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A new thought had occurred to him, chasing out of his mind all the worries and fears he had brought with him all the way from Terra. "Then we'll have to build a ship," he said calmly. "I know, when the Federation evacuated Poictesme, they took every hyperdrive ship with them.
Alan left the first week in December, having spent three weeks doing virtually nothing but sketching out his itinerary. There were plenty of places he intended to visit. There was London, where James Hudson Cavour had lived and where his hyperdrive research had been carried out.
He was discouraged. His journey had revealed the harsh fact that nowhere on Earth was research into hyperdrive travel being carried on; either they had tried and abandoned it as hopeless, or, like the Zurich people, they had condemned the concept from the start. "Did you find what you were looking for?" Jesperson asked. Alan slowly shook his head. "Not a hint. And I really covered ground."
I learned a curious thing about Amaterasu. Do you know why that planet was so extensively colonized by the Federation, when there don't seem to be any fissionable ores? The planet produced gadolinium." Gadolinium was essential to hyperdrive engines; the engines of a ship the size of the Nemesis required fifty pounds of it. On the Sword-Worlds, it was worth several times its weight in gold.
Now I've got to adjust the mixture of the fuel, otherwise she'll kick out on you and we'll have to clean out the tubes." "Yeah," sneered Loring. "Well, I happen to know you do that right on the control board." He motioned with the paralo-ray gun. "Get back down!" "On regular space drive, you do," agreed Tom. "But we're on hyperdrive now.
Within the first few hours, he came dangerously close to being murdered and then to being thrown in jail. He had no clues to the whereabouts of Steve, and couldn't even be sure his nine-years-older twin brother was still alive. And the Cavour Hyperdrive was the merest will-o'-the-wisp, dancing wildly before him in his dreams. Somehow, he survived.
He began to work with the new controls, plotting his coordinates with extreme care and checking them through six or seven times. At last he was satisfied; he had computed a hyperdrive course that would loop him through space and bring him out in only a few days' time in the general vicinity of the Valhalla, which was buzzing serenely along at near the speed of light.
Unlike Nannstein's theory of gravitics, which had led directly to hyperdrive, ultraspace theory held no clues to its practical applications; it would be several centuries before those were worked out. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to brief the First Speaker and Supreme." "Of course, Lord. They and Team-Leader Hovan are in Ship-Captain Exvani's quarters, and mine have been prepared for you."
"If we can solve Cavour's work and develop the hyperdrive, we won't be handicapped by the Fitzgerald Contraction. What difference does it make in the long run if the Valhalla becomes obsolete? We can always convert it to the new drive. The way I see it, if we could only work out the secret of Cavour's hyperspace drive, we'd "
The three cadets only beamed their enthusiastic approval. "Tara," continued Strong, "is your destination a planet like Earth in many respects, in orbit around the sun star Alpha Centauri. You'll take the Polaris directly to the Venus space station, where the transmitter has been given primary tests, outfit the Polaris for hyperdrive, and blast off!"
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