Sue them! (or better yet, slip them one of your stories, wait till they make it into a movie, and then sue them for even more money).
Now what the heck does swing the cat mean (other than catching the neighbour's cat steeling fish from your pond, and subsequently tailswinging it back over the fence (and 3 extra for good measure))?
Swing a cat. Cat'o'nine tails. (This is from memory, I'm sure the T'internet will explain all). A Cat'o'nine was a whip that had nine 'tails' to it. Oftern embedded with glass or sharp stones and the like. Men coudn't be flogged under decks because there wasn't room to swing the cat. So men would be dragged up on deck so the cat could be swung.
Hence not enough room to swing a cat . . .
And just for reference:
Keel Hawl. Men used to be tied with a rope that was worked under the boat from one side to the other or under the 'keel'. They would then be thrown overboard and hawled by the rope from one side of the boat to the other under the keel. Ok you might think. Just hold your breath and you'll be fine. On a new boat yes maybe. It wouldn't be pleasant but you might be ok. But on a boat that has been in the water a while like the old man'o'wars and war ships their hulls would be covered in barnicles. You've all seen barnicles on a rocks at the sea side. Would you like to be dragged over them, under water. That is to be Keel Hawled.
Square Meal. With a rolling ship a round plate would slide around the table (which had raised edges to it!) so rather than your meal being served on a plate you would get a square board. This would prevent you from loosing your meal in rough seas. Hence to have a square meal.
Now. Many of you might think that space is exciting, romantic, full of adventure and things to see.
It ain't.
Space is dull. Space is boring. Space is a stupidly large place. It takes stupidly large amounts of time to get from one place to another. Even with the advent a vaible Zero Point energy Harvester and demi-light speed space still takes mind numbingly stupid amounts of time to get across. If you think it takes light 8 minutes to travel from the sun to Earth and that's just one AU. Jupiter lies another 5 Au's after that. So light takes 40 minutes to get to Jupiter. For long journeys my little ship can push half light. Which is fine you say. Would take 80 minutes to get out to Jupiter. Well, it don't. it takes untill you get to Jupiter just to get up to 1/4 light. And then you gotta slow down at the other end. the amount of fuel you spend trying to get your ship up to speed and then slowing the bugger back down again just makes it far too cost prohibitive too go around breaking speed records all the time. In the trade many journey times are measured in cost rather than time. You know on average that a normal junket out to Jupiter from Earth will take six months at a cost of around 6 Mil. 5 Months will take 7.5Mil. 4 Months 10Mil and so on. When your starting out your taking the cheapest jobs you can get but the problem with that is your spending 2.Mill in your fuel cost and it takes you just over a year to get from Jupiter to Earth. Quite a long turnaround for jobs. And incredable boring!!
So you might think that when I'm about to talk about the apce racing you might think that it's going to full of space glamour, hi octane, adenaline packed, hull to hull racing. It ain't. I would say that Space racing is like a round the Earth Yaght race. But Yaghting is more exciting. At least you got waves. Long distance space racing is something they send junvanile deliquents on as a punishment. Also to get the little buggers out of the way for a few years. Ship on Auto Nav. Get the kid drunk and strapped in and before they now it their a million miles away with no access to the Nav Comp.
No. What we have instead is Port Racing. It's kinda illegal. It's a loose kind of orienteering but with super manouvarble Port Tugs and powerful 'fettled' Atmo Hoppers. Your given a set of coordinates at the start gate and your onboard Nav will log each point as you pass them in the correct order. The thing is the course will have ou criss crossing which ever racing enviroment the organizers choose. I have only entered one such race. The Titan cup. It's a yearly event, hugly popular with rich kids, bored kids, bored celebs and amateur hangers on. But some take it increadable seriously. The winning pot is millions and anything goes in the pursuit of winning. The only rules are that you must start at the start, follow the checkpoint and finish at the finsh. Oh, and no projectile or beam weapons. And just to show how serious some of the racers are it has been debated recently whether Rockets count as projectile weapons or not. The event is netcast throughout the system and huge amounts of money change hands in betting shops and syndicates. The entrants are registered but the locatoin kept top secret untill the very last minute. As these races are often in civilian areas, ports, mining complexes, space lanes, colony stations the authorities take a sim view on racing. But thats what made it even more exciting to be in and to watch.
I entered because I was made too.
I am a good pilot. Some people say I'm one of the best in the outer ring. I'm not such a good gambler. I got poker tells that you could read a book with. My numbers in blackjack never come up untill I leave the table and my 21 gets confused with bust!
I'd found myself a nice little gambling den in Europa-1. The ante was 100,000 and the betting was getting big. I got into trouble. Quite alot of trouble. The amount of trouble that the winnings from the Titan Trophy would just about cover. Which was lucky. Beacuse the Mr Santriani, the club owner and the head of one of the biggest crime families this side of the asteroid belt, had a ship. He told me all this after I told him I was a pilot. Which was after he asked me what I did. Which was after I said I'll earn the money. Which is after I had my fingures put in a vice. Which was after I told him I couldn't pay my bill. Which was after I lost a quite increadable amount of money.
He told me that he had a ship entered into the Titan Trophy but he was short a pilot. He told me then I would enter his ship, win and pay back my debt. Now I have never had any desire to enter the Titan Trophy. It's illegal for a start. If you get caught you have you licence taken away, get put in gaol for a long time and get your ship impounded. There is a strong liklyhood you will crash. And if you crash, you will die. Andt hen there are your fellow racers. Alot of whom would not think it below them to make sure you die too. There really is alot of money at stake. The Titan was not a race to be in if you valued your life. Apparently it is a race to be in if someone else values it for you. I didn't have much of a choice. I had too win to pay back my debt and if I didn't then I may as well have been dead anyway. I handed over my keys to my Tug with my free hand as a garantee that I would at least turn up and I was taken to view my svelt, polished, powerful, mean, clean racing machine.
The lights flickered on. "Oh. My. God!" My two escorts pushed me into the garage. "He want's me to race and win in that?" My escorts didn't say anything. They moved back to the door where they would stand without moving untill the race. This garage was now my home and my workplace. Because If I was ever going to get this bucket of bolts that sulked infront of me to work in time I was going to have to work like a bastard. It was an old, actually thats a kindness, it was a geriatric old model Jovy. The scientists used to use these becasue the hull was three times as thick as it needed to be and the elctron shielding was the best of it's day. That meant they could get close into jupiter but all that extra plate and the powerplant needed to power the shielding it would take them forever to get there. I took a good look around it and really wished I hadn't. I released the air hatch and climbed in. These things where supprisingly roomy inside, espeacially now all the science gear ahd been stripped out. It was only when I passed the cockpit bulkhead when I realised that someone was sat in the flight engineers seat.
"So. Got yerself into even more trouble with my dad then?"
"Yo . . . ! Bu . . . ? Wha? . . . Oh shit."
"Thanks. Love you too sweety."
"Your dad is Mr Santriani."
"Yep. sweetheart ain't he. Always got one of his boys to bring me a present on my brithday. Can't say he ever forgot. Never there himself of course. But hey, we can't have everything when your dads the crime Boss for most of the system."
"But I thought he ran mining cartels."
"Oh he does that too. Kind of like a hobby of his. See if he can run a legitimate business. I keep telling him that he's actually quite good at going straight. But he just shucks me and calls me his little porcupine. Don't ask why."
"But how?"
"Come I'm here? Dunno really. Oh yea. Thats it. I majored in astro-engineering and after that little stuny you pulled by dumping in the life boat my father reckons, seeing as how that poor chap they got instead of you wasn't worth a penny, I owe him for the search party. I think I should be flattered that he sent so many ships out for me but I've seen the bill. So, here I am. Working for dear 'ol papa. I don't think he would ever actually set me adrift in the cold darkness of space, but I'm never too sure."
"Oh shit."
"You think? Seen the ship? Yea. So have I. Suppose we had better crack on Eh?"
We sidestepped around each other as she got out of her seat and pushed passsed me at the bulkhead. I was stunned. To say the least. At the most I was stunned too with a deep foreboding that there was something I needed to too. And that I wasn't going to enjoy it.
I found her pulling the porpulsion drive apart. Throwing things over her shoulder, heavy things, things that looked important and went CLUNK when they hit the floor planking. She was muttering under her breath as she worked "Knackered. Don't need that. Oh christ, they stopped making those 30 years ago." Bong! "Crap" CLUNK. "Bollocksed" Clang. "Oops. Pass me that piece could you? No that one. By your foot. Yes, well done Einstien. Pass it back would you. Ta. Shouldn't have pulled that out at all. No, no, no." All in all she seemed very cheery about her work.
"Look". I said.
"Hmmm?" She grunted, head buried in a plasma conduit.
"I have to say something."
"Hmmpth ssshhhwwwaayyy grmpph".
"What?"
She eased herself out of the hole. "I said, I can't hear you."
"Oh. Look. I'm sorry."
"For what?"
"For dumping you in the middle of space."
"S'ok. If I don't get this heap'o'shit running without the reactor blowing up killing us both then I got my own back ain't I. Now ar eyou going to be useful or just stand there gawping. See if you can get one of the brothers out there to do some shopping for us. We might owe my dad something but if he wants this rig to win then he's gotta speculate to accumilate. Speak to Claude. He's the nice one."
"Jeez. I'd hate to see the other one in a good mood."
- - - - - - - - - - - -
It was ready. Of sorts. It was space worthy at least. Well, it only vented a little gas. And it went. When asked really nicely and with a big run up. But we had a ship. She christened it ' Mr Wiggles'. After her cat. I impressed myself, I only sulked for two days.
The day of the race came. Racers from all over the system where gathering. The rich in the posh hotels, the Middling in the street bars and Cafes of Centro and the Pits in whatever hostely would let them in. the whole of Europa was buzzing. The cops where out in full and the port was gradually emptying of anything that people valued.
The coordinates of the start came through and ships started to move quietly and law abidingly to the start grid. The race would start exactly on the start time whether your where there or not. If thepolice noticedany build up of ships then they would have the area surrounded. The race would still start though. There was no such thing as a cancellation. If noone won for whatever reason then the winnings would be rolled over untill the next time. But the race always started. 'Mr Wiggles' spluttered and coughed it's way across the port. No copper would have looked at us twice. 'Mr Wiggles' looked about as race worthy as a chocolate hobnob. Less so even. A Buzzer sounded in the cockpit, the race had started. The view outside suddenly filled with chemical plumes, ion traces, Plasma trails and blue lights as boats of all sizes and looks turned and headed for the next checkpoint. A 'ping' told us that our start had been logged and we dialed in the next coordinate. I rammed the afterburnes to full and opened the throttle. . . . . . Nothing. Not a jot, nada, zip, zero, none. No, wait! Damnit.
"Whats wrong?" I shouted. Her hands where dancing across her console like a concert pianist.
"I DON'T NO!" She shouted back.
"Ok, ok. No need to shout."
"You are!"
"Well. What do you expect. We're not moving. If we don't start moving soon your gunna be grounded for the rest of your life and I'm going to be dead."
"S'ok. It won't come to that." Her console shot out a shower of sparks. "Shit!"
"Oh thats great. So your gunna kill me first yes? Goddamnit." I rammed the throttle ports back and forth in their houseing and jabbed at the afterburner. "Come on you Bitch. MOVE!!"
"Bastard!"
"What?"
"It's a he. It's a Bastard. Mr Wiggles."
"It's a ship. All ships are female. It's a Bitch!!"
"Bastard."
"What sex was you cat?"
"Female".
"Ha!! Bitch!"
"Bastard!"
"No it's a girl!"
"Wasn't talking about the ship. Look stop playing with your sticks like that. It's not going to help. I'm going to go back and check something, when I shout take the throttle to full and hit that red button when I tell you"
"Right."
"But not before Ok."
"Ok."
"Sure?"
"Sure. now go and fix this boat."
She went back and after a few seconds of crashing, cursing and what sounded like a steel toe boot hitting metal. "Ok" She Shouted. "Up the the throttle!"
"Nothings happening!!"
"it is back here! Keep going. Keep going. Right, hit that button!"
The world went backwards. I've never felt such G. I was pinned into the seat barely manageing to hang on to the stick.
"OOOOOOOHHHHHHHH MMMMYYYYYYYYYY GGGGOOOOOOODDDDDDD!"
I would love to tell you how fast we where going but the ship was shakoing so badly and my eyes where buried so far back into my skull that I couldn't read the dials even if I wanted too.
The first three where in a failry straight line with no obstructions and we passed nine ships just getting to checkpoint three. But I then had to slow it down.
"Don't slow down!!"
"What?" She was still out the back.
"Don't slow down. We're stuck open and once we've used what the red button was connected too we ain't got no more. So your gunna have to flip it and power steer."
"Are you mad? At this speed. She's gunna rip apart!"
"No, she won't. Flip her."
To slow down I had to completly flip the ship over, on full power, to get the arse pointing the way we where travelling. That way our exhuast would slow us down. The only problem is that ships arn't designed to do it under power. It's not very good for them. And If I couldn't shut the engines down then that was my steering. I had to continously point my tail in the opposite direction to where I wanted to go kinda like driving a terrestrial vehicle on ice in the biggest power slide you've ever seen.
But it seemed I had no choice. I fired the retros and span her. Trying to keep her balanced on the end of her exhaust like a a spinning plate. If lost control we would be have the flight dynamics of a farting balloon. I got her spun and we started slowing down. My engineer made a reapperance a the bulkhead as the acceleration ceased and she could peel herself off the rear bulkhead. She strapped herself back into her seat.
"What the hell did you do?" I asked.
"Oh, just a little something I'd been working on."
"like what? Why can't we stop?"
"Becasue I've set up a chain reaction. Injection, mixing, energy, expulsion. We are sitting on a nuclear bomb."
"Oh, thankyou. Thats a great reasurance."
"just keep it pointing the right direction. Where are we."
"We overshot Checkpoint three but at this speed we should be back in the race in no time. But . . ."
"But what?"
"We gotta get around the Megalith."
"Oh shit."
The Megalith was the largest strip mining vessle in the System. It could literally eat asteroids, strip it down, and spit out anything it didn't want. It was huge. 16miles long, 5 miles wide and 3 miles deep. And a bugger to try and reverse park.
"We'll never get around it. Look, we would have go over the Megalith and in between the 'Solar Wind' And the 'Jupiter Express' We ain't got the room. Damnit. Even with the extra power we'll never make up the difference if we go round them all."
"I know". I said.
"So? what do we do. Give up? Fly to Saturn and bury oursleves in a crater for the rest of our lives. My dad will still find us. he's like that."
"Nope. We're going to go throught he Megalith."
"Through? Are you suicidal?"
"hey. your the one who put us this close to an atomic bomb. Look the Megalith has come in for a refit. There is nothing inside it. It's like a giant snake, hollow all the way through to allow it to swallow asteroids. We're apporaching it directly head on. I should be able to fly us straight through the middle. We got two more checkpoints before that and the finsih line is on the other side. We're going through the Megalith."
"This is it. We're all going to die."
"Don't be so fatalistic"
Mr Wiggles streaked through the checkpoints, up 20 places and gaining onthe leaders. I was making the extra speed carry though any course corrections. Taking wide downhill skier turns. Within seconds we where up to 2nd place and gaining on the leader. And we where passed.
"Yess!! Whoa. Come on girl. Stay with me." The mouth of the Megalith loomed ever larger. When all of a sudden the engines cut out. We stoped accelerating.
"The engines have gone"
"No shit sherlock. I'll go and see whats wrong."
"I got no directional. Just give me directional. We have enough momentum and we don't need any major course correction. Just give me enough to get through the megalith otherwise we are in trouble."
"I though you said we where ok if you aimed right."
"We would have been. But I aimed a bit too much left and not enough right. If we don't get directional pretty soon we're going to miss the mouth."
"that's ok. We'll just miss the finsh."
"No. We'll miss the mouth and hit the side."
"Oh. Well. It's not going to happen. The Grommit that hold the inlet hose to the head sproket as worked loose and dropped into the big end. It's rattling arounnd in there like a good un and I can't get it out. If I start her up again now then she'll rip herself apart from the inside. I can't start eh motor."
"Directional?"
"Hold on."
I heard a few more bangs and crashed and another bout of a steel toe. She limped back into the cockpit and strapped back in. "try that."
What a beauty. She'd done it. 'Mr Wiggles' just skimmed the side, leaving a trail of sparks and molten metal as I leant as hard as I could trying to pull her away from the gigantic steel cliff face.
"I thought you said it would be empty".
"It should be."
"What are they then?"
Two massive asteroids floated halfway along the lengtht of the Megalith. Line astern. They where tethered but it looked like they where drifting in their moorings. They filled the manmade cavern from side to side, roof to floor.
"We got a space." I shouted. "I'm going for the top side. She's bottom towards Jupiter. The Asteroids will be being pullled down. I'm going for it."
"It's too tight. we can't fit through there".
"Anywhere else we can fit?"
"No."
"Right then. Hold on."
'Mr Wiggles' lerched upwards and slammed herself against the steel composite roof. her Hull gouging a furrow in the Megaliths plating. The asteroids where getting closer and closer. The gap looking less and less large.
"No!!!. You got it wrong." She cryed. "The Ship is orbiting. The Asteroids will be flung out not sucked in!!"
It was too late. The gap was closing all the time. "Breath in." I said.
Smoke filled the cockpit, sparks flew and the air smelled of ozone and burning metal. 'Mr Wiggles' flashed past one, the the other asteroid carriying it's own apocolypse. Fire, smoke, sparks, metal and rock churned up around her as she plunged on. I was glad for that extra thick hull plate now. And then we wherepast. Past the asteroids and heading for space at the other end of the Megaliths tunnel. In the distance the finish line coordinates beckoned.
"Whoa. yea." I shouted. We had made it.
"Don't count yer chickens yet big boy. We've lost speed. Alot of speed. All that scrapping. We're coasting. What we have is all we got."
We watched the scanner. We where straight and level pointed straight at the finsih line. The second place man closing rapidly.
"It's not enough" She said. He's going to get us onthe line. nothing we can do."
We sat in silence for a bit before I thought of something.
"Burb her"
"What?"
"Burb her. We don't need the engine after this. Charge her with as much fuel as you can and light her up. All we need is one hit. A few seconds worth."
"But we'll never get back. we can't turn around."
"And if we loose the alternative is better?"
"True. Ok. Give me five and hit that button again when I shout."
She went back and pottered. I don't know what piece of metal was recieving the wrath of her steelies but it soon recindered and she came back. I ain't having what happened last time. Wait till I'm strapped in then hit the button. Ok."
I hit it and I knew the engine died. But it's last dying breath gave us enough momentum to cross the line first. Stopping on the other hand, was another matter.
We where caught up with 2 weeks later. Our debts paid in full our names written down in history. Although apparently the InterCorp Mining company are looking for us. Apparently we left a piece of our ship embedded in the six and a half miles worth of gouge that had appeared on the inside of their ship. We wern't in a hurry to pick it up.
And thats the story of how I won the Titan Cup race. Sorry, how 'we' won the Titan cup Trophy. I even had enough money left over to buy myself a salvage vessel. Whcih reminds of that time when we had to haul out to the deep space research observatory. The furthest I have ever been in space. But thats another story . . . . .
Heh, don't remember reading that. But dun (some local slag in there for you) be silly, they get paid millions to sit in a room eating cream cakes and drinking cups of tea. They must be important, or impotent. Not sure which yet.
I did read that Geologists are argueing that any large bodies founs out by pluto and beyond should not be called plutons(I think) because Plutons are a geological formation made by lava solidifying under ground and rising to the surface. So you could theoretically have plutons on a pluton...
Geologists Vs Astronimers . . No thats a naked greco roman moment I would pay to see . . .
Meteoroids (rocks of less than 10 meters in diameter)
Asteroids or planetoids (rocks that are larger than meteoroids but smaller than planets and do not have a gravitational force of their own)
Plutoids (rocks that are larger than Asteroids and do create their own gravitational force)
There... I solved their problem in all of 10 seconds... Now where's my millions of dollars, you basterds.
Well the ammount of coffee I drink, and all the geek stuff I put on my crotch (laptops, have phones in my front pockets, etc) I'ma be fireing blanks. 3 cups of coffee kills your count, laptops on crotch kills count, mobile phones/pdas in front pockets/around crotch kills count.
If I ever get married and she gets pregnant, I'll know she's been cheating because all of mine are be duds.
Right... Then we'll just add a new definition for gravitational force: requires more than 1.5 m/s to escape its gravitational field. I'd like to see you try and sit on an meteoroid: Don't fart, or you'll take off like the spaceshuttle on steroids (<-- Maybe we can call planets the size of the sun that?)
BTW, I propose defining the entire asteroid belt as one planet. We should call it Tiamat. After all, it's pretty obvious that it used to be a planet, and that it fell apart due to some collision with a very large celestial body (Marduk if you're a religion freak) and created the asteroid belt (heaven) and the earth and moon.
There is a band called Marduk too And sitting on a meteoroid isn't too tough. Going by then Newton's principle, you push the asterioid with equal force as the asterioid pushes you. But let's really not start this argument with grav force again, last time it ended with people with black eyes and sore thumbs
And sitting on a meteoroid isn't too tough. Going by then Newton's principle, you push the asterioid with equal force as the asterioid pushes you. But let's really not start this argument with grav force again, last time it ended with people with black eyes and sore thumbs