message 0152

• On dartships

>From: Onno Meyer <Onno.Meyer@arbi.informatik.uni-oldenburg.de>
>Subject: cherryhlist
>Date: Sat, 29 May 1993 13:36:05 +0200 (MET DST)

> What book are the dartships mentioned in?  I don't recall them (I haven't
> read Hellburner yet).
> 
> 	Markus

_DS_, p.287
Twelve carriers left of the fourteen that had come in, a cloud of
riderships and dartships, bore away from station ...

_ML_, p.25
Not so far away, a Union dartship stood off from dock, dull-surfaced
and ominous, with vanes conspicuously larger than any merchanter
afforded. It watched, it's frame bristling with armaments and 
receptors.

I think Talley came from a dartship, too, but I couldn't find the quote
short of re-reading the entire book.

My interpretation of these quotes:

_DS_ shows that the union warships taking part in the assault are
divided in three classes, and that riders and darts are lumped to-
gether as "small ones" (they're just a cloud), compared to the 
carriers as "big ones" that are worth counting.
Thus, a dartship is similar in armament and combat value to a rider.

_ML_ shows that dartsips have jump-engines larger than any merchanters,
but this could be a comparison of relative sizes. The dartship has a
frame, a word used in _DS_ to describe the part of _Norway_ that was
not the rotating cylinder. Because of this, I assume that a dart has
a cylinder, too. Since the sensors are especially mentioned, the
dartship might be build as a scoutship.

If Josh Talley came from a dartsihp, the darts were used for             
intelligence missions, too.

This points to an quite small, hard to detect jumpship with
weapons similar to a rider and much better endurance.

(I've just realised that I just did what I always hated in school,
to take a text and dissect the words for meanings the author   
probably never intended in such an insignificant place. :-) )
	Onno