“Are you suggesting your crew can’t handle a few weeks in deep space?” Pankau asked, his tone challenging.

“No, sir,” Roman said evenly. “I’m suggesting that it would save us a couple of those weeks if you’d ask Ccist-paa to take a side trip to Solomon and drop you off.”

Pankau seemed a little taken aback. “Ah. I see.”

“Unless, of course,” Roman said, looking the other straight in the eye, “you don’t think you can handle a few hours in a Tampy ship.”

For a moment he thought the professional facade was going to crack. But Pankau had better control than that. “That will hardly be a problem, Captain. If you’ll set up the radio…?”

Ten minutes later, it was all arranged. An hour after that, Roman sat at his bridge station and watched the space horse Jump.

It was about the only thing about space horses that was, at least visually, totally unspectacular. One instant the space horse and ship were on the displays; the next instant they were gone.

“I wish to hell we could do that,” Trent muttered.

Roman gazed at the display, at the empty spot where the Tampy ship had been.

“You and everyone else in the Cordonale,” he agreed soberly. Totally unspectacular… until you stopped to think about what had actually happened.

Instantaneous travel, over interstellar distances… and with no known distance limit except the ability of the space horse to see its target star. The whole concept sent a shiver up Roman’s back. “Maybe when the Amity project gets started we’ll pick up some insights on how to tame and control them.”

Trent snorted. “Fat chance. Sir.”

Roman eyed him. “You don’t think humans and Tampies can learn to work together aboard the same ship, Commander?”

“I don’t think it’ll ever come to that, sir,” Trent said bluntly. “In my opinion, Amity’s nothing but a smoke screen the Tampies and pro-Tampy senators dreamed up to try and look like they’re doing something about the shared-worlds problem.