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course,” Andrew echoed, mentally crossing his fingers. “For one thing, I’m currently on indefinite leave, but I’m supposed to report and account for my movements.”
    “I think you can leave that to me.”
    “I’m going too!” blurted Rachel.
    Andrew endeavored to put the gravitas of officialdom into his voice. “I don’t think that would be a good idea, Ms. Arnstein. I couldn’t be responsible for your comfort or safety—and I would be able to function more effectively if I weren’t having to try to do so.”
    “You’re not responsible for me in any case, Captain Roark! And as a free citizen I don’t need your permission to go to Tizath-Asor!” Rachel turned to Valdes. “Besides, I have some leads of my own. I can be useful to the investigation.”
    Valdes considered. “She may have a point, Captain. I believe I’ll arrange for transportation for both of you to Tizath-Asor. I’ll also provide you with a contact there. The two of you might generate a certain synergy.”
    That’s not all we might generate, Andrew groaned inwardly.

CHAPTER SIX

    The blueness faded from the sky beyond the shuttle’s viewports and the untwinkling stars of airless space emerged like innumerable tiny jewels strewn across black velvet.
    Valdes had been as good as his word. There had been no problem about visas. But passage had been booked for Andrew and Rachel Arnstein to Tizath-Asor aboard the Star Wanderer , pride of Spinward, Earth’s premier shipping line. Now the great interstellar ship appeared and grew in the view-forward.
    “There’s the Star Wanderer, ?Andrew said. His attempt to make conversation was not notable for success. Rachel, who sat across the aisle from him in an attitude of tile-nosed aloofness, gave no acknowledgment save a short nod as the shuttle continued on with the same gentle acceleration its drive core, converting the angular momentum of atomic spin directly into linear thrust, had imparted ever since takeoff. Alas, it was not magic; it still produced sensible acceleration. But at least it required none of the brutal g-forces of the last century’s spacecraft that had needed to worry about reaction mass.
    After the first Lokaron had arrived from Gev-Tizath forty-four years earlier, Earth’s physicists had gone into deep denial. Reactionless drives had been almost the least of it. Far worse had been the aliens’ apparent ability to cross the interstellar gulfs in less time than general relativity allowed for, from the standpoint of observers at each end of the journey—and the same amount of time as perceived by the journeyers themselves.
    The Lokaron had been compassionate enough to assure them that, yes, Einstein had been right . . . as far as he went. Their ships didn’t really transgress the sacrosanct lightspeed limit. They merely avoided it by means of a higher dimension—“overspace”which points congruent to locations in normal space were only relatively short distances apart, and in which space drives worked normally. All one had to do was enter and leave overspace—a multidimensional tunneling in spacetime known as “transition,”possible only in a gravity field of less than 0.0001 standard Earth G.
    And there was the rub. A ship could achieve transition for itself, but only if it carried a massive, energy-intensive generator. Exploration ships and warships did precisely that. But no such ship could earn its keep in the mercantile world of the Lokaron. Fortunately, the same effect could also be produced externally to its generating machinery—the “transition gate.” That machinery was even more massive and energy-intensive than the ship-mounted transition engines. But once in place it paid for itself innumerable times over, for it could be used by any ship that could reach it. It was, in fact, what made interstellar commerce economically viable, and as such it formed the basis of the Lokaron-created interstellar order.
    The shuttle gradually slowed to a near-halt