I said, "Does General Products build complete spacecraft nowadays?"
"We are thinking of branching out. But there are problems."
From the viewpoint of the puppeteer-owned company, it must have seemed high time. General Products makes the hulls for ninety-five percent of all ships in space, mainly because nobody else knows how to build an indestructible hull. But they'd made a bad start with this ship. The only room I could see for crew, cargo, or passengers was a few cubic yards of empty space right at the bottom, just above the airlock, and just big enough for a pilot.
"You'd have a hard time selling that," I said.
"True. Do you notice anything else?"
"Well..." The hardware that filled the transparent hull was very tightly packed. The effect was as if a race of ten-mile-tall giants had striven to achieve miniaturization. I saw no sign of access tubes; hence there could be no in-space repairs. Four reaction motors poked their appropriately huge nostrils through the hull, angled outward from the bottom. No small attitude jets; hence, oversized gyros inside. Otherwise... "Most of it looks like hyperdrive motors. But that's silly. Unless you've thought of a good reason for moving moons around?"
"At one time you were a commercial pilot for Nakamura Lines. How long was the run from Jinx to We Made It?"
"Twelve days if nothing broke down." Just long enough to get to know the prettiest passenger aboard, while the autopilot did everything for me but wear my uniform.
"Sirius to Procyon is a distance of four light-years. Our ship would make the trip in five minutes."
"You've lost your mind."
"No."
But that was almost a light-year per minute! I couldn't visualize it. Then suddenly I did visualize it, and my mouth fell open, for what I saw was the galaxy opening before me. We know so little beyond our own small neighborhood of the galaxy. But with a ship like that--!
"That's goddam fast."
"As you say. But the equipment is bulky, as you note. It cost seven billion stars to build that ship, discounting centuries of research, but it will only move one man. As is, the ship is a failure. Shall we go inside?"
)
