"Robert L. Forward - Rocheworld 01 - Rocheworld" - читать интересную книгу автора (Forward Robert L)

You've still got radar and ground plots! Close in!"

The words came from deep inside a short, chunky, round-faced woman with dark-black skin, a
close-cropped head of curly black hair, and a crisp Marine Officer's uniform seemingly tattooed on her
muscular body.

General Virginia Jones punched her supervisory keyboard as her parade-ground voice echoed off the
naked beams and taut pressurized walls of the crowded cubicle. Crammed into the compact control
room of a Space Marine Lightsail Interceptor, the programmers were short-circuiting the software in the
ship's computer to optimize an "unwilling capture" trajectory between their low acceleration twenty-five
kilometer-diameter sailcraft and the radar image of a lumbering cargo hauler. The huge heavy-lift vehicle
was rising slowly from its launch pad deep in Soviet Russia on its way to resupply one of the Soviet
bases in geosynchronous orbit.

"Boarding party!" General Jones roared to the deck below. "You've got ten minutes to do the
fifteen-minute suiting drill! Move it!"

There was a bustle as hammocks were stowed to give a little more room in the tiny communal barracks.
Suits were lifted from lockers and donned—rapidly, but carefully. General Jones looked sternly around
at the organized pandemonium and took a bite of her energy stick. She looked at it in distaste, thought
blissfully of the excellent mess back at the Space Marine Orbital Base, then stoically took another bite of
the energy bar. If it was good enough for her Marines, it was good enough for her.

Like the PT boats in World War II almost a century ago, the Interceptors had to be fast. With only the
light pressure from the Sun to push them, that meant keeping weight down. It was battle rations every
meal when the Space Marines were on Interceptor duty.

General Jones carefully watched the captain of the Interceptor as he swung his ungainly craft smoothly
around. Captain Anthony Roma was short and handsome, with dark flashing eyes and a youthful wave of
hair over his forehead that had Jinjur's mind wandering slightly. Captain Roma was the best lightsail pilot
in space (with the possible exception of Jinjur herself).

The lightsail scooped, dumping its cross-orbit excess speed in the upper atmosphere by using its huge
expanse of sail like a sea anchor. It tilted to maximize the solar photon pressure and rose again in a
pursuit trajectory of the bogey. Ten minutes later General Jones called a halt to the hunt of the phantom
fox.

"Freeze program," she said, then turned and tapped a code word into her command console. The
computer memory of the practice pursuit was locked until she released it. The primary purpose of this
exercise had been to test the reconfiguration skills of the human element of her computer-operated
spaceship—the programmers. By reconfiguring the software in the computer to take into account its loss
of components and capabilities, the programmers could hopefully tune the program to obtain its optimum
response time. She wished the Interceptors could have the latest in self-reprogramming computers, or at
least the touch-screen input terminals, but that was many fiscal-budget cycles away.

The study of the programmer responses could take place later. General Jones lifted herself up in the
weak acceleration, coiled her short, powerful legs under her compact body, hooked the toes of her
corridor boots under the command console, and launched herself toward the "sortie" port. There was
more to a Space Marine Interceptor than sail, computer, and programmers, and she was the preventive
maintenance technician for that fourth component.