"All you'd have to do to kill her," Javelin observed, "is to leave things alone. She'd clash with me, and that would be it, right?"
"I think so." Lilo sighed. "I don't know if it's that I hate to see anyone killed, or if I'm afraid I might get killed before you got rid of her. Anyway, it's an explosive situation. Here's what I want. I don't think Vaffa's capable of disobeying a direct order from Tweed. I want to add a demand to your list. He must order her not to harm you, or me, or Cathay. She's to be relieved of her duties guarding us. He must impress on her that she is his only representative on the ship, that it's all in her hands. She's got to live to report back to him, and to do that she must live peacefully with us."
"Done. Will that work?"
"I'm sure of it. It will settle her mind, make her accept it. And Tweed will go along. He won't be happy, but he doesn't have much choice, does he?"
"That's how I saw it," Javelin said smugly.
Lilo smiled, and finally dared to let herself believe she was free. She was cooped up on this ship, but she was free.
"How long will we be gone, by the way?" she asked.
"The trip will take about three hundred million seconds, going out."
"Would you mind putting that into standard Earth months?"
"About one hundred and twenty. Twenty years, round trip."
19
We could have made the trip to Poseidon much faster than we did. Even hauling my entire Ring base, that tug Cathay stole had plenty of power; it was built to shove quantum black holes around with a minimum of fuss.
But the whole stunt depended on arriving at Poseidon at exactly the right time, coming from just the right angle. We were constrained by the relative positions of Jupiter and Saturn at the time of departure, the orbital speed of Poseidon, and its rotation rate.
I had never bothered to give my rock hideaway a name. As we neared Poseidon and cut in the tug's engines again to get the rock up to speed, Cathay named it Vengeance.
They were hanging motionless relative to Poseidon, about fifty kilometers away. Without magnification it appeared as a small, irregular patch of gray, but on Lilo's screen it could be seen in more detail. It was dark and jagged, and coming around the horizon was a small cup with a fierce blue light in it.
Lilo thought back to the last time she had seen Parameter/Solstice. She had wanted them to come along, but it was obviously out of the question. If she and Cathay were successful with what they were about to do, there would be no time for dropping Parameter off anywhere; they would have to leave the system quickly. But Lilo wished they could have been with her to see their plan work.
If it worked, she reminded herself, swallowing nervously.
"Ten seconds," Lilo called out. She was wired into the computer, monitoring its performance through the cameras on Vengeance. She could feel the tiny bursts from the steering rockets as the guidance program made fine adjustments to the course. Now the target was coming up at blinding speed, made accessible to Lilo's senses only through the computer link. She got a glimpse of silver, then the impact destroyed the camera.
"A hit," she said quietly. She pulled the computer cord from the socket in her head.
Vengeance had gone into the nullfield bowl that contained the black hole. In a fraction of a second the mass of rock was churned into a mixture of lava, hot gas, and plasma. It splashed.
Immediately, the hole began to devour it. The gravity gradient quickly collapsed the matter close to the hole and began to pull it down the bottomless pit, releasing energy as it was compressed. As matter was destroyed, more moved in, but was pushed away by the pressure of the reactions happening just outside the vent horizon. There was a huge explosion, and ninety percent of the mass of Vengeance was blown free of the combined gravity of Poseidon and the hole. What was left began to collapse again.
None of this made any difference to the hemisphere of the nullfield. It was proof against anything the human race had yet been able to produce. The impact of Vengeance had no effect on it.
But Lilo watched very closely to see how the electromagnetic field generators were withstanding the strain. The one wild card in Parameter's equation was the generators. They were already supporting the mass of the hole. What could not be known for sure was whether they would hold up under the sudden acceleration caused by the impact. If they failed, the hole would start to drift downward, quickly destroying the nullfield generator beneath it. With the field off, the hole would drift through Poseidon as if it were empty space, and they would have to try to recover it on the other side.
"I don't see any movement, do you?" Lilo asked.
"No. It seems to be holding."
There were more explosions, coming only a few seconds apart, until the molten remains of the rock had rid itself of enough mass to reach stability. Now it was a tightly packed white-hot star, brighter than the surface of the sun, and only about a meter in diameter.
"Let the astronomers wonder about that for a while," Lilo said, and turned on the radio. "Can you hear me down there? Vaffa, Vaffa, are you listening?"
There was no answer for a while, and Lilo kept repeating herself until a male voice came over the radio.
"Who is calling?"
"This is Lilo, returned from the dead. And Cathay is with me. We brought back your ship, along with a present. You felt it coming in a few minutes ago. Is anyone hurt?"
"I don't know," Vaffa said, impatiently.
Lilo understood that he really didn't care, either. She shivered. It was her first contact with Vaffa.
"Just what did you hope to accomplish, anyway? You must have known you couldn't kill us with whatever you did. The best you could hope for was to entomb a few of us—which you did—but our suits will protect us until we can dig out. Which we are doing." The voice was imperious, used to being obeyed, but there was a note of uncertainty.
"He's damn sure you're not that dumb," Cathay said, with satisfaction. "Sometimes it doesn't help your nerves to know a lot about someone."
"I hope so," Lilo whispered. Then, into the mike: "What we accomplished is to push Poseidon out of its orbit. That's done, and it's too late to do anything about it. It was spectacular, let me tell you. In a few minutes people all over the system will be wondering what's going on out here. Does that suggest anything to you?"
There was silence from the other end.
"Before you run off to consult with the Boss, there's some things he needs to know. The way we figure it is simple. Everyone's going to wonder what's going on out here, but they'll figure it's Invaders up to something. This is Jupiter, after all. They won't dare send anyone to investigate. You can see if Tweed agrees with that."
There was no reply, so Lilo went on.
"We would like to point out that we are in possession of a powerful radio. I'm sure Tweed's been worried about that for some time now, wondering where Cathay is and what he's going to do. He's probably ready to get out, quick, if something should start to break. Okay, that's fine. But it's bound to take him some time. What we want you to ask him is this: How much time is he willing to buy?"
"Explain that, please."
"I was going to. First, an answer from you. How long would it take you, not counting ninety-six minutes of lagtime, to get Tweed on the radio, talk to him and get his answer? Don't hesitate; tell me right now." Cathay had emphasized the importance of that. According to him, Vaffa was not very bright, and was not a good liar. He should not be given time to think. They would be helped by the fact that his impulse would be to ask Tweed for orders as soon as possible.