Kevyn: I tried to get that gatekeeper to let me see the guts of the system, but he wasn't having any.
Breya: Why bother, Kevyn? Your teraport is superior technology.
Kevyn: Yes, but they get some mass-efficiencies on these wormgates that are theoretically impossible. It's been a puzzle for human physicists ever since first contact.
Breya: And if you could duplicate it, the teraport would work better?
Kevyn: That too.
Kevyn: Mostly i'm thinking of the N-Space physics parties I could get invited to if I knew the answer.
Breya: Now there is one benchmark of social achievement i'd never considered.
Footnote: Oooh... a whole year of daily Schlock: It is fitting on this, the one-year anniversary of Schlock Mercenary, that I quietly pay tribute not to my own success at keeping with this comic-strip thing, but to the author who single-handedly captured my imagination and dragged me forever into the SF section at the bookstore. I’m speaking of Larry Niven (author of the collection “N-Space�) whose Known Space universe enthralled me at age 14 and still holds a special place in my heart. Sure, I have other influences, and there may be brighter stars in my current heavens, but that’s only because they are closer. Known Space for me is like Sol System for humans in the Schlockiverse—it’s my first, ancestral home, and if you go a’ dissin’ it, you’ll have a whole fleet of Peteys on your sorry ass faster than you can say 'Ominous Hummmm.'