Read Online Half Life by Hal Clement - Free Book Online

machine, fusion-powered or not.
    The heat which leaked from the pipes was at once carried away by the airstream, of course. Status, while not interested, kept a running log of everything it sensed. This was not “cleaned” to save memory more often than once a Titan day, sixteen of Earth’s in length, so that events not recognized as important when they occurred could be reviewed in detail afterward. All but a few centimeters of wing adjacent to the ramjet pods themselves stayed at ambient temperature. Warmth was now, however, beginning to creep farther out as the speed dropped to and below tens of meters per second; but no living mind knew it.
    Status was not, even by those who thought if it as him, a living mind.
    The increasing camber applied by Belvew as wing stall approached may have contributed to what finally happened, but no one was ever sure. The operator’s tiny pitch and yaw corrections as he maintained a straight and steady descent may have, or may not. Even a trace of turbulence in Titan’s own air may have been all that was needed.
    Whatever the cause, most of the sharp white rim on the leading edge of the left wing suddenly fell or blew away from the now slightly warmer surface, and the lift on that side, already as dependent on wing area as on shape, dropped.
    Slightly. So did the wing tip.
    Slightly. Slightly was quite enough, since it also happened suddenly. Probably not even an automatic control, or even Status if it had been on call for such a purpose, could have reacted effectively at such low airspeed.
    The wing, short as it was, grazed the ground with its tip, and Oceanus’s nose whipped down and to the left. Belvew felt practically simultaneous kicks, nudges, pinches, and stabs from practically all his accelerometers and other rate instruments. At the same instant most of the central area of his Mollweide went blank, and the mosaic of sections which should have shown the view to the rear displayed only Titan’s pale peach sky.
    There was nothing useful to say for the moment, and Gene again made sure no one heard him saying it.
    “There couldn’t have been any turbulence there!” sounded too much like an excuse to be uttered by a disciplined civilian, much less a moderately high-ranking observer. Everyone’s thoughts reached the same point on that logic route, though not all passed the milestones in the same order.
    No ground camera views. No transport until. Seismic nets not finished. Weather tracers not even started.
    Labs now available only at their source, where they’d have to stay; and something odd was happening there.
    Humanity is a visually oriented species, and in seconds Maria and Status were building a new image of the factory site, whose details improved moment by moment as data poured in from different sensors.
    The factory itself was simply a block with rounded corners, a little over five meters on a side now that it had finished growing, saved from resembling a child’s toy by rain-gathering, light-reading, gas-ejecting, and other apparatuses on its roof. No one was looking at that image yet, however.
    The jet’s nose could gradually, as details were filled in, be seen crumpled back almost to the wings; the “coffin” in which a pilot could ride must be occupying only a fraction of its former volume. The ground the bow had tried to displace had not yielded significantly. The left wing and ram pipe were hidden under the fuselage, whose tail pointed upward at about sixty degrees. The right wing and engine, also pointing upward but less sharply, seemed undamaged, even after image resolution got down to single centimeters.
    “So much for Oceanus . Is Theia ready?” asked Goodall finally.
    “Just about,” Carla responded quietly.
    “I’ll check her out,” came Ginger’s voice. “I think I’m nearest, and I’ve just slept and done my suit.”
    “Are you willing to drive again, Gene?”
    Belvew hesitated only a moment before answering. The crash was presumably his