Prompt: Doodle

Doodlebug

Doodlebug (n): A self-propelled rail car, generally gasoline-electric pwered, used widely in the early twentieth century for local passenger and mail service on branch lines.

Theres the long-haul interstellar ship, the ones the model-builders and the ship-spotters get all excited about, with their ten-million-ton payloads and their giant gravwarp engines. Then there’s us little folks, the doodlebug captains. We carry the smaller cargoes, the short hauls. We ride the slipstream -- wait for a big ship going our way, then piggyback on their wormhole to the next system.

It’s not easy or safe; I've known captains who lost their companion ship, and floated forever in the infinitesimal space of a collapsed wormhole.

It’s also the only real flying out there anymore.