（外文电子版资料）Larry Niven Jerry Pournelle - Reflex.pdf

REFLEX by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle Any damn fool can die for his country. General George S. Patton. 3017 AD The Union Republic War Cruiser Defiant lay nearly motionless in space a half billion kilometers from Beta Hortensi. She turned slowly about her long axis. Stars flowed endlessly upward with the spin of the ship, as if Defiant were falling through the universe. Captain Herb Colvin saw them as a battle map, infinitely dangerous. Defiant hung above him in the viewport, its enormous mass ready to fall on him and crush him, but after years in space he hardly noticed. Hastily constructed and thrown into space, armed as an interstellar cruiser but without the bulky Alderson Effect engines which could send her between the stars, Defiant had been assigned to guard the approaches to New Chicago from raids by the Empire. The Republic’s main fleet was on the other side of Beta Hortensi, awaiting an attack they were sure would come from that quarter. The path Defiant guarded sprang from a red dwarf star four-tenths of a light year distant. The tramline had never been plotted. Few within New Chicago’s government believed the Empire had the capability to find it, and fewer thought they would try. Colvin strode across his cabin to the polished steel cupboard. A tall man, nearly two meters in height, he was thin and wiry, with an aristocratic nose that many Imperial lords would have envied. A shock of sandy hair never stayed combed, but he refused to cover it with a uniform cap unless he had to. A fringe of beard was beginning to take shape on his chin. Colvin had been clean-shaven when Defiant began its patrol twenty-four weeks ago. He had grown a beard, decided he didn’t like it and shaved it off, then started another. Now he was glad he hadn’t taken the annual depilation treatments. Growing a beard was one of the few amusements available to men on a long and dreary blockade. He opened the cupboard, de