Jettero Heller eased the tug through the "back door" of Palace City. Only a Voltarian engineer would know the "softness" of the warped space close beside the mountain that dominated Palace City, The place was considered completely impregnable, and so it was. For 125,000 years it had dutifully protected the crowned heads of the Confederacy. It was a symbol, an ultimate in authority: four hundred billion people on 110 planets regarded it, as much as the Emperor himself, the LAW of the land. So long as Palace City held, it would be obeyed. Heller was about to show that it was vulnerable, if he could. The risks were fantastic, the odds going for success were minuscule. But that was a way of life for Jettero Heller, combat engineer. A small black hole from outer space was embedded in the mountain at the north end of Palace City. Planted there by the earliest Voltar engineers, shortly after their arrival from a distant galaxy and their conquest of this planet, it had been providing power and defense for all that time. The black hole warped the space and altered the time of the area. Satisfied that his wind devil diversion was keeping the perimeter defenders under cover for the moment, he slipped the tug through. There was an instant of nausea as time factors altered. One was immediately in the dimness of artificial light. He looked up at the looming mountain. It was impressively big. Beyond it would lie the golden, circular palaces, in all their artificially lit parks and splendors. All that was hidden from him as yet. Over on the other side he knew there would be forests of manned artillery today and troops beyond count. Although his absorbo-coat would make him relatively invisible, reflecting no light back, he was liable to get between some illumination on the mountain and observers down there and silhouette. He would be, at best, a sitting duck for them. He hadn't had a Fleet base available to prepare his ship. He had done the best he could. He had mounted a couple of tubes on the top of the tug's hull: he had no guns. He had mounted a container for mines under the tug's belly. Suspending the tug in this twilight gloom, he lifted the T-shaped nose up. He only had one chance with this one: he had better not miscalculate. He pressed a firing button. With a swoosh, a hexagonally faced object flashed out of a tube. It soared higher and higher. It sailed over the top of the mountain. He could only hope that it would land properly on the opposite slope. It was an attractor-target. Any automatically aimed weapon, seeking to shoot, would find that target irresistible: even though his ship was spotted and fire opened up, the gun controls would choose instead the attractor-target-he hoped. So far so good. He now raised the tug's nose a little higher. He might find it useful to create a new diversion. He had some radio-triggered balls in the second tube, several thousand of them. He pressed a second firing pin: a hundred thousand pellets spewed out, much like firing a sawed-off shotgun. In this high trajectory, they would patter down across dozens of acres, amongst the parks and palaces. Unless somebody actually got hit with one, he doubted they would even be noticed. He checked the remote firing box that would trigger them: its safety was on. He put it in his pocket. Now he would get to work. He had mounted what was called a disintegrator-slasher in the compartment over the flight deck. The plans that had been used to install this nuclear black hole were so long gone that he could only depend upon the rumors he had heard as a cadet. The black hole was, supposedly, in the upper third of the mountain. He turned on his screens and began to triangulate for position. There was a trickle of gamma rays to follow up-leaks from around the shielding, not dangerous. The hole itself was fully encased. Its power was bled off in line conduits. The microwave reflectors on the other side of the mountain were simply radiation detectors. He had already used them and he would not use them twice. They would be wise to that now. He fished in the black hole's position by its leaks. It was not good news: the thing was at the absolute bottom of the third. It was a lot more mountain than he liked to tackle. You couldn't put a beam into it: it would just absorb anything like that. You couldn't throw a bomb at it: it would take half of Voltar with it. Heller was simply going to saw the mountaintop off and tow it away-if he could! He had the thing's position now. He went to work with the disintegrator-slasher. It could make a cut one molecule thick through anything, but Heller did not think its manufacturer had ever intended it for use in sawing off the top of a mountain. A high, high whine began to hurt his ears. He stopped and put some earplugs in. The manufacturers had designed it for levelling building sites by making a cut and then removing sections. They had never thought a Fleet combat engineer would need QUIET! Sooner or later somebody down in Palace City was going to wonder where that twenty-thousand-cycle screech was coming from. The work was slow. He was going through basalt and it was HARD! A thin line of heat began to glow all along the mountainside. That meant there would also soon be a line like that on the other side of the mountain. VISIBLE! Heller jockeyed the tug back and forth, left to right. He could not tell how deep the cut was getting. All he could do was saw, saw, saw and hope. Surely sooner or later somebody would hear that whine. It was getting through his earplugs. It was LOUD! He had the horrible feeling that he was leaving skips-areas where the stone had not been sawed through. It was difficult to keep an even line: this equipment was supposed to be used from a stable platform sitting on the ground, not from a ship. Well, he couldn't just sit here sawing the rest of his life. He would have to make a try of it. He turned off the disintegrator-slasher. He eased the tug over to the right. He was now in view of Palace City: there it lay in gold and green, bathed in artificial light. He flipped on the traction engines in the rear of the tug. He maneuvered to take a good, solid grip on the mountaintop.

BLAM!

A shell slammed into the mountain. They had spotted him!

BLAM! BLAM!

The attractor-target, thank Heavens, was pulling the cannon wrong in aim. Just one of those shells landing and this tug would go up like smoke: no armor. Heller rammed open the throttles of the planetary drives. He yanked the Will-be Was time drives full on. The tug lunged ahead. The traction beams strained. The tug began to thresh about. The mountaintop was NOT moving! Heller looked down the slope toward the city. Made small by distance, an infantry squad was coming. They stopped amongst the boulders, knelt and levelled blast-rifles. Heller braced himself to receive a hit. The tug struggled to move the mountain.

HIS WINDSCREEN SHATTERED!

The tug's automatic warning went on, "Sir, my starboard Will-be Was converter drum is overheating. Please ease off." Heller took another lunge against the tow. An explosion sounded above him. A blastrifle must have hit one of the tube casings on top of the craft. This was getting too rough a situation. Suddenly he dropped the tow that refused to tow. He spun around to his right. He ducked behind the mountain out of the sight of the infantry. This was the time for the diversion. He took the remote out of his pocket, took the safety off and pressed it. It should begin to fire the pellets he had dropped into the city. They should begin to go off at intervals. That should make things interesting for them down there. And maybe he could complete his job. The trouble was, the mountaintop was not thoroughly cut through. In the tube underneath the belly, thinking this might happen, he had placed a hundred down-blast shatter mines. It meant he would have to make a circle around the mountain. He hoped his diversion had worked. He began to move clockwise around the peak. Every hundred yards, at approximately the place he had made the cut, he dropped a shatter mine. His explosions began to go off with a crump as each one hit. He stuck the tug's nose around the mountain shoulder, visible again from Palace City.