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One of Floyd’s secret amusements, which he had never confided to anyone, was spotting similarities between human beings and animals. The resemblances were more often flattering than insulting, and his little hobby was also a very useful aid to memory.
Years ago, friction had braked the spin of Discovery’s carousel, thus transferring its angular momentum to the rest of the structure. Now, like a drum majorette’s baton at the height of its trajectory, the abandoned ship was slowly tumbling along its orbit.
10/10 attention to detail.
“Don’t try to help, and don’t be surprised at anything that happens.” Now, what does he mean by that? Curnow asked himself, while preparing to be as unsurprised as possible. Everything happened in about five seconds. Brailovsky triggered his broomstick, so that it telescoped out to its full length of four meters and made contact with the approaching ship. The broomstick started to collapse, its internal spring absorbing Brailovsky’s considerable momentum; but it did not, as Curnow had fully expected, bring him to rest beside the antenna mount. It immediately expanded again, reversing the
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PHYSICS!
And some were just victims of practical jokes or improbable accidents—like the unlucky amateur archeologists who found the props that a celebrated science-fiction moviemaker had abandoned in the Tunisian desert almost four decades earlier.
Floyd could imagine a dozen things that could go wrong; it was little consolation to remember that it was always the thirteenth that actually happened.
Remember—he’s in a business where if something works, it’s obsolete.
