Hector was all smiles as he strode into the dueling machine chamber. Geri was on his arm, also smiling.
Leoh said pleasantly, “Well, now that you’re together again and you’ve paid all your traffic fines, 1 hope you’re emotionally prepared to go to work.”
“Just watch me,” said Hector.
They began slowly. First Hector merely teleported himself from one booth, of the dueling machine to the other. He did it a dozen times the first day. Leoh measured the transit time and the power drain each time. It took four picoseconds, on the average, to make the jump. And—according to the desk-top calculator Leoh had set up alongside the control panels—the power drain was pproximately equal to that of a star ship’s drive engines pushing a mass equal to Hector’s weight.
“Do you realize what this means?” he asked of them.
Hector was perched on the desk top again, with Geri sitting in a chair she had pulled up beside Leoh’s. Drumming his fingers thoughtfully on the control panel for a moment, Hector replied, “Well … it means we can move things about as efficiently as a star ship….”
“Not quite,” Leoh corrected. “We can move things or people as efficiently as a star ship moves its payload. We needn’t lift a star ship’s structure or power drive. Our drive—the dueling machine—can remain on the ground. Only die payload is transported.”
“Can you go as fast as a star ship?” Geri asked.
“Seemingly faster, if these tests mean anything,” Leoh answered-
“Am I traveling in subspace,” Hector wanted to know. “like a star ship does? Or what?”