Dragon's Egg Quotes

“After a short flurry of national and international concern over the "death of the Sun," the human race settled down to solving the insoluble problem in the best way that they knew - they ignored it and hoped it would go away.”
― Robert L. Forward, Dragon's Egg

“If the computer had been a human, its eyebrows would have raised.”
― Robert L. Forward, Dragon's Egg

“terminal into compute mode, and made a quick calculation. “Seventy-seven microradians per second comes out to”
― Robert L. Forward, Dragon's Egg

“It had been a delightful vacation, eight long turns in the foothills at Swift’s Climb mountain resort.”
― Robert L. Forward, Dragon's Egg

“But if I go to sleep for eight hours, there will be a thousand years of cheela development before I wake up. That is like sleeping through the rise and fall of the Roman Empire!” “Set your alarm for six hours,” she replied, pushing him down the passageway, “That will give you enough sleep to keep you going and maybe you will be awake again before they develop spaceflight.”
― Robert L. Forward, Dragon's Egg

“Swift-Killer had never hurt so. Her last thought was that Bright had decided to punish her for having the temerity to attempt to talk to God. The automatic protective mechanisms in her body, activated by the lack of body reserves and the shock from the topside burns, suddenly took over. The animal reflexes were turned off, and for the first time in untold generations, a cheela went to sleep.”
― Robert L. Forward, Dragon's Egg

“Seiko slowly opened one eye. “Don’t be concerned, Doctor Wong, I was merely checking the tidal compensation,” she said, slightly annoyed at being interrupted. “At 406 kilometers from the neutron star, the tidal gravity gradient should be 101 gees per meter. Even though my middle is in free-fall, my arms, legs and head try to go in different orbits. My feet are one meter closer to the star and should feel a pull of 202 gees. My head is one meter further than my middle and should also feel a pull of 202 gees, while my arms should feel a push of 101 gees.”
― Robert L. Forward, Dragon's Egg

“Hunting was not hard work. It consisted of a leisurely stroll in the country with a bunch of friends, followed by a short period of exhilarating terror and a chance to demonstrate how brave and strong one was, climaxed by an orgy of eating and lovemaking that compensated for the long trek home carrying hunks of flesh.”
― Robert L. Forward, Dragon's Egg

“That means that those beings must live something like a million times faster than we do! And”
― Robert L. Forward, Dragon's Egg

“I must really be getting hungry,” Swift-Killer thought. “Here I am gazing full on the topside of a handsome young male and I am not even interested.”
― Robert L. Forward, Dragon's Egg

“With that she moved in between them and shortly was enjoying being the middle layer of a triple layer orgy.”
― Robert L. Forward, Dragon's Egg

“Inertia propulsion!” Pierre exclaimed. “On our last shift we were teaching them Newton’s law of gravity. Today they have inertia drives! Where will they be tomorrow?” “They probably will be able to control space and time and won’t have to bother with such clumsy things as black hole gravity generators and inertia drives,” Amalita replied. “But now I see why we were so awkward. Their main spacecraft will stay fifteen meters away from our spacecraft, but it is so massive that we will experience about one-third of a gee from it, pulling me out of the console chair and over to the viewing port. I guess I could manage to twirl once as I fall so they can see the human joints in action, but I bet I am going to be clumsier in one-third gee than that animation.” She turned from the screen and looked at him, “I wish you were doing my part, so I could get to see the cheela.” “I don’t know whether you would like it,” Pierre said. “According to this contour plot of the gravity field from the individual craft, although the size and mass of the flitters are much smaller than the main spacecraft, this one is going to come up to less than one meter from my viewing port and my nose is going to be pulling three gees!” He looked down at her body and grinned, “I guess the reason they didn’t choose you is they must know you don’t wear a bra in free-fall and they didn’t want to give you reverse Cooper’s droop.” Amalita turned back to the display, jabbing him with her elbow as she did so, and brought up the next screen full of instructions.”
― Robert L. Forward, Dragon's Egg

“His eyes widened and he rapidly scanned page after page. There were many photographs, each followed by detailed diagrams of the internal structure of the various neutron stars. They ranged the gamut from very dense stars that were almost black holes to large bloated neutron stars that had a neutron core and a white-dwarf-star exterior. Some of the names were unfamiliar, but others, like the Vela pulsar and the Crab Nebula pulsar, were neutron stars known to the humans. “But the Crab Nebula pulsar is over 3000 light-years away!” Pierre exclaimed to himself. “They would have had to travel faster than the speed of light to have gone there to take those photographs in the past eight hours!” A quick search through the index found the answer. FASTER-THAN-LIGHT PROPULSION—THE CRYPTO-KEY TO THIS SECTION IS ENGRAVED ON A PYRAMID ON THE THIRD MOON OF THE SECOND PLANET OF EPSILON ERIDANI.”
― Robert L. Forward, Dragon's Egg

“I am going to Sky Talk library,” Soother told Soother’s-Pride. “I understand that a new book about one of the early human rulers has been sent down by the humans on one of the alternate communication channels. I want to study it carefully for new ideas. I hope that the ideas on government by the human Napoleon will prove to be as interesting as those of Machiavelli were.”
― Robert L. Forward, Dragon's Egg