"Well, yes and no. One of the technicians - er, the people who work on the thing normally - had done it deliberately because they'd been invaded and they were trying to stop the invaders from using it. Only they'd not had any time to send a message back to Earth to warn them what'd happened, so nobody knew why it'd stopped working."

Hence the rocket and the trip up there, although she hadn't asked about the rocket. It was a fair amount to take in as it was, though, so he didn't bother going back to that part of things right now, figuring he'd do it if she decided to ask about it.

"Couldn't tell you if it was faster or not than what you can do, though. Only thing I could tell for sure was it didn't feel like anything at all once we'd been able to fix it and then use it to get back to Earth."