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worn off the number keys, and there was a semicircular streak on the screen where he had tried to clean it with a damp cloth. Nothing fancy about it. There were millions of computers just like it all over the world, and from what she'd seen inside the getaway special canister, the parts for the hyperdrive engine wouldn't be hard to come by, either. It wouldn't be long at all before someone else tried it.
    "How many people did you send the plans to?" she asked. "Everyone in INSANE?" Allen nodded. "There's over three hundred of us."
    There would probably have been more if the organization had a different name, Judy thought. Three hundred wasn't exactly a lot. As she thought about it, she felt the hair on the back of her neck start to tingle.
    "You realize every member of the group is going to be a target now?" she asked. Looking back to his computer, Allen said, "They will be if they don't forward the email. I mentioned that in my letter. It's a powerful incentive to share."
    "You're assuming they get the chance to share," Judy said.
    "It takes about three mouse-clicks," Allen pointed out.
    "You need unbroken fingers to click a mouse."
    He frowned. "What do you mean by—"
    "Email is hard to intercept, but snatching three hundred scientists would be a piece of cake. I'll bet every spy agency and secret police force in the world is trying to do just that. A lot of them probably have plans in place just for this sort of contingency, so their response is going to be about three mouse-clicks away, too." It seemed farfetched, but if she agreed with Carl about anything, it was that Allen's hyperdrive was a big enough deal to rattle governments. And when governments got rattled, they usually became ruthless in trying to ensure that they wound up on top.
    Allen's eyes had gone wide. "You—no, that's impossible. You're talking about a globally coordinated kidnapping effort, timed to happen before anyone forwards the email. Once it's out on the internet, it'll spread like wildfire. Nobody can stop it."
    Judy sighed. "I don't know. Maybe I'm worried about nothing. When I first realized what we were dealing with, I was afraid we'd be killed before we could get the secret out, but now I'm starting to wonder how many people are going to be killed because of it."
    "Nobody," Allen said. "The word is spreading as we speak, and it's spreading way too fast to stop."
    "You hope."
    "I know."
    He turned back to his computer. "I'm ready to test it."
    "You've figured out where we are?" Judy squinted out the windshield at the sun. It was a tiny, bright circle against black space.
    Allen shrugged. "Close enough. We're somewhere past Jupiter's orbit. Jupiter is clear around on the other side of the Sun right now, but that's how far we are. I think." She gave him a sidelong glance. "I thought you were going to do your testing between Earth and Mars."
    He shrugged. "I thought so too, but with the Sun the size it is, we can't be there. Evidently I miscalculated."
    A shiver ran down Judy's back. What if he'd miscalculated on something more dangerous, like the diameter of the space warp his engine created, or whether people could live inside its sphere of influence? He could have killed them all the first time he pushed the "Go" button. He might kill them yet. If something else burned out in the hyperdrive, they could be stranded millions of miles from help, and even if they did manage to make it back to Earth, there was no guarantee they could achieve orbit again. And if they managed that, they still couldn't land the normal way. Not with the vertical stabilizer vaporized. Discovery would need major repairs before it could ever negotiate the atmosphere again.
    Judy dreaded the investigations she would have to endure once—if—they landed. Maybe it was just Carl's pessimism getting to her, but she was beginning to regret her rash defiance of authority, if only for the inconvenience it would cause her before she could actually use Allen's device for