“No,” Colonel Spivey continued with a smile. “We’re not here to be your enemies, but to negotiate with you. To see if we can agree on a common program. And first on the agenda, by all means, is how to continue the work you’ve begun, putting every resource into saving the world.”

Everything the man said seemed so-o-o reasonable. Teresa found it infuriating, frustrating… all the way down to realizing her own role in Spivey’s game. While others dove right into the subsequent freewheeling discussion, she just sat there, resigned to a pawn’s mute, helpless role.

Clearly, with the New Zealand authorities committed to their alliance, extradition proceedings would be straightforward. Spivey could lock her up and throw away the key. Worse, she’d never fly again. No leak to the Net, no public outcry, not even legal gambits by the best live or software lawyers would ever get her back into space again.

The others were in jeopardy too, even though their cases weren’t quite as clear-cut. Teresa watched George Hut-ton’s mental wheels spin. With canny shrewdness, the Kiwi entrepreneur poked away at Spivey’s cage, testing its walls.

Prosecutions would mean disclosure, wouldn’t they? No one knew how deeply Spivey’s aversion to publicity really went. Did he seek to keep the secret for months? Years even? Or just long enough to give his side a head start?

The Tangoparu cabal had cards to play, as well. Such as their expertise, which no one else could duplicate in time. George emphasized the point, though it was a weak bluff and everyone knew it. Could they go on strike, refusing to use those skills, when the entire world was at stake?

Spivey countered by taking a lofty tone, making a strong case for teamwork. He dropped hints the criminal cases might be dropped. And within hours of an agreement, the times of short supplies and sleepless nights would end. Fresh manpower would arrive, fresh teams of experts to work round the clock, relieving the tired technicians, helping them guide Beta’s orbit slowly outward while making sure the worst tectonic shocks missed populated areas.

Teresa realized Hutton and Lustig were trapped. The benefits were too great, the alternatives too hard. All that remained were the details.

Of course, no one was asking her what she thought. But in fairness, she probably looked as if she couldn’t care less right now.

“We’re particularly interested in this coherent gravity amplification effect of yours, Dr. Lustig.” The speaker was one of Spivey’s aides, a black man dressed for tourism, but with the bearing of a professional soldier and the vocabulary of a physicist. “Surely the implications of the gazer haven’t escaped you?” he said.

“Its implications as a weapon? Oh, they occurred to me.” Alex nodded suspiciously. “How could they not? Want to destroy your enemies with earthquakes? Blast their cities into marmite… ?”

The officer looked pained. “That isn’t what I meant, sir. Other means of triggering quakes have been studied before. You’d be surprised how many there are. All were discarded as worthless bludgeons, lacking precision or predictability — useless in the present geopolitical arena.”

“And please note,” Colonel Spivey interjected. “It’s the very fact that we kept those techniques under wraps, completely secret, that let us discard those awful weapons and at the same time keep them out of the wrong hands. Secrecy isn’t always obscene.”

The black officer nodded and went on. “No, Professor Lustig, I’m not talking about liquefying the ground under the Forbidden City or anything like that. I was thinking instead about the gazer beam itself, propagating outward through space.

“Consider your claim that Beta must have been built by alien beings… aliens who apparently mean us harm… have you given no thought to how the gazer might be aimed? At targets coming into the solar system?” He leaned forward. “I can’t help but wonder if our extraterrestrial foes haven’t badly underestimated us, by inadvertently giving us the very means we need to defend ourselves.”

Alex blinked. A faint smile spread as he sat up straighter. “A defensive weapon… using the beam against Beta’s builders. Yes.” He nodded. “I see your point.”

“By damn, you’re right!” George Hutton slammed the table. Dawning enthusiasm glinted in his eyes. “Wouldn’t that be justice? To turn their own taniwha against them?”

“Um. Wouldn’t that mean leaving the, uh, Beta singularity down there… inside the Earth?” Logan Eng pointed out hesitantly. “… to continue serving as a mirror for the gravity laser?” He motioned with two hands. “Otherwise, no coherent beam.”

“Oh. Right.” George looked crestfallen. “Can’t have that.”

“Are you certain?” the military physicist asked. “You say Beta’s orbit even now carries it briefly up to regions where the rock density’s so low it loses mass. All right, then, what if it were set on just the right trajectory remaining inside the Earth, but balanced to neither grow nor shrink?”

George looked at Alex. “Is that possible?”

While Alex pondered the question, consulting mental resources Teresa could not imagine, June Morgan commented, “It would save us all that worry about how to deal with a million-degree flaming ball when it’s finally ejected from the Earth. What do you think, Teresa?” the blonde woman turned and asked her, for some reason.

Teresa pushed her chair back. “I’m feeling very tired,” she told Glenn Spivey as she stood up. “I think I’ll go lie down for a while.” The colonel looked at her for a moment and then nodded for a guard to accompany her. Teresa glanced back from the doorway to see Alex Lustig tracing mathematics in a holo tank, surrounded by excited scientists from both camps. She sighed and turned away.

The guard was an ANZAC commando from Perth, a gung-ho Aussie patriot who was nonetheless solicitous and rather sweet. When she asked if it was possible to have some food sent down, he said he would try.

Her bags were in her old room… retrieved from the car and no doubt inspected for good measure. She collapsed onto the same cot she’d awakened in that morning and mumbled a command to put the lights out. Curled up in a ball, clutching a blanket to her breast, Teresa did not feel “home” in any way at all.

In fitful slumber she dreamt the death of stars.

Her old friends. Her guideposts. One by one they flickered out, each with a cry of anguish and despair. Every sigh she echoed in her pillow with a moan.

Something was killing them. Killing the stars.

Poor Jason, she thought in the strange, mixed illogic of sleep. By the time he reaches Spica it’ll be gone. Nothing but black, empty holes. And he so enjoys the light.

Dreams move on. Now she looked out through the bars of a dungeon, across a dark, glassy-smooth sea, barren of reflections. As she watched, the water acquired a faint luminance… a pearly glow that suffused not from above but within. The radiance grew as steam rose; then roiling bubbles burst from a mounting bulge.

The sun rose out of the ocean.

Not the horizon — but the ocean itself. Too brilliant to see, it cast fierce light through her outstretched hand, tracing the contours of her bones. The blazing orb speared upward on a column of superheated vapor. In its wake, mammoth waves rolled across the once-placid sea.

Those water mountains were higher than her prison and heading her way. Yet she didn’t care. Even half blinded, she could trace the fireball’s trajectory and knew with dreadful certainty, It isn’t going away after all. It’s coming back. Coming back to stay.

Perhaps it was that dreaded thought that stirred her from the nightmare. Or maybe the creepy feeling that someone was treading softly toward her, across the floor of her tiny quarters. Teresa’s eyes snapped open, though she was still snared by sleep catalepsy and by her mother’s reassuring words.