Imperial Stars 2-Republic and Empire by Jerry Pournelle Read Free Book Online

in this. Reed and I have been in space longer than anyone else. In eight hundred years, we've met just five times, and yet . . .
    And yet, I feel closer to him than to all the politicians on Earth. What do they know about the stars? All they're interested in is preserving their petty little planet's rule over Man. They wouldn't know what an Overdrive would mean. It would mean that Man would have the Galaxy, it would mean that one wouldn't have to be a pariah, a man without a planet or a time, to be a starman.
    But is that what they think of? Huh! All they see is the end of Earth's control. Of course, they're right. The only thing that makes Earth undisputed master is time . Earth is always generations ahead of the planets. Its head start in technology will hold up forever—
    But not if there should be an Overdrive—not if Man could go from Earth to the outer ring in months, not centuries.
    He glanced at David Steen, strapped in beside him. Young but intelligent. Some day—
    "It's a dirty business, David," he said, almost involuntarily.
    "Sir?"
    "I said it's a dirty business. I never thought I'd be a hired murderer."
    "But, sir, we have orders. It's a military mission. You have no reason to blame—"
    "Orders! The orders of men who are all dead by now. The orders of an Earth that doesn't even give a damn about the possibility of Man really having the stars. Orders to destroy, orders of a willful, selfish . . . ah!"
    "Admiral ben Ezra, our orders are simply to make sure Dr. Ching doesn't escape. Not necessarily to kill anyone. Besides, we're—"
    "Yes," said ben Ezra bitterly, "yes, I know. We're soldiers." A new and narrow look came into his large gray eyes.
    "But you have a point, David," he said. "Our orders are simply to bring back Ching, and eliminate all knowledge of his work. They don't say anything about blowing up traders, do they? I've not been ordered to kill Peter Reed."
    "No, sir."
    "No, indeed," said the admiral slowly.
    "By all space," he roared, "we're going to carry out our orders! But we're going to do it without killing Captain Reed!"
     
    "Well," said Manuel Olivera, "where do we go from here?"
    "Out to the outer ring, I suppose," said Peter Reed. "We are in a very peculiar position. I'm sure that ben Ezra won't blast us without boarding. He's got to make sure he gets Ching. But wherever we go, he can plot our course, and be there first. Whatever we do, we've got to do it between now and the next planetfall."
    He leaned his face in both hands, propped upon his elbows on the mahogany desk top.
    Ching sat nervously in front of him, and Olivera paced the room.
    "I still don't see why Earth wants to stop you, Dr. Ching," said Olivera.
    "In a way, I do," replied Ching. "Positively speaking, the Overdrive would mean the inevitable end of Earth's domination. Without the time differential, Earth would be just another planet."
    He managed a small grin. "But on the other hand," he said, "scientifically speaking, they're being most foolish. I am perhaps twenty years from an equation from which an Overdrive could be developed. All I have, right now, is a new point of view. For a thousand years, men have been searching for an Overdrive, always trying to escape from the Einsteinian Universe. Sometimes they look for a mythical thing called hyperspace, or subspace, or the fourth dimension. What I have done, is simply to begin an inquiry, within Relativity Theory, modifying not the question, but the substitutions."
    "What is all that about?" snapped Olivera.
    "I'm not sure yet," said Ching abstractedly. "But basically, if you accept the Special Theory of Relativity, the reason that the speed of light cannot be exceeded is that mass is infinite at the speed of light, hence it would take an infinite force to accelerate it to that speed.
    " But , if there were a drive whose thrust was a function of the mass it was accelerating, then, as mass increased, thrust would increase, and at the speed of light, theoretically,