Fred Saberhagen Berserker 14 Berserker's Star

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far, none of them had come close enough to have any chance of stopping it.
Harry had nothing more to contribute to the
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Fred Saberhagen - Berserker's Star.html barrage. The
Witch had now entirely used up her modest complement of legal, normal
missiles, as well as all the secret c-
plus slugs.
A missile from one of the other ships, aimed at the fleeing berserker, came
near hitting the
Witch
instead.
After a minute's delay, Pike's voice came crackling back. "We're trying,
Silver. But you've
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Fred Saberhagen - Berserker's Star.html got a better start at heading it off
than we have. If you can't hit it with a weapon, we don't have much chance. If
it comes down to trying something else, that'll be up to you."
"Naturally." Harry didn't feel in the least bit heroic. The way things were
working out, they were all going to be dead in the next few minutes anyway. It
wouldn't cost
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Fred Saberhagen - Berserker's Star.html anyone in this system anything to try
to save a few billion other people.
"What else is there to try?" Lily asked him, speaking privately.
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"I suppose he's talking about ramming it. But if we can't even get close
enough to hit it with a beam& "
The berserker was not going to be doing any c-
plus jumping, a tactic almost certainly suicidal
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Fred Saberhagen - Berserker's Star.html here near the heart of this crazy
system. Nor were the ships now in pursuit. No computer check was needed to
confirm that any ship or machine that tried that trick, out of desperation,
would be swiftly eliminated without doing its enemies any harm.
Harry was talking to himself and to Lily, and to the
Witch
, if either of them cared to listen in.
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Fred Saberhagen - Berserker's Star.html
"We don't have to shoot it. We don't have to ram it, in the normal sense.
Just touching it, with something, anything, made out of normal matter, ought
to be enough."
Avalon was growing larger, in the scope images, and in the cleared ports, too.
The stepwise series of concentric orbital shells was actually visible in
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Fred Saberhagen - Berserker's Star.html some wavelengths.
Harry went on radio again. "What am I
looking at now? Like rings?"
Someone familiar with the mechanics of the system, most likely Dr.
Kochi, watching the proceedings from her berth in the medirobot, explained to
Harry that objects in space near this particular pulsar were restricted as to
the
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Fred Saberhagen - Berserker's Star.html orbits they were allowed to
occupy almost like electrons orbiting the nucleus of an atom. "It's a form of
the Pauli exclusion principle."
"In celestial mechanics?
That's crazy."
"I know. But that's how it's going to be when you get very near the star."
TWENTY-FIVE
If the berserker were to
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Fred Saberhagen - Berserker's Star.html release its deadly cargo now, no
computer on either side would find it possible to predict just what trajectory
the bundle of antimatter might follow. But the enemy would be taking a great
risk that all its work and planning would go for nothing.
One definite possibility was that the packet would simply fall back on
Maracanda. That
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Fred Saberhagen - Berserker's Star.html would certainly cause catastrophic [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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