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.
âCoordinator.â The short-haired redhead in the plain gray jumpsuit nodded. âIâm Lieza.â
âEcktor, Lieza,â I corrected. âIâm only Coordinator for now.â
The shuttle pilot smiled briefly as if to dispute me, but only said, âDo you want to sit back there or up here?â
âUp there, if you donât mind.â
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 couldnât use magfield drivers, not even on their landers. Even if Gates had a magnetic field as powerful as that of Old Earth, and the cybâs home planet probably didnât, other planetary and solar magnetic fields vary, and there usually isnât enough power concentration in the outer fringes of most systems. Fusactors always work, but theyâre heavy and require a comparatively high amount of fuel. You canât take a ship underspace in high dust densities, and that means traveling outsystem before underspacing, and that requires concentrated energy generation systemsâfusactors 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 pilotâs 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 cybsâ equipment couldnât have detected the communications, even had they known the method and the standing wave modulations.
âDeseret Control, this is MagPrime, ready to lift for Ell Control this time.â
âCleared to lift, maintain one eight zero until clear of the zone.â
âStet.â
The modified mag-induction system that was far smoother than any of the alternatives had the shuttleâs 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 couldnât have seen Kohl Creek even if Iâd 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 didnât find the odor objectionable.
âClearing zone this time. Turning to ell intercept radial.â
âStet, MagPrime.â
The magfield shuttle swept eastward, pressing me back into the copilotâs couch. The hull insulation didnât 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.
âMagPrime, on Ell Prime radial. Ell Prime, do you copy?â
âWe have you, MagPrime,â answered Elanstan, sounding husky and full-voiced even on direct netlink despite the link static, a shield to accompany Rhetoral the ancient longblade.
âStet.â
âTake care of your passenger,â linked