“No good reason?” the other cop said. “You call handing dangerous technology to every malcontent in the world no good reason? People have died because of that damned hyperdrive.” He waved a hand at the diamond-plate camper in the back of Trent’s pickup and added, “And by the looks of that thing, I’ll bet you’ve got one of your own right here, don’t you? You know you forfeit the entire vehicle if you get caught with one. Too bad; it’s a nice looking truck.”

Trent had to consciously force himself not to clench his fists. Nobody was going to take his truck without a fight, but there was nothing to fight about this time. Trent had a hyperdrive, all right, but it was in three pieces back home: the electronics built into an old CD boombox that still played music, the field coils in a spare wheel motor casing in the garage, and the laptop computer that controlled it sitting in plain sight in the living room where Donna used it to write letters and surf the Internet. The cops could even search the computer for a hyperdrive control program, but they wouldn’t find one. The program was everywhere on the Internet; Donna would just download a copy when they needed it.

“Go ahead, search all you want,” Trent said, “but you won’t find anything. I just like the look.” He stared the cop straight in the eye, fully aware of how menacing he looked with a full beard under a black Stetson.

“I just might do that,” the cop said, sticking out his chest and glaring back at him. The blue and red lights from the cruiser glistened off his badge.

“Oh, give it a rest, Tom,” Bill said. “We’ve got bigger fish to fry tonight.” To Trent, he said, “He’s been kinda touchy about hyperdrives ever since he his four-wheeler into a launch hole out by Quealy,”

“Ah.” Trent looked into the hole he had just come out of. “I understand how you feel about that. But that don’t make it right to ban ’em. We’ve given up too much freedom in this country already.”