Zipspace (aka Continuum 24.9BetaPrime) is fast. A round trip between Sol and Rigel takes on average three terrestrial months in Subspace, four and a quarter in Sidespace, two and seven eighths in Trippinspace, and three hours twenty minutes in Zip.

The downside is that Zipspace is a mess. Any ship wider than two meters will be shredded by Zip's spacetime warps and crinkles, and anything smaller has to dip and dive crazily to avoid said crinkles. So Zip is used solely by tiny courier craft ferrying very small valuable urgent cargoes such as plague vaccines and perishable entrees.

Alma Pilt, otter and Zip courier, is taking a small and highly secret cargo across the 400 parsecs from Ginnungagap 3 to New Milton Keynes. Her "ship" consists of a spacesuit, a Zip drive, a cargo strap, and Alma's own self complete with cybernetically enhanced reflexes. Alma darts and twists round Zip's unchartable ever-changing spatial folds, dodging the odd deadly nugget of hypomatter, listening with half an ear for the Zip Sharks of courier legend. Alma's very skeptical about the Zip Sharks, but she's taking no chances - couriers do go missing, and the cosmos is big enough to contain lots of silly things.