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“Anti magnets to one quarter,” said the pilot.
“One quarter, aye,” said Panzer, manipulating the control, and the viewscreen showed the wharf start to slide to port. The mood lighting turned green.
“One meter clear,” said Durkin. “Jetways retracting. Five meters. Ten meters clear, sir.”
“Magnets to zero. Nose ring to zero degrees, one second burst, then fifteen degrees.”
“Nosering at fifteen,” said Panzer
“One second burst,” said the pilot.
The wharf began to slide shallowly down, now, too as Roth tiptoed away from the congested wharf. Once clear, she dropped off the pilot, then came to anchor in the Moon Roads so her captain could open his orders.
This he did by excusing himself form the bridge and stepping down the companion to the great cabin and logging in to the computer there. The orders were simple enough: a milk run to Neva 4 to drop off supplies, collect raw oxygen, and return.
Ignoring for the moment a certain uneasiness with the Neva system, Jack moved to the chartroom and plugged his sextant into the navigational computer, pulling up a map of the space and hyperspace between here and the Neva system over the time it would take the Roth to get there under standard conditions. Based on the projected weather along the way and recent reports of French activity, he chose a course along Interstellar routes 16 and 73, noted the probable time dilation offset, and saved the data to the navcom. Then he puled up a current map of the solar system. The interstellar route entrances were in a heliocentric orbit sandwiched between the orbits of Mars and the Earth; I-16 was perhaps one-sixth of a revolution back. He highlighted the gate and their current position: 28º37’16’. He saved this to the navcom, too, then ejected and pocketed his sextant and returned to the bridge.
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