Contact!
ContActually there was less than a quart of fuel in the Starshine’s tanks. Kim knew it ruefully well. It would run the little ship at interplanetary speed for perhaps six hours. On normal overdrive—two hundred light-speeds—it would send her just about one-seventh of a light-year, and star-systems averaged eight light-years apart in both the First and Second Galaxies.
Starshine’sOf course, on transmitter-drive—the practically infinite speed the Starshine alone in history had attained—the ship might circumnavigate the cosmos on a quart of fuel. But merely rising from Terranova would consume one-third of it, and landing on any other planet would take another third.
StarshineActually the little ship was in the position of being able to go almost anywhere, but of having no hope at a
