Jump Ships

I opened the first Jack Mack novel, ‘Among the Many Stars,’ with Jack McFee making jumps from system to system in a highly modified McFee W-4A. This was a very small vessel to be fitted with a jump drive and a great many compromises had to be made to jam in both the drive element and an array of surveillance equipment.

The W-4, in any of its iterations, was never intended to be a jump ship. Jack’s machine may well have been the only one ever converted! Nor was the earlier W-2B from which it, in part, derived. The W-2C was another matter, a bit larger vessel which was designed with an eye to possible jump drive installation.

Not that most were. W-2Cs mostly served as medium fighters and the mass of a jump element would have seriously impacted their performance. A handful were equipped, however, some serving as jump-couriers and some as trainers. A number of early C-types, fitted with the relatively low-performance Riley-Thule twelve-tube engine, served as the core of the jump school operated from Fundy Station.

I mentioned jump-couriers. This was the most common use of lighter machines fitted with jump drives—to be relatively quick couriers from system to system. Most were a good bit larger than the W-2C. Among McFee machines that would include W-6s and W-9s, both multi-engine types. We have Jack being conveyed home from Oz Station in a W-9 in ‘Among.’ These machines were rarely used in combat with jump drives. Again, the extra mass involved would have seriously impaired their effectiveness. Most jump ships were quite large.

Jack’s Nativ spy ship is another matter. It is not particularly large and certainly doesn’t have a lot of power. Performance-wise, it is the proverbial dog. But its role is to jump into systems to conduct long-range surveillance patrols. It is most certainly unsuited to any sort of combat.

The bulk of combat vessels that were fitted with jump drives were carriers, with complements of smaller, non-jumping machines. This was generally the most effective approach. Larger cruisers were also fitted out to jump, being too heavy for use with carriers, for the most part. There was always some compromise in performance with the mass of a jump element but that was less noticeable with larger ships.

I will drop Jack into a new jump ship for the next Jack Mack novel, essentially a customized civil ship suited for a post-war spy. And his AI buddy ‘M’ is likely to be moved from the Nativ to accompany him on his missions.