“I had a hell of a time finding a copy of the control program,” she said when she noticed him standing beside her. “Homeland Security has been shutting down U.S. websites that post it, and of course most of the foreign sites I checked had the program in their language.”

“How about England, or Australia?”

She shook her head. “England can’t spit without permission from the U.S. anymore, and Australia’s sites are under pretty much constant hack attack from HomeSec. But I finally found an English-language version on a ten-minute mirror site in Denmark.”

“Good. Let’s plug in the computer and make sure it can talk to the drive.”

They went out to the pickup and set the computer in place on the dash, then connected all the various cables and powered it up. Donna loaded the program and ran a diagnostic routine, which reported everything ready to roll.

“Good enough,” Trent said. He felt his heartbeat quicken, and he looked out to the street, half expecting to see Tom the cop drive up in his patrol car. There wouldn’t be much defense if he did; the pickup was pretty clearly capable of interstellar flight now.

“You got enough food loaded?” he asked.

“There’s at least a couple month’s worth, if we don’t mind ramen noodles for the last week or so.”

“That ought to do.” He certainly hoped so. You never packed for a day in the mountains, not when a broken axle could strand you there for a week, and you didn’t pack for a week on an alien planet, even one with people already living on it. A mishap on landing could put you out of touch for anywhere from a month to forever, depending on the mishap.

Donna went back inside to finish packing their clothes and random other stuff. While she was doing that, Trent powered up the compressor and filled the air tanks. There were two of them, both under the seat, each one good for about three hours of breathing. More than enough time to jump from star to star, find a planet, match velocities, and land, provided everything worked right. If things didn’t work right, well, that’s why there were two tanks.