Bud Sparhawk - Primrose and Thorn

VIP免费

2024-11-24 0 0 78.41KB 31 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

Primrose and Thorn

Bud Sparhawk

"Build me straight,

O worthy Master!

Stanch and strong, a goodly vessel,

That shall laugh at all disaster,

And with wave and whirlwind

wrestle!"

The Building of the Ship, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Why did I ever listen to you about this race? I already spend a bunch right here on Earth," protested

Jerome Blacker, president of JBI. "I've been having second thoughts about this Jupiter race."

The two tanned and muscular people facing him looked uneasy. A sales tag was still attached to the

man's sleeve and flapped as he waved his hand while speaking. "You already made the commitment,

JB—you just have to follow through. Come on, it doesn't cost you any real money."

"You sure as hell aren't much of a businessman if you think this won't cost me anything!" JB said nastily.

"Mr. Blacker," Pascal interrupted, "the publicity about this race will bring in more than enough to offset

expenses."

Jerome leaned across the desk. "What about insurance, the cost of transport, the cost of the boats?

Those things aren't cheap!"

Pascal sighed. "The funds from the Jovian ventures can't be spent on Earth. Thanks to the treaty of '54,

you have to reinvest at least 75 percent of your profits."

Jerome winced. "Don't remind me about those damn pirates! If it hadn't been for my stations and hubs,

the damned Jovians wouldn't have a pot to piss in," he grumbled.

Pascal continued his attack. "GeoGlobal and the Times cartel are both outfitting ships for the race. No

telling how many the Jovians are going to enter themselves. If we don't race, JBI will lose a lot—the

publicity about our entry will bring in more than enough revenue to cover our expenses."

Jerome mused, half to himself, as he rubbed his chin. "I remember your numbers, I've read the reports.

So be it. What do I have to do to finalize the financial arrangements?"

Pascal spoke slowly, not wishing to reveal how anxious he was to get JB's approval. "I've already

reserved Thorn, a used barkentine. You just need to sign the commitment for outfitting her. Once that's

done, the orbital factories will start fabricating the sails—we've already sent them our specs. We'll use the

Jovian funds for both of those efforts. The only cash outlay you need to worry about will be our transport

out to Jupiter."

"Which leaves only the human element," Jerome said. "Even now I find it hard to believe that we can win

this race." He swiveled in his chair to face the woman who sat beside Pascal. She was the best captain in

his fleet and winner of more sailboat races than he could count. She'd been unusually quiet since she

came in the office.

"Do you think you can race one of those barques, Louella?" he asked her quietly. "Do you think you can

sail a boat on the seas of Jupiter?"

Pascal held his breath as he awaited her answer. The success of their entire enterprise, and the payoff for

the past year's worth of intense training, rested on her reply. The answer she gave would make or break

the deal.

"I could sail a fucking bathtub on the Sun if the price was right," she spat back. "Now how the hell do I

get a drink around here?"

Rams had stopped at the station in the hopes that there would be an opportunity for business. That, and a

chance to restock his supplies. In order to keep his ship, Primrose, he had to take advantage of every

opportunity that came his way.

Jake, an irritable old scamp who knew everything there was to know about sailing the winds of Jupiter,

had taught Rams how to sail. Rams learned that every ship had its own personality. He learned how to

balance keel and ballast, how to adjust the ship's buoyancy to ride the turbulence.

After teaching him the basics of sail, rudder, keel, and line, Jake went on to show him how to heave-to in

the hurricane-force winds so that they would ride easily, neither making way nor being blown back.

They'd used that technique to mine the edges of Jupiter's storms. The updrafts in these dangerous

hurricanes often pulled metal-rich meteorites and icebergs—worth their weight in gold to the floating

stations—from the lower depths of the atmosphere. Jake showed him how to "cheat" the boat close to

the edges of the turbulence, using jib and main to close in on these bits of rock and harvest them.

Jake had shared all of his secrets of playing the winds of Jupiter's storms and winning its rewards. Jake

taught Rams to love the winds on the wine-red seas.

Rams's transition from crewman to ship's captain hadn't been easy. He'd scrimped and saved every cent

he could, and signed away nearly all of his future profits—all to buy a fast, outdated clipper at one of

JBI's auctions. Clippers had been deemed too inefficient to achieve JBI's "acceptable" level of

profitability.

Refitting the boat and replacing the instruments that Primrose's former crew had stripped put him even

further in debt. In addition, there had been the outlay for new sails and refitting the keel. Both cost more

than he expected and, suddenly, his debt for Primrose started to look like a financial black hole from

which there was no hope of escape.

His first year had been a disaster. The cargo he'd hauled hadn't generated enough to pay the interest on

his loans. To keep from losing her he borrowed even more. If he wasn't careful he could lose Primrose

and be thrown in jail—that was the penalty for simultaneously using her as collateral for multiple loans.

Since then it had been nip and tuck, keeping one financial step ahead of bankruptcy.

The second year of operations had taught him where the good money could be earned—carrying

perishable goods on quick dashes. JBI's huge, lumbering cargo ships could move things cheaply, but they

were neither speedy nor very maneuverable. Like the old square-riggers of Earth, they flew with the

wind, stolid as the stations, and scarcely moving much faster. Sometimes their crew endured months

between station-falls.

Rams usually got the best return when he had to make a darting emergency run from station to hub and

back. Double charges both ways, and no hassle for it, either! Best of all, the fees kept him out of prison.

"Wind one-thirty meters per second and rising, Cap'n. Satellite shows some deep turbulence spinning off

the edge about twelve thousand klicks upwind and heading to intercept your destination. Weather

advises you should try to stay within the central laminar flows of sub-bands MM and KK until you're

almost to Charlie Sierra One. That should keep you out of the storm," the station master said.

"Put it down that I acknowledge the limits on bands MM and KK," Rams replied as the 'master logged

his ship out. "How much margin does Weather give me before that storm hits?"

"Best they can project is that you have about a sixteen-hour margin, give or take six hours. Of course, if it

swings south of CS-42 the edge winds might give you a lift."

"When did I ever see one of those storms change course in a way that would help me?" Rams asked

rhetorically. "I'll plan on beating the weather the last leg of the trip. I just hope that Weather's prediction is

right."

"I agree with that," the 'master replied. "You'd better keep a watch for any miners who might be

prospecting on the periphery of the storm.

Wouldn't want to run into one of those crazies, would you?"

Rams grinned, remembering when he had been one of those crazies. "I'll watch out for them," he

promised.

"Well, it looks like you are all set to go, Primrose," the station master said as he popped the record from

the computer and handed it to Rams. "Fair winds and good passage, Cap'n."

Rams checked the ballast tank when he returned to the ship. According to the leveling mark on the wall

of Primrose's berth, she was riding low—just a little too heavy probably from the extra cargo he'd taken

on. He switched on the heaters in the ballast tank. That would create enough steam pressure to drive the

excess ballast out, lightening the ship. When Primrose's bull's-eye was almost up to the mark, he turned

the heater off. In a few moments more she was floating level with the station.

"Ready to cast off!" Rams said over the intercom. He listened for the 'master to loose the clamps that

held Primrose in the station's embrace. Four loud bangs resounded through the pressure hull as the

clamps released. Rams immediately felt the ship list to starboard as she drifted backwards into the fierce

winds of Jupiter.

Primrose heeled as it caught the full force of the wind. Rams braced himself, checked the instruments,

and then turned the ship downwind as it emerged from the lee of the station,

The station's infrared image quickly faded as they exceeded the viewer's range. A few seconds later the

sonar return vanished as well. Only a fuzzy radar image, quickly dissolving into a cloud of electronic

noise, told him where the station rode. Even that image would fade once he got more than a kilometer

away. After that he'd be sailing blind.

Primrose ran with the wind as he lowered the keel. He pointedly ignored the keelmeter as the diamond

mesh ribbon uncoiled from its housing. The thousand-ton weight at the keel's end started its familiar

swinging motion as the keel was unwrapped from its spindle. Primrose rocked in response to the

motion. The pendulum's swing slowed as the ribbon paid out farther and farther into the thick soup of the

atmosphere.

Finally the rocking motion dampened and Rams halted the winch, locking it in place. Only then did he

check the keelmeter. Although he relied more on the feel of the ship's trim when setting the keel depth, he

liked to assure himself of the setting.

A single glance told him that his instincts had been correct. He'd halted the keel at 1,400 meters, one

hundred meters shy of the theoretical setting the station master had calculated. He let an additional fifty

meters of the mesh keel pay out; it wouldn't hurt to have Primrose a little bottom-heavy on an upwind

run.

Rams reached for the sail controls. Primrose was being blown downwind at thirty meters per second,

relative to the station. The station he'd just left plodded along slower than the wind, held back only by

her massive drogues—a fancy word for sea anchors. The drogues that swung beneath the station's

bulbous form created drag and provided a measure of control. It was sailing, but using anchors to steer

instead of sails.

Rams hit the switch to release his mainsail from its housing on the main mast and braced himself. The ship

tilted even further to starboard as the wind bit the suddenly increased surface area. He immediately

played out the traveler, letting the main find the angle that would allow the fierce wind to flow across the

sail's face. He kept a careful eye on the pressure gauges from both sides of the wishbone that constrained

the sail, adjusting the sail's angle to maximize the front-to-back pressure differential. He wanted to get as

much lift as possible from the airfoil effect.

Primrose finally stopped rocking and curved into the wind as Rams adjusted the line. Primrose was

running at about sixty degrees to the wind when she finally balanced out and was making an appreciable

sixty meters per second.

"All right, girl, let's show old man Jupiter what we can really do," he said, deploying the jib from its

housing at the prow. There was a hellacious rattling from forward as the chain hoist protested the way the

wind whipped at the small jib and smashed it against the pressure hull. Rams winched the line back until

the jib sheets were taut and the small forward sail was funneling the wind along the back of the mainsail,

forming a venturi between them.

Primrose heeled even more as the force on her increased from the additional sail surface exposed to the

wind and turned tighter into the face of the wind. She was now running at about a forty degree angle.

Rams grinned in satisfaction as her speed increased proportionally. He watched the knotmeter rise past

seventy, seventy-five, and settle at nearly eighty meters per second.

He checked his location on the inertial positioning display and made a minor adjustment to the rudder,

then adjusted both the mainsail and jib to account for the new angle of attack.

"Clipper Ship Primrose out at 1400 hours, under way and on course for Charlie Sierra Four Two," he

said into the radio. The station master probably wouldn't be able to hear the formal sign-off, given the

usual overwhelming amount of static in the atmosphere. Nevertheless, Rams was always careful to

observe the formalities.

As Primrose pulled steadily away, Rams made a thorough examination of the ship. He wanted to ensure

that everything on board was shipshape. He double-checked the straps and buckles on all of the cargo

crates, just to make sure they'd been properly secured.

Next he checked the topside sail locker, taking care to see that the spare sails were properly stored and

ready for deployment when the need arose. If all went well he wouldn't have to replace the sails on this

trip, which would help his profit margin. Having them fabricated in orbit and brought down by elevator

was bloody expensive.

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

Bud Sparhawk - Primrose and Thorn.pdf

共31页,预览4页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

Bud Sparhawk - Primrose and Thorn

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: