“Well, you know,” Jared said, tapping his head. “I’m in this predicament because of Consu technology. Let’s just say I’m not neutral on its uses.”
“You make an excellent point,” Wilson said. “But this is sweet. A friend of mine worked on this; we’d talk about it. Most Skip Drives require you to get out into flat time-space before you can engage them. You have to get far away from a planet. This one is less picky: it can use a Lagrange point. So long as you’ve got a planet with a reasonably large moon, you’ve got five nearby spots in space where it’s gravitationally flat enough to engage this drive. If they can work out the kinks, it could revolutionize space travel.”
“‘Work out the kinks’?” Jared said. “I’m about to use this thing. Kinks are bad.”
“The kink is that the drive is touchy about the mass of the object it’s attached to,” Wilson said. “Too much mass creates too much of a local warp on the time-space. Makes the Skip Drive do weird things.”
“Like what?” Jared asked.
“Like explode,” Wilson said.
“That’s not encouraging,” Jared said.
“Well, explode is not quite the accurate word,” Wilson said. “The physics for what really goes on are much weirder, I assure you.”
“You can stop now,” Jared said.
“But you don’t have to worry about it,” Wilson continued. “It takes about five tons of mass before the drive gets wobbly. That’s why this sled looks like a dune buggy. It falls well under the mass threshold, even with you in it. You should be fine.”
“Should be,” Jared said.
“Oh, stop being a baby,” Wilson said.
“I’m not even one year old,” Jared said. “I can be a baby if I want. Help me get into this thing, would you.”
Jared negotiated his way into the sled’s basket seat; Wilson strapped him in, and stowed his Empee in a storage box to the side of the seat. “Do a systems check,” Wilson said. Jared activated his BrainPal and connected with the sled, checking the integrity of the Skip Drive and the ion engines; everything was nominal. The sled had no physical controls; Jared would control it with his BrainPal. “The sled’s fine,” Jared said.
“How’s the unitard?” Wilson asked.
“It’s fine.” The sled had an open cockpit; Jared’s unitard was formatted for hard vacuum, including a cowl that would slide down completely over his face, sealing him in. The nanobotic fabric of the unitard was photosensitive and passed visual and other electromagnetic information directly to Jared’s BrainPal. As a result Jared would be able to “see” better with his eyes covered by the cowl than he could if he were using them. Around Jared’s waist was a rebreather system that could, if necessary, provide breathable air for a week.
“Then you’re good to go,” Wilson said. “Your coordinates are programmed in for this side, and you should also have them to get back from the other side. Just put them in and sit back and let the sled do the rest. Szilard said that the Special Forces recovery team will be ready for you on the other side. You’ll be on the lookout for a Captain Martin. He’s got a confirmation key for you to verify his identity. Szilard says to follow his orders to the letter. Got it?”
“Got it,” Jared said.
“Okay,” Wilson said. “I’m out of here. We’re going to start cycling out the air. Suit up. As soon as the bay doors open, activate the nav program and it will handle it from there.”
“Got it,” Jared repeated.
“Good luck, Jared,” Wilson said. “Hope you find something useful.” He walked out of the bay to the sound of the Shikra’s life-support system sucking the air out of the bay. Jared activated his cowl; there was momentary blackness followed by a rather impressive gain in Jared’s peripheral awareness as the unitard’s visual signal kicked in.
The rushing noise of air thinned into nothingness; Jared was sitting in vacuum. Through the metal of the ship and the carbon fibers of the sled, he could feel the bay doors sliding open. Jared activated the sled’s navigation program; the sled lifted from the floor of the bay and slid gently out the door. Jared’s vision included the visual track of his flight plan, and its destination more than a thousand klicks away: the L4 position between Phoenix and its moon Benu, currently unoccupied by any other object. The ion engines kicked in; Jared felt his weight under the engines’ acceleration.