torchship n.

He held a torcher’s contempt for the vast distance itself. Older pilots thought of interplanetary trips with a rocketman’s bias, in terms of years—trips that a torch ship with steady acceleration covered in days.

The Can Do—that’s this bucket—is about to rendezvous with the Go For Broke, which is a high-gee torchship.

The first scout[-]ship is launched by the Trek. Crewed by five volunteers, it is powered by a full-sized fusion torch though its mass is only one-tenth that of a conventional torchship.

‘You think it oughta be like the old days? Say, like when there were torchships?’ ‘You ain’t gotta go back that far, but tha’s good example. More beer! Back when they was ion ships and men to match 'em.’ ‘Torchships my ass,’ Raschid sneered. He spat on the floor. ‘Those torchships. You know how they worked? Computer-run. From lift-off to set down.’

When they arrived the first task awaiting the torch ship’s crew was to recover the huge cylinders containing the deep-sleeping majority of the mission crew. There were disadvantages to each style of travel—torch ship or slot tug.

The little torchship had not been doing well of late, and the kzin-nominated purchasing combines on the asteroid base of Tiamat had been squeezing harder and harder.

Pitcairn was the last and largest torchship built by Earth, and it’s the most famous of the bunch.

It couldn’t reach superluminal speeds, but its metric engineering drives could generate internal gravity in the crew compartments, and it could land and take off from spaces that a torchship wouldn’t be able to reach, much less a sailship.