Plague on Kryder II

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After Calhoun and Murgatroyd the tormal were established on board, the Med Ship Aesclipus Twenty allowed itself to be lifted off from Med Service Headquarters and thrust swiftly out to space. The headquarters landing grid did the lifting. Some five planetary diameters out, the grid's force fields let go and Calhoun busied himself with aiming the ship for his destination, which was a very long way off. Presently he pushed a button. The result was exactly the one to be expected. The Med Ship did something equivalent to making a hole, crawling into it, and then pulling the hole in after itself. In fact, it went into overdrive.

There were the usual sensations of dizziness, nausea, and a contracting spiral fall. Then there was no cosmos, there was no galaxy, and there were no stars. The Aesclipus Twenty had formed a cocoon of highly stressed space about itself which was practically a private sub-cosmos. As long as it existed the Med Ship was completely independent of all creation outside. However, the cocoon was active. It went hurtling through emptiness at many times the speed of light. The Aesclipus Twenty rode inside it. When the overdrive field—the cocoon—collapsed and the ship returned to normal space, it would find itself very far from its starting point. For every hour spent in overdrive, the ship should break out somewhat more than a light-year of distance farther away from Med Service Headquarters.

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