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    "My goodness!" gasped Bash. "It isn’t even breathing hard!"
    Sandy looked at her brother with a smile of family admiration that overrode sibling rivalry. "Tom, even with repelatrons—I mean, how do you go from zero to sixty without speeding up? It looked like it was just there !"
    "Instant top speed!" grinned Bud.
    "The cart did change location. It did pass through the intervening space," Tom stated. "But was it ever actually in motion? People could argue over the definition. If the momentum-field defines space, then the cart didn’t so much move through space as space moved through it !"
    Sandy was nodding. "I remember you said something like that about your time-transformer, the dyna-4 capsule. That was about time, but I think I understand."
    "We’re using much the same technology as we’ve already developed, based on Dr. Kupp’s dimensional equations—now now, no faces, Sandy, Bud! The Galilectrum coils inside the perpendicular cylinders create a sort of vortex that grabs momentum-space and pulls it right through the machine. The space in front is stretched out, attenuated—there’s a momentum-energy deficiency."
    "But round the backside, it’s all piled up," Bud put in. "A surplus!"
    "Mm-hmm," the young inventor confirmed. "And because the ‘books’ have to wind up balanced, a compensating surge of momentum takes place in the space between, driving the cosmotron—and whatever else occupies that space—forward. Dr. Kupp describes the effect as purely kinematic non-inertial translation. "
    "He would ," commented Sandy wryly.
    Bashalli studied the waiting machine with a thoughtful expression. "Then it is, perhaps, like what they call teleportation ."
    "Not just yet," chuckled Tom. "We’re working on that one! But it should carry the Starward from here to Pluto without mussing a hair."
    "Easy for you to say," Sandy declared, eyeing her big brother’s ragged crewcut.
    After a few more tests, the girls emphatically reminded the boys that a picnic lunch awaited them. Tom nodded, but looked at the cosmotron. Then he brightened. "Say, why not give our afternoon break a scientific justification?" he grinned. "The test machine looks awkward, but really it’s very light in weight, like the neutronamo. We could take it along with us to the lake!"
    "Sure," Bud agreed. "Er—why? Planning to push around a few ducks?"
    "We could bolt it down on the Mary Nestor , flyboy, and do some high-tech sailing!" The Mary Nestor was the Swift family’s sleek sailboat. "We’ll call it a study of the practical applications of purely kinematic non-inertial—"
    "I’ll fetch the basket," interrupted Sandy with a certain look.
    They freighted the cosmotron spacedriver to the lease pier on Lake Carlopa in a big Swift Enterprises delivery van. Using special brackets, Tom and Bud bolted the prototype device to the boat’s low gunwales. The four excited passengers clambered aboard, and Tom thumbed the controller. They yelped with delight as the Mary Nestor was suddenly, instantly, in motion!
    "It’s wonderful," exclaimed Bashalli. "I don’t feel the motion at all!—just the air against my face."
    "Whatever mode of propulsion we use, we still have to deal with friction," Tom pointed out. "That’s why the Cosmotron Express will be stationed in space full time."
    The boat was scudding along at moderate speed, about as fast as sailboating on an average breezy day. In the middle of the crescent-shape lake, Tom switched off the machine. Instantly the Mary Nestor was dead in the water, bobbing vigorously as its wake caught up with it. Bud half-stood—and the wake caught up with him ! He stumbled against Tom, whose hand help the Spektor unit.
    The sailboat took off like a shot! Wind and spray rammed against four wincing faces—and then came the worst. A humped column of water rose up out of the lake in front of them like a thick-necked sea serpent and lunged at them. It struck them like a piledriver!
     

CHAPTER 5
Starward