By 2081, settlement of the far reaches of the solar system definitely had one adverse affect on Earth civilization: the holdings of the royal and ancient - but unfortunately long disbanded - Scarboro public library were scattered all the way from Mercury to Pluto. Colonists could just not part with their beloved tomes and carried them jealously wherever the whims of fortune took them.

So, to right this wrong and reclaim the legacy for a new generation, many long retired library board members, along with sympathetic supporters from the underground rebel book alliance, convened to consider their options. They needed a ship - a fleet of ships actually - to go to those distant places and collect those treasures. And collect them with punishing over-due fees.

Professor Emeritus Vincenzo Air reported on a long forgotten chapter in propulsion technology: the curvilinear j-Fforde drive; an interplanetary drive named in honor of the author Jasper Fforde, discoverer of Book World earlier in the century. The basic principle behind the drive was a targeted seeking of the 'spine' in local space that, once found and accessed, allowed a spacecraft to jump to any location in space via 'pages' in a matter of seconds.

After an immodest allocation of funds, and a number of years of development, the first prototype book retrieval spacecraft outfitted with a curvlinear j-Fforde drive - the s.p.l. Bendale - was ready for testing. Many hardcore due-date ignorers were on Mars, so the shakedown voyage was to Cydonia for a face-to-face showdown. Prof. Air insisted on being the test pilot, but he was a little too fast on the draw and gunned it so hard that he kinked the main drive unit. When later asked by reporters how fast it would go, he replied, "It's a real page turner". Among the stacks back on Earth, his title of Professor Emeritus, was quickly replaced by Lead-foot - well, at least outside the range of his hearing aid.

And what about those fee dodgers? Some tricks of illumination allowed them to avoid facing-the-music on this sortie - but there is always next time!

Image: Dorsal view

Image: Before paint