Unless the Englishman was skillful, his burden would drag
him off his feet.
Dominico had a tube of rocket fuel under each arm. The Italian was small,
and the tubes were bulky. Each was about ten feet long and two feet in
diameter. With any gravity or air resistance at all, the Italian couldn't
have carried even one.
Santos took the radiation detection instruments and the case with the
astrogation equipment from Koa. Rip greeted his men briefly, then took
his computing board and began figuring. He knew the men were glad he and
Santos had made it. But they kept their greetings short. A spinning
asteroid was no place for long and sentimental speeches.
He remembered the dimensions of the asteroid and its mass. He computed
its inertia, then figured out what it would take to overcome the inertia
of the spin.
The mathematics would have been simpler under normal conditions, but
doing them on the run, trying to watch his step at the same time, made
things a little complicated. He had to hold the board under his arm, run
alongside Santos while the new sergeant held the case open, select the
book he wanted, open it and try to read the tables by his belt light, and
then transfer the data to the board.
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