Free Adiamante by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

light flurries of white that blurred the sharp black edges of the landers that had brought the greencoats to Old Earth.
    The craft that waited for me on the permacrete was as dissimilar to a cyb lander as a demi to a cyb. Less than thirty meters long, white, the top of the forward cockpit no more than five meters off the permacrete, the magdrive shuttle looked like a toy compared to a cyb lander. The side door slid open, and I stepped into the small cabin behind the cockpit.
    â€œCoordinator.” The short-haired redhead in the plain gray jumpsuit nodded. “I’m Lieza.”
    â€œEcktor, Lieza,” I corrected. “I’m only Coordinator for now.”
    The shuttle pilot smiled briefly as if to dispute me, but only said, “Do you want to sit back there or up here?”
    â€œUp there, if you don’t mind.”
    She nodded again, and her eyes blanked as she went fullnet. I took off the cloak and folded it into a square that I put into a locker before I strapped in to the other cockpit
couch. As I settled in, I studied the display screens, far simpler than those on board the cyb landers, I was certain.
    Appropriate technology is only one key. The cybs couldn’t use magfield drivers, not even on their landers. Even if Gates had a magnetic field as powerful as that of Old Earth, and the cyb’s home planet probably didn’t, other planetary and solar magnetic fields vary, and there usually isn’t enough power concentration in the outer fringes of most systems. Fusactors always work, but they’re heavy and require a comparatively high amount of fuel. You can’t take a ship underspace in high dust densities, and that means traveling outsystem before underspacing, and that requires concentrated energy generation systems—fusactors or the equivalent.
    Magfield drivers tap existing energy flows, above and below the normspace web, whereas fusactors create an energy flow to be used.
    After checking the door and seals, Lieza returned to the pilot’s couch, and brought the taps on line, using the electric drivers in the wheels to propel us out to the end of the buried guideway.
    While Lieza would handle the piloting, much as I would have enjoyed it, I did follow the linkcomm, the pulsed bursts so quick that even the best of the cybs’ equipment couldn’t have detected the communications, even had they known the method and the standing wave modulations.
    â€œDeseret Control, this is MagPrime, ready to lift for Ell Control this time.”
    â€œCleared to lift, maintain one eight zero until clear of the zone.”
    â€œStet.”
    The modified mag-induction system that was far smoother than any of the alternatives had the shuttle’s lifting body airborne within a few hundred meters, but Lieza held the shuttle down as the speed built, until we reached the end of the guideway. Then we angled up so
fast that I couldn’t have seen Kohl Creek even if I’d had one of the exterior scanners focused there.
    The hint of ozone inevitably rose with the continued operation of the magfield shuttle, one of the few drawbacks for some, though I didn’t find the odor objectionable.
    â€œClearing zone this time. Turning to ell intercept radial.”
    â€œStet, MagPrime.”
    The magfield shuttle swept eastward, pressing me back into the copilot’s couch. The hull insulation didn’t totally damp the roaring whistle that continued to build, and static crackled through the net as we climbed, not with the sudden acceleration of an old-style rocket but with a continuous two-plus gee force that lasted far longer than the chemical rocket jolt.
    â€œMagPrime, on Ell Prime radial. Ell Prime, do you copy?”
    â€œWe have you, MagPrime,” answered Elanstan, sounding husky and full-voiced even on direct netlink despite the link static, a shield to accompany Rhetoral the ancient longblade.
    â€œStet.”
    â€œTake care of your passenger,” linked