Keys.

Chapter 1

Cent

"Dad?" I walked into the large family room from the kitchen with Joe, my right hand clenched firmly in his left to the white-knuckle point, betraying my nervousness. The whiteboard that Dad used to write where he would be and when he'd return had been erased, so he should be home.

Sure enough, he was there in the easy chair that he favored near the fireplace, a hardback book with a dark cover open in his hands. He looked up from it to me and closed it, leaving his finger in place for a bookmark. He smiled at us and I noticed Mom sitting comfortably on the couch, an ereader in her hand. I glanced at Joe with a cringe in my eyes and he acknowledged it. We had planned to talk to Dad and get him excited about our plan before bracing Mom to the notion. Dad was more conservative and security conscience than Mom, but we had thought that he was a bit more of a dreamer. I sighed and nodded at Joe, indicating that we should go on with the presentation. I had been screwing up my courage to do it for too long to just stop now.

"Joe, we haven't seen you for a week or so. How've you been?" Dad was looking at both of us a little concerned, I thought. He must of picked up on my nervousness. Joe piped up with, "Just fine, sir. Cent and I have been working on a project." I shot him another look, this time full of, "Too fast, too fast!"

Dad looked at both of us again and said, "Millie, it looks like they have something to get off of their chests. Could you put the teapot on?" Mom nodded and turned her reader off and set it aside, rising to head to the kitchen behind us. I pulled Joe towards the couch that Mom had vacated an sat down, pulling him down beside me close. I wanted his support and help talking to my parents in this initial discussion, especially since Mom would be there and we had thought that it would be harder to get both of my parents to look upon our plans favorably.

Joe talked a bit with Dad about school while I bit my lip and tried to take slower breaths, waiting on Mom. Ever since Joe had gotten a far look in his eyes and asked me a couple of leading questions about my abilities, I had been getting more and more excited about our notion. This was the biggest stumbling block, though, getting Mom and Dad's approval and participation. Joe and I knew we could go ahead without their approval, but I had outright refused the idea. I had just turned seventeen and I knew I was smart, but my parents had been through so much that I knew that, for lack of a better word, they had wisdom about our situation. I didn't want to go on without it, and Joe agreed.

Mom returned with a tray of drinks and some shortbread cookies. Joe ended up with some sweet hot chocolate, complete with tiny marshmallows, to which he grinned and thanked Mom. After we all had gotten some sips in, I took another deep breathe and started.

"Last week, Joe asked me a jumping question I didn't have a ready answer for. It was about destination location, Dad. He wanted to know if we could jump into a something that was moving. I had to say kind of yes and no, we can't look up and jump into a moving airplane, or a car, or something like that since we have to acquire a specific jump location. But I did tell him that when you and Mom were travelling in her car, you jumped from the back seat to the front with no problem."

Joe spoke then. "What I was really curious about was whether you had to acquire a jump site with specific coordinates x, y, z, or if you could choose to get a location within something that had a non-specific coordinate." He looked at Dad to make sure he was being followed, and Dad made a 'go on' gesture, like he wanted to get to the end so he could answer whatever question Joe had. But Joe held up his hand and said, "Wait just a minute. I need to tell you about our experiment and the implications."

"We bought a light weight portajohn on wheels from an outfit in the Midwest, one that Cent could jump. She moved it to an abandoned mall parking lot, went inside and acquired a jump site within. She came outside, closed the door and jumped back and forth a couple of times to make sure she could. Then I asked her to turn her back, close her eyes and put her hands over her ears. Then I rolled the johnie about ten feet away. I came back to her and asked her to jump to the john without looking at it. She kept her eyes on me… and did it."

Joe was grinning like a madman. "I ended up rolling that thing all over to prove the hypothesis, even taking it a couple of streets away in a random direction. She got into it every time. She had acquired a jump site with a non-specific coordinate."

I took over. "What we did then was answer Joe's original question. I turned my back again, and while Joe was moving the johnie from one side of the lot to the other, I jumped into it again. With my back turned. There was no jerk to it from being stationary; I had automatically acquired the slow velocity of the moving privy. Now, it makes sense that if I could locate it stationary, I could do it moving, since we are all moving all the time as the world turns… but it was the final confirmation we needed for our planning."

Dad was staying quiet. I could see that none of what we had said was surprising to him, he and Mom had run through similar things in their life together and he was patient with the drawn out explanation of what we had been doing. Joe coughed into his hand and said, "Sir, in addition to Austin and some other authors that Cent and I have in common, I also like some of the old space opera books. I made an assumption based on distance then, and Cent remembered something you said about the experiments they did on you when you were captured."

"It was about the speed of jumping. You and they discovered that there was some overlap, and for the smallest split second you were in both places at the same time. This enables you to do that water trick I've seen you do, and it means that you aren't really traveling from one place to another, you are really choosing where you want to be on the surface of the world. It wasn't just faster than light; it was instantaneous." Joe leaned forward and at Dad squarely. "Why does it have to just be THIS world?"

Dad grinned and said, "It's not a new thought to me, son. I like stargazing more than most; you think I haven't looked up at the moon wishing for a telescope good enough that I could get a jump site there? We could buy a space suit from Russia easy enough. But the tech just isn't good enough yet for that."

Joe and I looked at each other and grinned. I said, "We…. Have a way around that, Daddy. The velocity trick I've learned opens up some avenues. The limitation of how much you can jump is related to how much you can lift, right? Well, the only limitation to how much velocity I can acquire is how much wind speed I can stand, and it's quite a lot, upwards of 300 miles an hour, with protection." Joe said seriously, "Have you ever heard of the Orion drive, Mister Rice?" Dad shook his head, looking more interested than he had been.

"It's a kind of drive for interplanetary space, a pie in the sky thing that would probably never have worked except in science fiction. It was used in 'Footfall' by Niven and Pournelle around 30 years or so. Cool book, the aliens look like baby elephants. But the drive is even cooler. You build a starship on top of huge shock absorbers and thick steel plate. Then set off a nuclear bomb on the other side of the plate. No matter what, that ship will MOVE." Joe grinned again. "Cent can be the bomb."

Mom had had her accepting face on until now. It dropped like a hot rock and she said, "Say that again? I don't think I heard you anywhere near right."

I held out my hands, hopefully placating her a bit. "No explosions, I promise! And I certainly am not going to be at the bottom of any ship pushing for all I'm worth. Here." I pulled out the drawings that Joe and I had made, corrected, and argued over for the past couple of days. "We build a small capsule big enough for two, me and a pilot. I'm at the upper tip, and when I'm ready, I inflate padding that touches and surrounds me completely, like an all over waterbed or airbag. Probably air; we're trying to save weight. I start adding velocity slowly, to whatever I'm comfortable with… and the capsule rides up with me."

Dad was looking a bit shocked. Joe and I had planned to whipsaw him a bit between us so we could get through the whole thing before he could bog us down in little objections, so he took over again. "The great thing is since the acceleration is free and so constant, it doesn't matter how long it takes to get into orbit; Cent just goes until it's done. The pilot has course adjustment rockets and of course can ask Cent to just add more delta-v in whatever direction they need. Cent IS the drive. Once they get above the atmosphere, they can pick out a parking orbit… or head directly to a Lagrange point. Once there, the real magic happens."

Joe leaned forward. "We've been in space for over 60 years, Sir, and it still averages over 11,000 dollars a pound to put something in orbit. Once we park the capsule in the Lagrange point, all of that is now free. Cent can bring up modular equipment and supplies by the ton, people to put it together, everything needed to begin a real conquering of space. All the promised zero-gee factories to make the special precision stuff we are going to need… well, everything needed for the next step."

Dad looked at him, nothing but doubt so far in his face. "Which is?"

I looked at him with hope and excitement. "Mars. And the stars."