Rocket!

Rocket! is the fourth in a series of near-future sci-fi/thrillers whose young heroine Ell Donsaii has a nerve mutation. This mutation's rendered her a genius and an athletic phenomenon. In Rocket! she works out the enormous potential of the wormholes she discovered in Lieutenant. Though they only provide small openings through the fifth dimension, these wormholes will prove a tremendous boon to humankind. Feeding fuel to little rockets will let them fly all the way up into space.

Excerpt:

Excitedly Ell started picking up the components and laying them on the surface of the big table. The happy babble around her quieted as one by one the team members turned to watch her lay out a number of metal tubes. She heard them speculating, "What is it?" "All those tubes. Some kind of plumbing project?" Ell laid a pointed cap at the left end and a conical device at the other. "A rocket?" someone asked. Ell grinned up at them, "Yep, a rocket." Ben said, "Why a rocket? I thought we were going to replace rockets with instantaneous transfer of materials through ports to the satellites and to the space station?" Ell smiled even more broadly. "Well, first we have to get our ports up to orbit where we want to transfer those materials, right? And before you say we can just send them up on the rockets that already go up there, think about why those rockets are so huge?" She looked around the group. "Right? Because they have to carry so much fuel! For the first part of the mission they're mostly just launching fuel for the next part of the mission. It's horribly inefficient!" The group stared at her as they pondered her words. Fred scratched his head. "Are you thinking this little rocket", he waved at the parts on the table, "because we can port it fuel, could make it all the way to orbit?" Ell waggled her eyebrows, "All the way to the space station!" Eyes widened around the group. Someone said, "Then we could 'port' them supplies!" Ell said, "Yeah! So, full speed ahead!"


Genre: Science Fiction