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This system has three basic components: the express boat itself, the express boat tender, and the scout/courier. Each performs a different purpose, and each has its own niche to fill within the whole program.
The express boat (also called an X-boat) is a small, fast ship filled with a pilot compartment, message data banks, and jump drives. The fit is so tight that there is no room even for maneuver drives. Each is capable of jump-4 (four parsecs per week); it jumps, relays its messages to the station on arrival, and then waits to be picked up by a tender, to be refueled and sent on its way with a new load of messages. The local station, meanwhile, accepts messages, encodes them, and transmits them to a tender at the edges of the stellar system*1).
*1) Marc W. Miller: Traders and Gunboats Traveller, Supplement 7, GDW, 1980