Sunday 19 July 2020

Phase 3

See Undeclared War: Phase 2.

Phase 3 is even easier. Dorcas:

enters the tug;
removes supplies, motors etc;
takes them outside;
places them in the tug's grapnel field;
accelerates the tug close to the kzinti warship;
applies a sidewise thrust;
cuts off the grapnel field;
thus, releases masses toward the warship...

End of warship. Poul Anderson emphasizes that this is long, hard work for a single person. Nevertheless, Dorcas manages to work unopposed and the plan works without a hitch. There are still kzinti and a human traitor to be disposed of in a ground base but the balance of forces has shifted decisively in favor of the outnumbered human beings and a battle is won before we realize that it has begun.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Perhaps this was a bit too implausibly "easy" for Dorcas? Didn't the Kzin captain have crew Kzin monitoring security cameras for precisely this kind of thing? Or was he criminally overconfident?

Ad astra! Sean