"Can you crank the inertia switch down to about 5-G?" asked Pete. "Make it a hundred and fifty feet per. Then sit there and shove it in every time it comes out until we can get out of Pluto's grip. We've got to have a stable place before we can do any fixing."
"You and your jackrabbit drive," jeered Sandra Drake. "Concocted by the best brains in space. Baloney—the best space in brains, I call 'em."
"Some day," promised McBride, "I'm going to spank that woman—with a hairbrush!"
The meter rode up steadily to one-fifty, and then dropped to zero with a click. The oil switch closed again, and the meter started up the scale once again. This time McBride timed it.
"Steve," he said. "We're running at twenty per, original setting, and the acceleration is increasing at the rate of twenty feet per, also. That means our velocity is increasing at the rate of twenty feet per second per second per second."
"Something screwy. Larry, grab a few tools and ride below and fix that inertia switch so that it will close automatically. No use making Drake sit there punching on that control button every seven and one half seconds. We're going to be running this way for a couple of hours before we get to safe space."
"A couple of hours?" groaned Drake. "Listen, geniuses, is there any reason why I couldn't flatten this chair out? This is killing me."
"Look, Larry, make that switch cut out at 2-G. Sandra, set your drive for 1-G. It'll jerk our guts to pieces, but we'll be doing about the same as any ship under a 1-G drive—no, we'll be doing better. Something in this heap is making us accelerate our acceleration; we're working on the second derivative. That means—"
"That means," put in McBride, "that we're running on the rate of change of acceleration, which is the rate of change of velocity. Now under this drive, we have a new factor, which we can call 'R' and which stands for the rate of change of acceleration. Then, since our acceleration is increasing with respect to time, the linear equation: V=AT no longer holds to express our velocity at the end of T seconds. Our first equation under this rule becomes one to find the acceleration after T seconds under R rate of change of acceleration. Follow? We have Equation One:
(1) A=RT