Read Online Chanur's Homecoming by C. J. Cherryh - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: C. J. Cherryh
Tags: Fiction, General, Science-Fiction, High Tech, Life on other planets, Science fiction; American, Space ships, Fantastic fiction; American
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sequencer, Haral's usual job; and Tirun had armaments live back there too. In case.
"Haa," Khym muttered suddenly.
"We just lost station output," Geran said.
Sikkukkut's officials had just blinded them, at least insofar as station could. Doubtless someone was on the com to Sikkukkut personally, to tell him that there was a hani ship live, armed, and with its powerful nose stuck right into Kefk's gut.
Not mentioning what those engines back there could do if they cycled the jump vanes sitting at dock. Some of their particles would stay in realspace, mightily agitated; others, in their random way, would enter hyperspace, and stream for the depths of the local gravity wells, the greatest of which was Kefk's main star. Everything would part company in a rather irretrievable fashion, either turning into a bright spot or a failed attempt at a black hole, stripping its own substance down, since it had no directional potential except the station and the star's own motion through the continuum. Probably not enough to prevent implosion. Hilfy activated a keyboard in her idle moment, fed in The Pride's mass and her best guess at total station mass, adding in the number of ships tied into the station, a moment of black self-amusement, filling her mind with numbers and schoolbook calculations.
It was significant that the kif had not immediately demanded that they shut down the internal power: the kif knew they had no power to enforce that until they had Pyanfar in their hands.
And Hilfy did not want to think about that at the moment. She simply ran the numbers on their own possible dissolution, and whether they would actually form the hyperspace bubble, and whether with all those ships and that station and all that mass, they might actually have a hyperspatial effect on the largest star when they plowed into it.
She sent it into Nav, since the bubble variables resided there in standard equations; and of a sudden her comp monitor blinked, beeped, and came up with output too soon to have responded to that complex query: TRLING/PR1, it read, PSWD.
Password?
Nav query?
Those were the two thoughts that hit her brain while her eyes were in motion back to the top of that screen where the program name was listed: they found that PRIORITY ONE code and the Linguistics Path Designator as the implication suddenly hit like a wash of cold water.
YN she typed, which was the shortest city name on Anuurn and the standard password for their lightly coded systems: fast keys to hit.
Syntax achieved, the screen said. Display/Print?/Tape?/All?
She hit D and P; the screen blinked text up, full of gaps and mangled syntax: it was running a code-cracker set in the assumption it was mahensi, but it was not mahen standard, it was some godsforsaken related language, though the computer was making some sense of it on cognates. Jik's message. The coded packet he had dropped in their laps back at Mkks.
Dialect. Which?
She punched more buttons, desperately, asking for the decoded original. It came up, vaguely recognizable as mahen phonemes. "Gods be," she muttered, "Haral, Haral, the comp just spat out Jik's message but it's still hashed up, it's
got a string of words together but it's still sorting-we got a breakthrough here."
The screen blinked with a red strip across the top, which was Tirun using her keyboard to snatch information across to her board and probably to Haral's. "Keep on it," Haral said. "Tirun, monitor com."
"Aye," Tirun said, and "Aye," Hilfy muttered, punching keys, with the hair bristling on her neck and her ears flicking in half-crazed vexation with the computer, which had thrown her a half-solved problem in her own field here on the very edge of oblivion.
Kif could call our bluff any second now. Haral could push that button.
We could go streaming for that sun and the gods rot it what language is he using that comp hasn't got? O gods be! when's that alarm going to come? We're going to die, gods rot it, and it's giving me something
"Haa," Khym muttered suddenly.
"We just lost station output," Geran said.
Sikkukkut's officials had just blinded them, at least insofar as station could. Doubtless someone was on the com to Sikkukkut personally, to tell him that there was a hani ship live, armed, and with its powerful nose stuck right into Kefk's gut.
Not mentioning what those engines back there could do if they cycled the jump vanes sitting at dock. Some of their particles would stay in realspace, mightily agitated; others, in their random way, would enter hyperspace, and stream for the depths of the local gravity wells, the greatest of which was Kefk's main star. Everything would part company in a rather irretrievable fashion, either turning into a bright spot or a failed attempt at a black hole, stripping its own substance down, since it had no directional potential except the station and the star's own motion through the continuum. Probably not enough to prevent implosion. Hilfy activated a keyboard in her idle moment, fed in The Pride's mass and her best guess at total station mass, adding in the number of ships tied into the station, a moment of black self-amusement, filling her mind with numbers and schoolbook calculations.
It was significant that the kif had not immediately demanded that they shut down the internal power: the kif knew they had no power to enforce that until they had Pyanfar in their hands.
And Hilfy did not want to think about that at the moment. She simply ran the numbers on their own possible dissolution, and whether they would actually form the hyperspace bubble, and whether with all those ships and that station and all that mass, they might actually have a hyperspatial effect on the largest star when they plowed into it.
She sent it into Nav, since the bubble variables resided there in standard equations; and of a sudden her comp monitor blinked, beeped, and came up with output too soon to have responded to that complex query: TRLING/PR1, it read, PSWD.
Password?
Nav query?
Those were the two thoughts that hit her brain while her eyes were in motion back to the top of that screen where the program name was listed: they found that PRIORITY ONE code and the Linguistics Path Designator as the implication suddenly hit like a wash of cold water.
YN she typed, which was the shortest city name on Anuurn and the standard password for their lightly coded systems: fast keys to hit.
Syntax achieved, the screen said. Display/Print?/Tape?/All?
She hit D and P; the screen blinked text up, full of gaps and mangled syntax: it was running a code-cracker set in the assumption it was mahensi, but it was not mahen standard, it was some godsforsaken related language, though the computer was making some sense of it on cognates. Jik's message. The coded packet he had dropped in their laps back at Mkks.
Dialect. Which?
She punched more buttons, desperately, asking for the decoded original. It came up, vaguely recognizable as mahen phonemes. "Gods be," she muttered, "Haral, Haral, the comp just spat out Jik's message but it's still hashed up, it's
got a string of words together but it's still sorting-we got a breakthrough here."
The screen blinked with a red strip across the top, which was Tirun using her keyboard to snatch information across to her board and probably to Haral's. "Keep on it," Haral said. "Tirun, monitor com."
"Aye," Tirun said, and "Aye," Hilfy muttered, punching keys, with the hair bristling on her neck and her ears flicking in half-crazed vexation with the computer, which had thrown her a half-solved problem in her own field here on the very edge of oblivion.
Kif could call our bluff any second now. Haral could push that button.
We could go streaming for that sun and the gods rot it what language is he using that comp hasn't got? O gods be! when's that alarm going to come? We're going to die, gods rot it, and it's giving me something
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