"Message for you from Colonel Knoedler, Dr. Dykstra," the courier said, thrusting a private viewer cube into his hand. "He left instructions that you should scan it immediately."

"Oh. Thank you," Dykstra said. The courier left.

Neither Rick nor Sammi seemed to have noticed that the young man had even been there. They were intent on the main screen, as was everyone else in the room, for any sign that the affected Phinon ships were going to flee. Hague had reported an initial flurry of chatter flying among the attacked ships in the first moments of the release of the genanites, but that spike had decayed to no chatter at all in only moments. "Oh yes, they know they're sick, yes," was what Hague had reported, but nothing else in the last ten minutes.

Dykstra lifted the viewer to his eyes and brushed the "on" stud with his finger, then remembered to put the earpiece in place. A holodisplay of the inner Solar System appeared. An arrow pointed to Mercury. Another pointed to a panoply of bright specks that was the Belt. A thick cream line represented the Phinon attack. An arrow at the bottom pointed in the direction of where Earth-Luna, not shown, would be.

There were a lot of silver lines going from Mercury to the Belt, then making sharp turns and intersecting the Phinon line along much of its length.

Dykstra was distracted by Sammi. "I failed," she said. "It's been long enough. They should be turning. They're still coming. I failed." Rick moved over to her and put his arm around her.

"Ensign, what are all those fast little specks moving up the screen?" Dykstra caught an admiral down on the main floor asking. "Some problem with the screen?"

"No sir," the ensign answered. "The screen is fine. But I don't know what the specks are."

Dykstra returned to the viewer. Knoedler's voice had started a narration. "Chris, remember Slingshot?" he said.

Dykstra tore the viewer away from his eyes and looked at the screen again, then he went to the rail and called down. "Hey! The specks. Ensign, how fast are the specks moving?"

The man looked up, recognized his questioner, turned to the admiral, got a nod and answered. "They're all moving at very high fractions of the speed of light. If they're real, I mean."

Oh, they're real all right. "How many are there?"

"Looks like thousands, no, tens . . . hundreds of thousands," the confused ensign finally answered.

Dykstra reached out a hand and steadied himself against the rail. "Colonel, you brilliant son-of-a-bitch," he said.

Everyone heard.

"Tommy, looks like ninety-eight percent of the KKVs came through the Belt right on trajectory," Nikki Knoedler said to her new husband. It had been a rush wedding at the only close-to-Christian chapel near the Mercurian north pole, but the colonel had insisted and, depressed or not, Nikki had not forgotten that that was what she had wanted, too. At the moment they were aboard Knoedler's boat, which Nikki had renamed the Honeymoon before the craft had been shot out of the cannon at .42c.

That was twenty minutes ago.

The kinetic kill vehicles had gone on before them, thousands at a time, shot out of the cannon in multiple salvos on trajectories that would take them into a huge swath of the Belt. There, close approach orbits past asteroids with high powered tractor beam assists, coupled with the Dykstra-Hague impellers on each vehicle, had boosted their velocities up to over .8c, and bent their courses to intersect the column of the Phinon fleet.

Due to Knoedler's plan, the System Patrol had a scarcity of ships equipped with the new drive, but over 600,000 intelligent rocks to hurl at the alien attackers.

And hurl they had. The Honeymoon had followed last, but on a different, direct course to the fleet encounter. There with Nikki piloting, Knoedler himself was doing whatever fine-tuning was needed to maximize their assault.

"Good! Damn good as a matter of fact. God must be on our side," Colonel Tommy replied to his new wife. "Any evidence yet that they're turning aside? If Sammi's genanites don't do it, maybe losing half their fleet will."

"Been over fifteen minutes. Doesn't look like any of the lead ships have changed course," Nikki answered while staring at the scanner.

"Then I guess we have to save the day," Knoedler said. "You may apologize to me again for all the things you said to me when I ordered you to come with me to Mercury, wife."

"I'm sorry, Tommy. Call the High Command now?"

"Chris will have had his advance notice by now," Knoedler said. "It's time to tell the whole System what's about to happen. I mean, 'happening.' They'll be seeing the first impacts before our message reaches them."

* * * "Bob?" Now what? the lieutenant thought. They'd only been at one gee for five minutes. "Yes?" "I guess I'm bleeding worse than I thought," Paula said. "God damn you, Paula!" he roared at her, but he cut the drive to zero. "We'll just coast with the shields up and hope we don't get any concentrated fire. I'm coming to get you. I'm suiting up, now." A soft, "I'm sorry," issued from the speaker, but by then Bob was on the middeck putting on his power suit (upgraded to a deluxe model like Pops had worn). Bob was out the airlock and standing on the bow with his gripfields in less than a minute, and looking into Paula's skiff in less than two.

She looked like hell.

Somehow her seat had gotten crushed up against the control console, with her sandwiched in between.

"You can't even get your suit helmet on, can you?" he observed.

"Maybe if I could feel my arms," she said.

That she hadn't died from the blast that disabled the skiff was a major miracle. That she hadn't died when

they were under two gees was another minor one.

"Shit. I'm going to have to carry the skiff back to the docking ring so we can keep you under atmosphere, then cut you out once I'm back inside. We won't be able to use the drive though because you'll still be outside the compensation fields."

Through his comm he ordered the ship to deactivate the tractor beams, then grabbed the skiff and started the slow walk over the top of the Hyperlight II to the docking ring.

Bob thought he saw a brief spark of light out the corner of his eye off the port side. He looked that way and saw another. And another. "Paula, can you see out, toward where the Phinons are?"

"Yes. What are those flashes?"

"Beats me. But . . . shit. Looks like their ships are self-destructing. Maybe they're doing that instead of turning. Paula! I think we did it!" Too many sparkles and flashes were going off by now to even hope to count.

Looks like the end of a burning fuse, Bob thought.

XV.

"Chris, what's the colonel trying to pull?" Rick asked. He'd left Hague to continue monitoring the Phinons alone-not a word had come out of the genanite-exposed ships for some minutes now; those were the ones that Hague was focusing on. Hague continued to listen, headset on, cable getting tangled as he walked around his squirrel cage slipping nuts to Sarobi, Sammi, and Bixy.

"Colonel Knoedler took the basic design perfected at Slingshot by"-Dykstra nodded to Sammi-"Steve MacTavish and his crew, and added small versions of the new drive to each kinetic kill vehicle. With mass converters for power, they're orders of magnitude better than they would have been."

"But why all the secrecy?" Sammi wanted to know. "I thought my bugs were our only hope, and here Knoedler's had this in the works all along."

"Several reasons," Dykstra replied. "Recall the original purpose for the KKVs-to destroy military assets in the Belt. Had they discovered what he was doing, some elements in power there would not have been willing to lay down arms and make common cause against the Phinons. They wouldn't trust us, because these really are now a weapon that the Union could use to clean out the Belt for good. Also, look at the trajectories. The KKVs were shot out of the cannon on Mercury." At this Sammi drew a blank, but Rick understood. "But they're coming from a wide arc of the Belt. This way they can double their velocity doing close approaches, and it also has the advantage of the KKVs not initially heading straight for the fleet just in case the Phinons could spot them. But how do you think the BDF would have responded if they'd seen several hundred thousand projectiles coming at them at forty percent of light speed? They would have thought we were attacking them. They probably don't even know yet what just went through the Belt to disrupt all those asteroid orbits they're likely noticing about now."

The specks on the screen were nearly to the Phinon column; they all fixed their attentions on the scene. The KKVs ignored the first hundred or so Phinon craft. Many of these were the infected ones, and Knoedler had not wanted them to be targeted. But immediately following, Phinon ships were starting to die.

They winked out, one after another, in a pattern reminiscent of popping popcorn-first a few kernels pop, then more and more until there's just one continual sound. Within seconds the occupants of the tracking room were witnessing the same "burning fuse" of sparks that Bob had described, only he'd seen it minutes earlier.

"Message incoming from Colonel Thomas Knoedler," suddenly blared out on the PA, unusual that, but no doubt planned by Knoedler and his superiors. His message also followed, except it was Nikki who was talking.

"This is Lieutenant Commander Nikki Knoedler of the System Patrol ship Honeymoon," they heard. "So, she landed him," Rick and Dykstra heard Sammi comment under her breath. "You are witnessing the interception of the Phinon fleet by a salvo of 630 thousand kinetic kill vehicles. We anticipate and expect the destruction of fully half of the enemy fleet. . . ."

The rest of the message went on to discuss what Dykstra had already told the others, and Nikki included a formal apology to the Belt for keeping them in the dark.

"Half their fleet," Rick said. "Pretty damn good. But we're still going to have to hope they decide to flee."

It had taken less than half the fleet to destroy the Jovian system.

"Wow, look at 'em go!" Bob exclaimed as the sparkler of dying Phinon ships continued.

"Yes. Very . . . pret . . . ty," Paula agreed. It sounded like she was talking through clenched teeth, so Bob tore his eyes away from the scene and redoubled his efforts to move the skiff back to the docking ring.

He had to go slow. Power suit or not, the skiff was very massive and he couldn't risk losing control of it and damaging the Hyperlight II. It also wouldn't do to jerk it around too much and add to Paula's discomfort, though at the moment Bob was so angry at her for holding out on him about her condition that he wouldn't have minded eliciting a few grunts and groans of additional pain.

He carried the skiff along the top spine of the ship, then gently moved it into docking position.

It wouldn't fit.

"Dammit!" he said. "Looks like the ring's been damaged, the female unit on the skiff. I'm going to have to lift you up again and see if I can hammer it back into shape enough to fit."

"What . . . ever," Paula said.

Lifting the skiff again, Bob inspected the ring, and to his relief saw that it had only been dented in on the side, and a few pushes and twists with his powered hand set it back into fairly round shape. He put the skiff back into place. "I'm going back inside now," he told Paula. "I'm going to have to scrounge up some emergency sealant to pack around the docking ring from the inside though, before I can get in there and pull you out. It'll leak otherwise."

This time she just grunted a sort of "uh-huh" and let it go at that.

Before reentering, Bob turned again to look in the direction of the Phinon fleet. The fuse had gone out, he noted, and since he didn't know what the cause had been, he didn't know that the last of the KKVs had done its job. But he had only been looking for a few seconds when he did see something he recognized.

"Oh shit. Oh, man! Thank God Almighty, we did it! Paula, we did it!"

Though from a greater distance away, it was a scene Bob had observed once before, with Rick, out near the Hague Limit.

That of hundreds of thousands of drive flames, all burning brightly at once.

"Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, oh yes, oh yes, oh yes!" Hague said, bouncing in his seat, almost unable to contain himself. "Yes, oh yes, oh yes!"

"Arie, what is it? What did you hear?" Rick asked, concern but perhaps a note of hope in his tone. No one had been paying attention to Hague because they were all watching the screen. The last KKV had killed its ship and everyone wondered what would happen next.

"They're going to flee, oh yes, oh yes! Run away, run away! Oh yes, yes, yes!"

Rick turned to the others. "Arie says the Phinons are going to-" he began, but then his eye caught the view on the screen and he just pointed. "Look!"

Sammi and Dykstra turned just as the ensign at the control board leapt out of his seat. "Drive flames! God dammit, those are drive flames!"

The admiral kept a cooler head. "What are their vectors, Ensign? That does make a difference."

"Sorry, sir," Rick heard the ensign say. "I'm on it."

By now everyone on the main floor had moved to prime viewing position of the main screen. Rick, Sammi, and Dykstra were all clutching the rail and leaning over. Dykstra's cane suddenly slipped from where it was leaning against the rail and clattered to the floor. Nobody noticed.

A minute went by where the general buzz of people whispering and hoping and praying was nearly deafening all by itself. Then the ensign said, "Got it, sir. Confirmed. They're accelerating at over nine gees. They're going to miss us!"

And now it was a time for cheers. Sammi threw her arms around Dykstra and kissed him soundly on the lips. Rick threw his arms around the both of them and was surprised, but then amused, to find himself crying. The hell with it. They were all crying, or laughing, or both. Even the admiral down below was saying, "Man! Oh, man! Oh, man!"

"Chris, oh God, I can't believe it! I can't believe it!" Sammi cried. "The nightmare is over. We're going to make it!"

"We owe it all to you, Chris!" Rick said. "Good job! Great job!" He knew how inane that sounded-Dykstra's singular brilliance had just been responsible for saving the planet. But what other words were going to be adequate?

"Has anyone thought to send a thank-you to the colonel?" Dykstra suddenly asked. Forgotten in the excitement was that Nikki was still sending them information from the Honeymoon. She had been taken off the PA, but Rick was able to switch her message through a separate headset from Hague's station. He was surprised to find that the little genius, though he'd been the first to discover and register delight at the good news, was now intently listening to Phinon chatter again.

Rick held one side of the headset to his ear. Nikki was saying, " . . . will have data on density and expansion characteristics of the debris cloud." Rick smiled at that. Yeah, there'd be one hell of a lot of mangled Phinon hardware falling to Earth for the next few days. Fireball city for watchers in the Northern Hemisphere. She was continuing. "We have confirmed kills on five point five hundred K ships and counting. Many of them never had time to raise their shields. This was a real-" There was a brief burst of static and the link went dead.

"What the hell?" Rick muttered. He looked at the channel indicator: DOWNLINK LOST glowed at him in red letters. "Uh oh," he said. "Chris, I-"

"No, no, no, no, no, oh nooo!" Hague burst out. "Oh, no! They're not all going, not leaving, oh no!"

Dykstra and Sammi heard that and promptly came over. Rick's other news had to wait as they tried to calm down the diminutive scientist enough to explain.

"Yes, some ships with the bugs never relinked, yes, never started talking again, no, oh no," he said, and now he was sobbing.

It did not take long for the news to filter through the crowd, and the tracking center crew went to work to confirm Hague's claim.

Four Phinon ships had not changed course. Four of the ones at the front of the column. Four of the ones that had suffered the ravages of Sammi's genanites. One of those ships would pass close to the Moon. The other three would likely drop their bombs on Earth.

Earth-Luna had been saved from annihilation. But multigigaton bombs are hell on biospheres. Though saved from annihilation, the Earth still faced a global catastrophe.

The skiff wasn't likely to disconnect from the Hyperlight II, Bob decided, but he was certain the docking ring would leak like hell once he opened the inner hatch. For that, he got a can of leak-stopping foam, sprayed up a sphere of the aerogel goop roughly a meter across, then pulled open the hatch. There was a violent hissing but the floating glob moved up to the leaks and soon had filled all the gaps, solidifying into a seal nearly as tough as the hull metal itself. Now they'd have to remove the skiff in a dockyard, but that was okay-the ship had accomplished her mission.

"Have you out in a few minutes," Bob told Paula as he opened the hatch and stuck his head inside.

"Thank God," she said. "I'm feeling . . . really, really woozy." Bob could see a tear in her flight suit and dried blood crusted along the edges of the rip. What her leg looked like inside the suit he didn't want to think about.