"Who else?" snapped Drake.
The meter touched one-fifty.
"We're not doing anything. Level off, Drake, or you'll squash us flat!"
"_You_ level off. I haven't had the power lever since I adjusted it
before I hit the main switch. I can't even lift my arm now; I didn't
expect you to run this heap of junk from up there and so I didn't
adjust the arm rest."
The dial crept up past one-sixty.
"But we're not running it from here," yelled McBride. "We haven't
touched a thing since Hammond told you to take it up at twenty feet
per."
The automatic respirators started to work, pumping their rib-cages
in rhythm with their own breathing urges, and they sank into the
enveloping folds of the elastomer cushions which supported their
bodies. The meter hit one-seventy and passed it.
"Then who _is_ running the soup up?" came back the labored voice of
Sandra Drake. "If this is just a joke, cut it. I can't take much more."
"You--and all of us are doing well to take what we're getting now,"
stormed McBride. "Who--"
"Something's amiss somewhere," said Hammond thoughtfully. "At this
point, any gagster would quit. Look at the meter. One hundred and
ninety feet per! Almost 7-G! Uh--"
* * * * *
Black waves and dizziness came, shrouding little dazzles of colored
pinpoints that danced before the eyes. The meter touched two hundred
feet per second per second acceleration, and then the drive was cut
with a snap. The compressed elastomer rebounded, almost throwing the
men from their chairs, but the cover bars held them in.
The drive was completely off; acceleration zero.
"Drake! Get the inertia switch in again!" called Hammond.
"Going in," came the weakened voice of the pilot.
The original twenty feet per started again, and it began to climb, just
as it did before. "Stay alive," said Hammond to Drake. "We need you to
shove the inertia switch in if nothing else."
"I don't care to die," came her hard voice. "I'll keep alive. You pack
of fools figure out what's wrong with your invention, that's all I ask."
"Can you crank the inertia switch down to about 5-G?" asked Pete. "Make
it a hundred and fifty feet per. Then sit there and shove it in every
time it comes out until we can get out of Pluto's grip. We've got to
have a stable place before we can do any fixing."
"You and your jackrabbit drive," jeered Sandra Drake. "Concocted by the
best brains in space. Baloney--the best space in brains, I call 'em."
"Some day," promised McBride, "I'm going to spank that woman--with a
hairbrush!"
The meter rode up steadily to one-fifty, and then dropped to zero with
a click. The oil switch closed again, and the meter started up the
scale once again. This time McBride timed it.
"Steve," he said. "We're running at twenty per, original setting, and
the acceleration is increasing at the rate of twenty feet per, also.
That means our velocity is increasing at the rate of twenty feet per
second per second per second."
"Something screwy. Larry, grab a few tools and ride below and fix that
inertia switch so that it will close automatically. No use making
Drake sit there punching on that control button every seven and one
half seconds. We're going to be running this way for a couple of hours
before we get to safe space."
"A couple of hours?" groaned Drake. "Listen, geniuses, is there any
reason why I couldn't flatten this chair out? This is killing me."
"Look, Larry, make that switch cut out at 2-G. Sandra, set your drive
for 1-G. It'll jerk our guts to pieces, but we'll be doing about
the same as any ship under a 1-G drive--no, we'll be doing better.
Something in this heap is making us accelerate our acceleration; we're
working on the second derivative. That means--"
"That means," put in McBride, "that we're running on the rate of
change of acceleration, which is the rate of change of velocity. Now
under this drive, we have a new factor, which we can call 'R' and
which stands for the rate of change of acceleration. Then, since our
acceleration is increasing with respect to time, the linear equation:
V=AT no longer holds to express our velocity at the end of T seconds.
Our first equation under this rule becomes one to find the acceleration
after T seconds under R rate of change of acceleration. Follow? We have
Equation One:
(1) A=RT
Then to find the true velocity at the end of T seconds and so forth, we
take the integral of that, and we have:
(2) V=1/2RT^2
To get the distance covered in T seconds at R rate of change, we
integrate once more and come up with ... ah, let's see--Oh, sure:
(3) D=1/6RT^3