blow. Tough lady, let me tell you.”

Humphreys shook his head in sympathy.

“Where is this man Krone now?” Korolev inquired. “I must talk with him.”

“Unfortunately, he’s in no condition to talk even yet,” Runyan explained. “He’s in Walter Reed Hospital, and they’re doing everything they can to bring him around.”

“How about the woman?” Humphreys asked.

“Well, under the circumstances, I didn’t press charges. Everything she did was under coercion. She’s got an apartment in Washington I hear and visits Krone daily. The doctors think she is a beneficial factor.” Runyan stared into the fire, recalling his encounter with Maria Latvin, and shivered slightly.

“Listen,” Runyan brightened, shaking off his reverie, “we want to hear more about this idea of yours. You think you have some way of attacking the holes?”

“Well, it’s not fully worked out yet,” said Humphreys, “but we do have a proposal. I wish we had a bit more time. I’m not so sure how we will fare trying to convince the President and his advisors of its workability.”

“Try it out on us,” encouraged Phillips. “You suggested in your letter that stimulated emission was involved?”

“That’s right. You know how the principle works in lasers. Atoms are energized and ready to emit a photon of light. Then if a seed photon is sent in, it stimulates one of the atoms to emit an identical photon. The two photons then induce the emission of two more identical photons, the four become eight, the eight, sixteen and so on, leading to a chain reaction.

“The same process can be made to work on any system that radiates. If a thing emits photons spontaneously, then it can be induced to emit photons on cue under the proper circumstances. Viktor pointed out that, in particular, this applies to black holes. We know that because of the quantum mechanical uncertainty principle, the event horizon of a black hole is slightly fuzzy and that light leaks out. Every black hole slowly radiates away its substance. The question is, can our black hole be stimulated to radiate away its mass and disappear faster than it would ordinarily?”

Humphreys stopped and took a sip of his drink. Runyan, his mind churning, fixed him with a stare.

“You would need an intense source of light then,” said Runyan, gesturing with his good left hand as if trying to conjure up such a source on the spot.

“Yes,” answered Humphreys, “and it needs to be focused since the target is so small.”

“A laser then,” said Phillips quietly.

“Right,” Humphreys addressed him. “We think a super powerful laser could be fashioned that could siphon off some of the mass of the hole. Even more,” he paused, “there are hints from Krone’s notes that such a process could be even more efficient than the basic first order theory would indicate. We haven’t worked it all out yet, but certain of his data suggest the existence of nonlinear effects that could improve the efficiency of the stimulated emission dramatically.”

“Just how dramatic is that?” asked Runyan. “You don’t want to liberate too much energy too fast— Mc2 for that hole is a lot of E.”

“There is no way to eliminate the hole in one step with any foreseeable technology, and, indeed, we would not want to if we could, as you rightly point out,” replied Humphreys. “If what I’m suggesting works at all, the best we can hope for is to peel a little bit of mass off at a time and to repeat the process many, many times.

“Viktor has also devised an interesting variation on that theme. A properly shaped initiating blast may cause the bulk of the energy to be liberated in one direction. We might be able to guide the impulse in such a way to offset the drag and keep the hole from settling prematurely completely into the Earth. Our hope is to boost the orbit so that it is totally outside the Earth. Then little by little we could widen the orbit and eventually set it adrift into interstellar space.

“If the process must be repeated a thousand times to gain control, we have hope. A million times? Well, we should begin looking for a new home.”

“Do you have any idea how effective the process will be?” inquired Phillips, maintaining his quiet demeanor.

“It depends on the relative efficiency for the production of photons and particles with mass: electrons, protons, neutrons. There will also be neutrinos. The particles are the most efficient repository for mass and momentum, from our point of view. The neutrinos can in principle carry off a large amount of energy. If the process works at all, there should be a large explosion.

“To answer your question, Wayne,” Humphreys continued, “our current estimates are that the hole could be nudged out of the Earth with about a hundred thousand repetitions, each releasing about the explosive energy of a ten megaton bomb. Those numbers are very tentative. They could be off by a factor of a hundred either way.”

“Your recommendation then?” Phillips wanted to know.

“Put every talented scientist available on the analysis of Krone’s notes, and begin the design and engineering of the necessary laser. The first goal is to run a field test to see whether it works. Then go into full scale mass production. The lasers will be immense and expensive, and, if the process works, you’ll destroy them every time.”

“We must also worry about the others,” rumbled Korolev, “the three he made first.”

“As I understand it,” Runyan said, “our government and yours are analyzing every scrap of seismic and sonar data available. I think one of them has been found.”

Phillips swirled his drink and took a reflective sip of it.

“Viktor,” he said, “I think there’s no question that you and Clarence are to be congratulated for coming up with such a clever and positive sounding approach. What about the practical problems, though? It strikes me that what you have suggested is going to be fiendishly difficult to accomplish in reality.”

Korolev gave Phillips a long frank look devoid of the self-effacing geniality he had been displaying.

“This frightens me,” he said. “I can think of no other way to proceed, but what we ask, to hit a rapidly moving, vanishingly small particle in just the right way—this is very difficult. By comparison, the Moon is huge, your Apollo program a trivial exercise.”

The Russian paused to rub his chin. “The stakes are very much higher now,” he said in a ruminative tone. “If we fail, it is not just the prestige of a country that is at risk, but the future of all life.” His head sank on his chest, and he lost himself for a moment in the flicker from the grate. “We must try,” he continued, “but some projects are too complex, too difficult, to be solved by any number of talented people, any amount of resources.”

He was silent again for awhile. Then his head came up, and he leaned forward with a more earnest air. He gestured with an extended forefinger.

“Here are some of the problems we face. How do we make a laser that works at the energies most destructive to the black hole? The lasers must be huge, but they must swivel rapidly while maintaining infinitesimal accuracy. How do we do that? The operation must be computer controlled, but the task is monumental. I fear a new generation of computers must be invented just for that purpose alone.”

The four men talked late into the night, analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of the plan and solutions to unprecedented engineering problems. The next morning they caught an early shuttle to Washington.

Four months later, on a Saturday afternoon, Pat Danielson shouldered her way through the door of her new condominium, kicked the door shut with her foot, and set the bulky box of kitchen utensils down in the middle of the disarray. The room was piled with cardboard boxes pilfered from liquor and grocery stores. The only piece of furniture was a sofa bed that would have to do double duty until she could buy more furniture. She walked down the hallway to the left, sniffing the acrid, clashing odors of new carpet and paint, past the small bedroom she would use as a study and the bathroom opposite, and into the larger bedroom with its own bath and dressing area. She walked the length of the room to the curtainless window that faced the front of the complex and opened it to the fresh spring air. Looking straight down six stories, she could see the security guard structure at the front gate. Craning her neck to the right she could see, just past the small balcony jutting from her front room, the swimming pool sauna complex, and the tennis courts beyond. What a swinger, she kidded herself.

“Coffee’s on!” she heard Janine shout from the kitchen.

Coffee? “How are you making coffee?” she called back as she retraced her steps down the hallway. Her old coffee pot was in the box she had just carried in. As she entered the front room she inhaled the delicious aroma and followed it into the kitchen. The cabinets were bare except for a new automatic drip coffee maker and a bag of

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