When the lights in my helmet showed that everybody was suited up, I pushed the button that flooded the room. No way to see, of course, but I could imagine the pale blue solution-ethylene glycol and something else-foaming up around and over us. The suit material, cool and dry, collapsed in to touch my skin at every point. I knew that my internal body pressure was increasing rapidly to match the increasing fluid pressure outside. That’s what the shot was for; keep your cells from getting squished between the devil and the deep blue sea. You could still feel it, though. By the time my meter said “2” (external pressure equivalent to a column of water two nautical miles deep), I felt that I was at the same time being crushed and bloated. By 2005 it was at 2.7 and holding steady. When the maneuvers began at 2010, you couldn’t feel the difference. I thought I saw the needle fluctuate a tiny bit, though.
The major drawback to the system is that, of course, anybody caught outside of his shell when the Anniversary hit 25 G’S would be just so much strawberry jam. So the guiding and the fighting have to be done by the ship’s tactical computer-which does most of it anyway, but it’s nice to have a human overseer.
Another small problem is that if the ship gets damaged and the pressure drops, you’ll explode like a dropped melon. If it’s the internal pressure, you get crushed to death in a microsecond.
And it takes ten minutes, more or less, to get depressurized and another two or three to get untangled and dressed. So it’s not exactly something you can hop out of and come up fighting.
The accelerating was over at 2038. A green light went on and I chinned the button to depressurize.
Marygay and I were getting dressed outside.
“How’d that happen?” I pointed to an angry purple welt that ran from the bottom of her right breast to her hipbone.
“That’s the second time,” she said, mad. “The first one was on my back-I think that shell doesn’t fit right, gets creases.”
“Maybe you’ve lost weight.”
“Wise guy.” Our caloric intake had been rigorously monitored ever since we left Stargate the first time. You can’t use a fighting suit unless it fits you like a second skin.
A wall speaker drowned out the rest of her comment. “Attention all personnel. Attention. All army personnel echelon six and above and all navy personnel echelon four and above will report to the briefing room at 2130.”
It repeated the message twice. I went off to lie down fora few minutes while Marygay showed her bruise to the medic and the armorer. I didn’t feel a bit jealous.
The Commodore began the briefing. “There’s not much to tell, and what there is is not good news.
“Six days ago, the Tauran vessel that is pursuing us released a drone missile. Its initial acceleration was on the order of 80 gravities.
“After blasting for approximately a day, its acceleration suddenly jumped to 148 gravities.” Collective gasp.
“Yesterday, it jumped to 203 gravities. I shouldn’t need to remind anyone here that this is twice the accelerative capability of the enemy’s drones in our last encounter.
“We launched a salvo of drones, four of them, intersecting what the computer predicted to be the four most probable future trajectories of the enemy drone. One of them paid off, while we were doing evasive maneuvers. We contacted and destroyed the Tauran weapon about ten million kilometers from here.”
That was practically next door. “The only encouraging thing we learned from the encounter was from spectral analysis of the blast. It was no more powerful an explosion than ones we have observed in the past, so at least their progress in propulsion hasn’t been matched by progress in explosives.
“This is the first manifestation of a very important effect that has heretofore been of interest only to theorists. Tell me, soldier.” He pointed at Negulesco. “How long has it been since we first fought the Taurans, at Aleph?”
“That depends on your frame of reference, Commodore,” she answered dutifully. “To me, it’s been about eight months.”