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Updated: August 24, 2024
And if a group of power-hungry men could control a star-drive and hold it for profit, they could blackmail an entire planet for centuries, and build an empire in space that could never be broken. He knew that it must not happen that way. Dad had died to prevent it. Now it was up to them. Greg glanced quickly around the cabin, searching for some way out, something that might give them a chance.
"I'd guess that the records here will tell, when they have been studied and deciphered. Perhaps there was already some sign of intelligent life developing elsewhere in the Solar System. Perhaps they hoped that some of their own people would survive. But they had a star-drive, so some of them must have escaped. And with the record here...." "We may be able to follow them," Greg said.
At one moment he entertained fantasies of going on into the Lhari worlds, returning victorious with the secret of their fueling location, or of the star-drive itself. At another, he could not wait to be free of it all. He longed for the society of his own people, yet ached to think that this voyage between the stars must end so soon.
It was a tiny picture, a silvery sliver of light, but it too was unmistakeable. It could be nothing else but a Starship. Later, as they talked, they saw that the map had told each of them, individually, the same thing. "They had a star-drive," Tom said.
While the medic was professionally reassuring him and strapping him in his bunk, Bart wondered what humans would do with the Lhari star-drive if they had it. Well, he supposed they could use automation in their ships. The Mentorian paused, needle in hand. "Do you wish to be wakened for the week we shall spend in each of the Proxima, Sirius and Pollux systems, sir?
But the conversion to star-drive, as the Lancet was wrenched, crew and all, out of the normal space-time continuum, was far outside of normal human experience.
Bart stood waiting, feeling empty and cold. Vorongil's stare baffled him with unreadable emotion. "You fool, you unspeakable young idiot!" Raynor One groaned. "Why did you blurt it out like that before every news media in the galaxy? Why, we could have had a monopoly on the star-drive Eight Colors and Vega Interplanet!"
All his life Dal had traveled on the outgoing freighters with his father; star-drive conversion was no surprise to him. But for Jack and Tiger, it was their first experience in a star-drive ship. The Lancet's piloting and navigation were entirely automatic; its destination was simply coded into the drive computers, and the ship was ready to leap across light years of space in a matter of hours.
The more scared you are, the worse it's going to be!" She was rigid, trembling, in a trance of terror. "You rotten little coward," he yelled at her, "snap out of it! Or are all you Mentorians so gutless that you believe any half-baked folk tale the Lhari pass off on you? You and your fine talk about earning the star-drive!
Application for reinstatement could be made at a later date, but acceptance could not be guaranteed.... "Well, I might have expected it," Greg said, "after what the Major told us. The money for Star-Jump must have been coming from somewhere, and now we know where. The company probably figures to lay claim on any star-drive that's ever developed." He dropped the notice down the chute, and laughed.
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