“But how did the Saxtorphs ever acquire a hyperdrive?” asked Laurinda Brozik. “I thought licensing was strict in the Solar System, too, and they don't seem to be terribly influential.”

“They didn't tell you?” replied Kamehameha Ryan. “Bob loves to guffaw over that caper.”

Her lashes fluttered downward. A tinge of pink crossed the alabaster skin. “ I don't like to… pry— ask personal questions.”

He patted her hand. “You're too sweet and considerate, Laurinda. Uh, okay to call you that? We are in for a long haul. I'm Kam.”

The quartermaster was showing her around while Rover moved up the Alpha Centaurian gravity well until it would be safe to slip free of Einsteinian space. Her holds being vacant, the acceleration was several g, but the interior polarizer maintained weight at the half Earth normal to which healthy humans from every world can soon adapt. “You want the grand tour, not a hasty look-around like you got before, and who’d be a better guide than me?” Ryan had said. “I'm the guy who takes care of inboard operations, everything from dusting and polishing, through mass trim and equipment service, on to cooking, which is the real art.” He was a stocky man of medium height, starting to go plump, round-faced, dark-complexioned, his blue-black hair streaked with the earliest frost. A gaudy sleeveless shirt bulged above canary-yellow slacks and thong sandals.

“Well, I— well, thank you, Kam,” Laurinda whispered.

“Thank you, my dear. Now this door I'd better not open for you. Behind it we keep chemical explosives for mining-type jobs. But you were asking about our hyperdrive, weren't you?

“Well, after the war Bob and Dorcas — they met and got married during it, when he was in the navy and she was helping beef up the defenses at Ixa, with a sideline in translation — they worked for Solar Minerals, scouting the asteroids, and did well enough, commissions and bonuses and such, that at last they could make the down payment on this ship.