Oh, and for the record, time travel is NOT in general part of the world I'm working on; it was only used for the sake of the "punchline" of that one little vignette. Ergo, that vignette will never appear as it is in any of my stories that I may or may not eventually write & publish, as far as I can foresee.

P.S. How can the Bush administration be so sure it wasn't Karl Rove who leaked about Wilson's wife unless they know who it really was?
I'm not so much suggesting that they really do, as that the dolts don't know what it really means to "know" it wasn't he.

   While Farwell slowly pulled himself hand over hand along the corridor, Weaver flew effortlessly on ahead, the freefall environment a help rather than a hindrance to his headlong flight.
   He was already buckling into the helmsman's harness when Farwell stuck his head through the hatch. Weaver waved him towards the astrogator's station.
   As he figured out which parts of his own harness attached to which, Farwell asked, "How fast did you say this ship can go?"
   "Three gees acceleration, up to thirty-five thousand klicks per second delta vee in normal drive. If we can get to a PG point, we can do 99.97 percent lightspeed, gamma forty," Weaver informed him.
   "Damned fast, that," Farwell said. "What's its power source, to give it that kind of a kick?"
   As a row of indicators on his display ticked over to green, Weaver initiated the power-up sequence. Over the distant hum of the hydrogen pumps, he answered, "It's solar-powered."
   Farwell looked up from the last of his buckles in surprise. "Solar? I wouldn't have thought sunlight could give you that kind of power."
   Weaver turned his head to stare at Farwell blankly, until a look of understanding dawned on his face. "Oh yeah, solar power meant getting energy from the solar flux back in the twenty-first century, didn't it?"
   "Well, yeah, of course. How else would you get power from the Sun?"
   Weaver explained "Well, in the twenty-fourth century, 'solar power' doesn't mean we get our energy from the Sun." He pressed the spot on the computer display that lit up the fusion drive at the stern of the ship, and Farwell exhaled involuntarily as three times his normal weight crushed his chest against the seat. "It means we get our energy the same way the Sun does. The solar fusion cycle, you know?"

Incoming... new post soon. I'm going to post my first fictional prose I've written in years. It's just a small vignette, without much of the background I've been working on; it was just something I wanted to write so I could squeeze in the punchline. Not a knee-slapping punchline, more of an "Oh! I see" punchline.
It's basically just to work on my writing style a bit, since it's been so long since actually writing anything.

In other news, my computer's been comatose these past few months, hence the severe dry spell. I sometimes get access to other people's computers, so can still do a little something now and then.