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“MECO in twenty-six,” the NAV Officer says, her voice jittery from the Starcraft’s violent contortions. “Outjump once we’re in the green.”

“Acknowledged,” I say.

The Starcraft groans and shakes hard. We groan and shake hard.

I grip the handholds on either side above the COMM panel. Due to budget constraints and generally poor management, we don’t have the Inertia Dampeners like they do on “Star Trek”: hence, the handholds.

Out ahead of our Starcraft, the Slipstreams. The Void. The Nothingness.

The Whatever.

“The Fold field is collapsing,” she says. “Twenty seconds to outjump.”

We’re nearing the Translight jump’s end, the Terminus; the point of max Z on the vehicle as the Fold disintegrates, and we re-enter relativistic Space-time.

Whatever that is.

“Fifteen,” she says.

I knew it was going to be trouble. This far out. Out past the Line. Waypoint Zulu Zulu. And then we were hit by a gravity sneaker wave. There was nothing we could do but execute an emergency Translight jumpout.

No coordinates. The A.I. bitching at us something fierce the WHOLE time. A raw space-time fold.

My third.

Her first.

And all the while, I recall my S.O.s’s face when I left her at Tualatin Station in the Sol System. How she claimed I ate half of her bear claw, and, by the way, since I was a diabetic, I shouldn’t be eating that shit at all!

“Doughnuts and women,” I mutter. “A story as old as the Universe itself.”

The NAV Officer turns and looks at me. “What?”

“Nothing,” I say. “Let’s proceed with the checklist. D.O.R.s are now online.”

“Roger,” she says. “MECO in ten.”

She’s scared. I hear the fear in her voice.

“On my mark,” I say.

“Five, four, three, two…,” she says.

“Mark, I say. “Kill drive engine.”

And an awful bang and a heave of a shake.

Then we’re out.

Ahead, a star field.

“That was close,” she says.

“Yes.”

And my thoughts linger on Donut Land. A place of scrumptious buns where special Things rise, courtesy of those Masters of Rheology who are concerned with the deformation and flow of matter as is our very own Translight Engine’s A.I. Maurice, who can be a right bastard at times, especially ever since I activated the Pun Module and shit.

The COMM panel in front of me goes green.

“Mains back online,” she says. “Almost like it never happened.”

I say nothing, employing a dramatic pause I learned back in my elementary school’s production of “The Life and Times of Mister Snuffleupagus and His Doughnut (sic).”

“Get us back home to Tualatin Station,” I say. “I’ve got a date with the other half of her bear claw.”