming the space-strain coil's field, and thus prevent our falling.
When we start to move away again, we will be climbing against that
gravity, which will aid us in stopping. But even so, it will take us
about three days to stop. We wouldn't get anywhere using molecular
power; that giant sun was just too damned generous with his energy of
fall!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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