THE COSMIC COMPUTER

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course, the /Harriet Barne/ lacked.[Pg 98]

"Well, are we going to make the whole trip in free fall?" he wanted to know.

"No, we'll use our acceleration for pseudograv halfway, and deceleration
the other half," Jacquemont told him. "We'll be in free fall about ten
or fifteen hours. What we're going to have to do will be to lift off
from Poictesme in the horizontal position the ship was designed for, and
then make a ninety-degree turn after we're off-planet, with our lift and
our drive working together, just like one of the old rocket ships before
the Abbott Drive was developed."

That meant, of course, that the after bulkheads would become decks, and
explained a lot of the oddities he had noticed about the conversion job.
It meant that everything would have to be mounted on gimbals, everything
stowed so as to be secure in either position, and nothing placed where
it would be out of reach in either.