"Stand aside!" Tregonsee commanded. "I will go into the council chambers!" With the palm of the son's right hand, Tregonsee struck the guard a powerful blow across his cheek. The guard obsequiously cringed aside, and Tregonsee arrogantly pushed open the doors and strode within. He immediately slammed the double doors shut, not just to act out his imperiousness, but to shut off observance from the bloody scene he was about to cause.

  Under the sculptured crystal pendants stood three purple-clothed Kalonians, their backs to him. Three others lounged on the silken cushions on the floor.

  As the heavy doors banged shut, all of them turned their heads to look at the newcomer.

  "Son!" exclaimed the one with the two gold ornamental chains around his neck. "Son!" All six were frozen stiff with surprise.

  "Father!" Tregonsee said, taking his cue from the reaction. "I am returned from the death you condemned me to." He observed the shaking hands and the darting blue eyes of one whose ruthlessness expects no mercy.

  "You are not the man that grandfather was," Tregonsee said, making the voice of the son boom. "Helmuth had a right to speak for Boskone! You have not earned the right to speak for the Bosko-Spawn! I am here for vengeance for myself and justice for the Qu'orr. You sentenced me to a slow death. I now sentence you to a fast death!"

  With this ominous pronouncement, each Kalonian instinctively reached for his long knife in the scabbard on his belt. As they were drawing them, five small bursts of energy, with five soft, plopping sounds, came from the organo-mental killer-ring on the left hand of the son, and five Kalonians collapsed to the black marble, dead. The sixth, the Helmuth-father, had, with a blindingly swift motion, thrown from the palm of his hand his weighted knife, and it plunged to the hilt into the breast of his son.

  Tregonsee did not allow his body to fall. Even with the heart now permanently stopped, he could keep the organism functioning for several minutes.

  Helmuth's son, the first and last of the Chosen Six, fell to his knees in terror, clasping his blue hands together, pleading silently for his life.

  "I will give you a final chance, father. Tell me how the black hole weapon works. Speak!"

  "Oh, my son, my son! The weapon is not mine. It is the work of Ish-Ingvors! Only he can tell you! One of the chains around my neck is a transmitter which can link you with him!"

  "Then tell me how I can end the slavery of the Qu'orr. Speak!"

  "The other chain! It is my absolute control over every Tanse slavemaster on The Moon of Lost Souls! Now, son of mine, spare my life!"

  The gold double doors banged open, and a purple-tinted-skinned woman in the straps and buckles of a palace guard jumped into the room, followed by another ten men and women in mixed dress. Tregonsee, his Kalonian figure still tall and regal-looking, with the blood running down his chest and dripping on the floor, nodded to the woman. This was S.I.S. agent KK-45. She did not hesitate. Her long knife came out of its scabbard, and, with a slash, she decapitated Helmuth's son.

  Tregonsee tried to speak, but his lungs had collapsed. No air was being pushed through his vocal cords. Instead, he said telepathically, "Welcome, Seena. Thank you all." He allowed the body he had possessed to crumple to the bloody floor. "Listen, Seena--

  "I am now completely back in my own body, lying in my speedster in the military van. The driver has not moved it from the entrance way where he let you out. Send someone from the room immediately with the two gold chains which Helmuth had. Slip them off his neck and warn the deliverer not to unclasp them. Otherwise the mechanisms will be deactivated. I must fly as soon as possible from this spot, while all attention is focused on the ships in the sky.

  "Seena, you are now Overseer of Kresh-kree, and as a woman the shock to all will be great. Follow the plan. Quickly. Form your Council. Proclaim yourself Number One. Later, Lanion will reunite Kresh-kree with the rest of the Civilized Kalonians of the old Thrale-Onlonian Empire.

  "The Qu'orr have kept their promise. The great fleet of warships overhead will remain for the next few days while you consolidate your rule. The entire planet will believe they are yours. Their presence alone will insure by intimidation that your revolution will succeed, and when they go you must claim you did it for the sake of peace and harmony and good will."

  While Tregonsee's voice was in her head, Seena was wasting no time to complete the take-over, but she stopped to hear the final thought from her S.I.S. boss. "I have the two chains. The Onlonian one is worthless. I will leave the other behind for Ulie to operate. Her work is almost done. Ulie will soon be with you. May you both prosper."

  Enroute to join the Grand Fleet, Tregonsee called to Kinnison, preparatory to linking up again on Kinnison's reestablished network. "I've a confidential report to make first to HQ-S.I.S.-Klovia, Kim. Listen in for the up-dated details." With Captain Garner tuned in and Kinnison discreetly in the background, Tregonsee reported everything, ordered more agents to Kresh-kree as help, checked out the placid after-math of the Meppy unit-cluster situation, directed Ulie to join Seena, and finally: "Notify Chaplain General Chon's office that there are three serious dislocations of the religious frameworks of the planets Kresh-kree, Tanse, and Tanse Moon One. I'm particularly concerned about Tanse Moon One. There's a dangerous lack of sophistication in the Qu'orr, which leaves them vulnerable to unscrupulous exploitation as well as racketeering by zwilniks.

  "Everything clear, Garner? Any questions, Kim, before I go on line? Then plug me in."

  Tregonsee rejoined the link and immediately asked about the "Doomsday Machine," the description he had overheard just before his landing at Kresh-kree. Had the Qu'orr wiped out the appearance of the monster-ship?

  "Yes, Treg," Worsel said. "One moment it was there, blotting out the stars, and the next moment it was gone. Personally, I would have been happier looking at it if I'd known the greater horror it was masking. When it faded away, it uncovered the globe of ten thousand Spawn ships, fixed there like an enormous, porous cocoon cradling a black gateway to hell. Laf dubbed that preposterous space leviathan created by the Qu'orr 'a Doomsday Machine.' The real Doomsday Machine was not the mask, but that hideous, hungry, black beast at its heart. We're hoping you know how to stop it. Do you?"

  "Maybe. I heard Nadreck's suggestion about using the crystal for autogeneration of a hyperspatial tube to pump out matter, a good idea. But I also heard the Cardynge and Thorndyke arguments and the Ordovik doubts. I thought I had the solution. The Qu'orr could make a massive Ordovik crystal, just like they made the monster-warship. The radiating matter we withdraw by our tractors is directed against the Spawn ships, annihilating them. But..."

  "But? What's the glitch?" Worsel asked.

  "The Qu'orr balked, believing it too tricky for them.

  They create matter out of mental energy from Nth or hyperspace as a direct extension of themselves. A black hole warping might suck the life right out of them."

  "You don't think it's too dangerous for them?"

  "No, I don't," Tregonsee said. "They're a very timid race, and they're just plain scared. To them their new freedom means they can stop being used and vegetate for a while. They need some time to stabilize themselves. Maybe later they'll help."

  "Too bad," Worsel said. "But we've come up with our own idea. If we can throw enough tractors around the Spawn sphere of ships we can drag the sphere together with the black hole into the outlaw sector of the galaxy out there. We'd turn their own plan into a counterweapon. That ought to shake up that Ish-Ingvors, or whoever is running the Spawn show. Cardynge and Thorndyke are working out the mathematics while Nadreck and I figure out our formation. Both Nadreck and Thorny will be back on board, after their scouting mission, about the time you arrive. Nadreck is in danger of building up steam in his refrigerated suit, he's so hot over this Ish-Ingvors, Shingvors revelation, with his hints of some kind of Onlonian Dregs gang."

  The impossible picture of Nadreck giving off steam in his almost absolute zero cold atmosuit was too much exaggeration for Tregonsee to take from Worsel. "That's an outrageous exaggeration, Worsel. Nadreck wouldn't raise his temperature by one degree because of unconfirmed facts and rumors. However, he is certainly agitated. Something personal, I feel," he shrewdly theorized. "Probably about the so-called Dregs of Onlo he's been mentioning lately."

  Nadreck himself answered. "We will discuss this when you get back to the flagship, my Rigellian friend. Not all Onlonians were destroyed by me, of course, when we overthrew those bandits who ruled the Thrale-Onlonian Empire. There are clues suggesting that my obliteration of Kandron's base on Thrallis IX has produced a band of survivors seeking vengeance against me. They seem more bloodthirsty than their vicious relatives, the Eich. Undoubtedly they're Onlonians. This Ish-Ingvors must be one of them. I am wasting my time talking like this. Ish-Ingvors seems to be as mad as he is evil,

  so I will simply find him, interrogate him--and then kill him."

  "QX, fellows," Kinnison said. "Let's get back to thinking. GOMEAC has been churning out some stats and a few encouraging conclusions. Let's see what we can come up with by the time Tregonsee gets there. And don't overlook the possibility that if you need me I can get there faster than a blistered cat coming out of a bucket of itchygreen."

  By the time Tregonsee had reached the fleet and boarded the flagship, the plans had been made and the execution had begun. The Patrol ships had encircled the Spawn and had tried to change its steady course toward the center of the galaxy. The black hole proved to be an unshakable anchor. So a new tactic was being undertaken. The Patrol ships were equally divided against the small number of enemy ships and were to concentrate maximum firepower simultaneously, at Admiral LaForge's signal. The pinpointed target in each case was the weak bend in each hyperspatial tube. The tubes would be fractured--the prediction was that it would be easy, because the tubes themselves were under stress to straighten out from their abnormal shape. Instead of one U-shaped tube, there would be created two straight hyperspatial tubes passing through the ships. The graviton web would be destroyed, and the ships would be doubly hurled from one direction and doubly sucked from the other direction, down into the maw of the hole. Although Tregonsee had formulated his own plan, he agreed this other plan should be tried.

  The signal was given, and the ray beams flashed out to slice into each of the Spawn. There were ten thousand sparkling balls of coruscant energy, spitting back only a fraction of the deadly concentrated energy of the entire Grand Fleet of the Galactic Patrol. The result was nearly instantaneous. The Spawn ships imploded in a beautifully precise geometric pattern, into the surface of the hole's event horizon. Their images stayed there, making the black hole a spectacular Christmas tree ball speckled with a perfect design.

  There was some wishful speculation that the black hole might be somehow unbalanced and thus destroyed. Admiral LaForge was ready to order his fleet into a full Bergenholm-drive retreat, should the black hole inexplicably shed its increased energy so fast as to reverse itself into a supernova. No such order was necessary, as there was no explosion. "The enemy fleet is gone, completely destroyed!" LaForge said.

  "But the black hole isn't," Worsel said. "The ending of Spawn control over it simply leaves it moving inward toward the center of the galaxy. The mass/energy of those ships has, as expected, added more fuel to the gravitational collapse, producing more geons. Geometric law in quantum mechanics may postulate geons, but it doesn't give us a solution as to how to change the charge of such geons. It's really too bad those Spawn ships weren't made of anti-geons."

  "The datadrones are still there," Cloudd pointed out politely. "They contain countless tons of anti-matter. If there were some way by which we could throw them into the sub-surface or heart of the hole..."

  "That's it!" Tregonsee exclaimed. "That's what a giant Ordovik-generated hyperspatial tube should be used for! The irreducible gravitational energy stored on the surface of the one-way membrane can be driven into oscillation by the opposing energy particles released in matter-anti-matter reactions. The whole black hole entropy, or degree of disorder, might be exploded into a reversal effect. That's not making anti-geons, but the result should be the same!"

  Cloudd was surprised, and pleased, at the commotion his offhand suggestion created. All the high-powered brains in linkage seized on the idea as the best available hope and quickly discussed and organized a plan. Then, together, spearheaded by Tregonsee, they managed to convince a grateful race of Qu'orr to make the giant crystal needed to execute the plan.

  "Each one of us," Tregonsee said to all, and especially to Worsel and Nadreck, "has an assignment to handle last moment improvisations. The final decision remains. Who takes charge of capturing the drones and planting the crystal?"

  "I'll do it," Cloudd said immediately, previously silent, but now emphatic without being presumptuous. "The datadrones are my babies. I know how to corral them."

  "Excellent!" Tregonsee said. "The crystal must be planted deep. Then the Patrol will pressor the drones down the tube. You can use my speedster."

  "You're volunteering for a one-way trip, Cloudd," Worsel said, "and I admire you for that..."

  "That's hardly something to be admired for," Nadreck said. "Suicide, no matter what the reason, is not admirable. Anyhow, there's no reason why Cloudd can't get back safely."

  "Impossible!" Thorndyke said. "I know Cloudd thinks he can approach the surface, fire the crystal down, and pull away before he's trapped. But the small tube that forms will have to be followed immediately by the Qu'orr crystal and the entire mass of datadrones. There's no way that Cloudd can get back through a tube plugged solid with the drones. You must see that, too, Nadreck."

  "There is a way," Nadreck said, "by using my speedster," and when he explained to them, they all agreed it was feasible. Cloudd, however, did not feel that the Patrol would be able to pressor the drones into the tube. "I have my own method," he said, and, just as in the case of Nadreck, when he told them they agreed that Cloudd's alternative was better.

  So Benson Cloudd found himself alone in Nadreck's speedster, plunging straight into the bloating surface of the black hole. His Ordovik crystal, instead of being loaded for firing from the front missile projector, was held by a tractor field on the nose of the ship. The almost infinite power of the hole made for an almost infinite tensor, and the "mechanism of energization" needed only the tuned crystal for autogeneration; the super-Bergenholm engine of the ship warped, then negated, space, and the hyperspatial field, so naturally created, became the deliberately created hyperspatial tube. The whole concept and execution, in Cardynge's hyperbole, was "child's play." And so Nadreck's ship plunged down the tube. Behind it, following Cloudd in a strung-out line like some titan's pearl necklace, was the front end of the chain of all types of datadrones. They were spinning out from their assemblage, one after another, as fast as the Patrol ships could throw tractor hooks on them and link them together, hook to hook. The technique which Cloudd had developed worked perfectly on the obviously disoriented drones.

  Cloudd had his face pressed up close against the chronodometer trying to read the numbers. It was dark in Nadreck's cockpit, built for a Palainian who did not use normal sight. Cloudd was using two slender flashlights, one taped to his temple and another to the back of his right hand, both permanently lighted, to check the instruments and dials. He had only one job to do: monitor the measuring devices. The depth of penetration had been determined and pre-set, but the automated equipment could not be assumed to be impervious to the forces of the fields they would be subjected to, in particular the gravitational and electromagnetic fields. The great fear was that the tube would be carried too deep in its formation and that the datadrones with their anti-matter would emerge beyond the center of the interior, be ejected into space, and the hoped-for result completely lost.

  The determinative number, 7849184, was approaching its final display on six separate, synchronized readouts. If the number flashed by, he would manually start the final process. The numbers were turning over erratically, without rhythm, and they blinked past 7849184 before he jabbed the button. The numbers held at 7849199. Was this within the desired range, within the margin for error?

  Nadreck had explained how the crystal should be inserted in the black hole and the tactic which would permit Cloudd to escape. "Cloudd doesn't fire the crystal," Nadreck had said, "he takes it inside the hole almost to the core. When the tube is activated, Cloudd stays inside the tube, completely protected, and rides it in as it is forming. The large tube, preceded by the Qu'orr crystal, follows close behind him. He turns my speedster inside out, so that he is facing backward, the crystal still in place in front of him, but now on a reverse course. He races out through the same kind of tube he had been creating. The old tube, on his way in, had been replaced by the newer and bigger one. Now, on his way out, he creates another small tube right up through the big one. A tube within a tube now shields him from collisions with the drones. When the drones reach the center of the hole, emerging from the large tube, the Qu'orr are told to collapse their tube. They aren't a part of the cataclysmic explosion of energy as the black hole turns white, so they're protected. That's why they'll agree to this, Tregonsee. Cloudd will be parsecs away, traveling free, as we all will be. What could be simpler?"

  Indeed, what could have been simpler?, Cloudd told himself, the numbers on the chronodometer beginning slowly to reverse as Nadreck's little ship began its fantastically impossible maneuver. Inside out. Front to back. Peeling the solid ship into another direction as he had so often peeled his laboratory rubber gloves inside out off his hand. Reversing it through the fourth dimension! That's how Nadreck described it so matter-of-factly, insinuating that Cloudd was rather stupid to think it couldn't be done. Would he end up left handed? Would his heart pump on his right side instead of on his left?

 

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