Fire Upon the Deep (spoilers)
Michael J. Lonski
> A great deal was made of the fact that by destroying those ships in the
> Blight's fleet which had ramscoops, the Sjondra Kei fleet had somehow
> contributed to the Blight's defeat. I can't figure out how (stuff deleted)
The only thing that the Countermeasure really accomplished was the Zone change
(not all that much, huh :) The Blight could not function within the Slow zone
due to its complexity. The ships that were destroyed had an ability to
travel very quickly that would still have worked AFTER the zone change. Thus,
if they had been left alone, they would be able to leave the newly made Slow
Zone area in a matter of years or centuries and continue the "spread" of the
Blight. Instead, the remaining ships could only move at a comparable crawl
that would get them out of the Slow zone in hundreds or thousands of
MILLENIUM!! By that time, sheer entropy is almost certain to have destroyed
the ships. That is how the Sjondra Kei fleet contributed to the destruction,
even though at the time, nobody knew that the Zone change was going to happen.
Remember that the OOB II was equipped with special engines that would work
in the Slow zone. Mention was made that if a ship equipped like this were
to unexpectedly wander just a LITTLE way into the Slow zone, the crew could
potentially limp back out in a matter of years (perhaps with the aid of some
sort of "cold sleep", my memory is fuzzy on that). I believe that this type
of ship was called a "bottom skimmer" or something like that.
Of course, this is all just my not-so-humble interpretation of the events. :]
--
Michael Lonski (address mail to: mi...@micros.com) 301-210-8134
Micros Systems, Inc., R&D, 12000 Baltimore Avenue, Beltsville, MD 20705
Juggling - the art of consistently dropping thrown objects
Michael Scott
I don't think that the remaining ships could have got out of the Slow Zone
and re-established the Blight. It seemed to me that if Slow Zone capable
ships had survived they would have kept on with their mission and destroyed
the Tines' world in (if memory serves) 50 years or so.
--
Michael Scott