a small spaceship; a lifeboat or shuttle
The story will be that Lady Maud was blown to bits by an internal explosion. We were the only survivors. We were drifting around in a space dinghy when the Jovian raider came along and rescued us. Neat, eh?
That’s why I had to land. You see, she went off by herself in the…. I think if I invent the word ‘space dinghy’ it will give you the idea. I warned her that the…well, an important part was defective; but we had just had a small quarrel and she insisted on spiting me. She never came back. [both ellipses in original]
Approaching Earth, they put their ship into an orbit and rendered it invisible. For about two more years they stayed in the ship, except for careful exploratory trips in a gravity-diverting space dinghy.
‘But sir,’ he turned to Fairweather, ‘how did you get her back to earth?’ ‘A device for exploiting the capabilities of the negative time formula. It’s not a spaceship, really. More a space dinghy. I’m sure you can deduce the type of vehicle we used.’
‘Our shuttle.’ Somehow Ivo had visualized a pint-sized rocket, a space-dinghy built for two. He should have known better. The launch vehicle was thirty-three feet in diameter at the base and not much smaller at the top.
Although Orton was well-known and had been scouted hundreds of times in the not-so-distant past, she observed all the rules for approaching an alien world, ordering out a scout party in the space dinghy.
The Unquenchable finally notices us, and reaches out with an ion harness to pull our little space dinghy inside their cargo hold.
antedating 1941
Last modified 2021-07-28 15:05:10
In the compilation of some
entries, HDSF has drawn extensively on corresponding entries
in OED.