“Like this.” Cloud found a sheet of drafting paper and sketched rapidly. “There’s the crater, with the vortex at the bottom—there. From the sigma curve I estimate the most probable value of the activity I’ll have to shoot at. Then I select three duodec bombs from the hundred or so I’ll have made up in advance—one on the mark, one each five percent over and under the mark. The bombs, of course, will be cased in neocarballoy thick enough for penetration. Then I take off in a shielded armored flying suit, say about here. . . .” “If you take off at all, you and your suit will be inside a flitter,” the Lensman interrupted. “Too many instruments for a suit, to say nothing of bombs, and you’ll need heavier screen than a suit can put out. We can adapt a flitter for bomb-throwing easily enough.” “That’d be better, of course. QX, I set my flitter into a projectile trajectory toward the center of disturbance. Twelve seconds away, at about this point here, I take my instantaneous readings, solve the equations of that particular warped surface for some definite zero time. . . .” “But s’pose the cycle won’t give you a ten-second solution?” “Then I’ll swing around and try again until a long-enough cycle _does_ show up.” “QX. It will, sometime.” “Sure. Then, having everything set for zero time, and assuming that the activity is somewhere near my assumed value. . . .” “Assume it isn’t—it probably won’t be.” “I accelerate or decelerate. . . .” “Solving new equations—differential equations at that—all the while?” “Certainly. Don’t interrupt so. I stick around until the sigma curve, extrapolated to zero time, matches one of my bombs. I build up the right velocity, cut that bomb loose, shoot myself off in a sharp curve, and Z-W-E-E-T—POWIE! She’s out.” With an expressive, sweeping gesture. “You hope.” Strong was frankly dubious. “And there you are, right in the middle of the damndest explosion you ever saw.” “Oh, no. I’ve gone free in the meantime, so nothing can touch me.” “_I_ hope! But do you realize just how busy you are going to be during those ten or twelve seconds?” “Yes.” Cloud’s face grew somber. “But I’ll be in full control. I won’t be afraid of anything that can happen—of _anything_ that can happen. From my standpoint, that’s the hell of it.” “QX,” the Lensman decided, “You can go. We’ll iron out the kinks as we go.” “We?” “I’ll be in the lookout shack with the boys, at least on the first ones. When do you want to start?” “How long will it take to fix up the flitter?” “Two days. Say we meet you there Saturday morning?” “I’ll be there,” and again Neal Cloud and Babe, the big blue ox, hit the road; and as he rolled along the physicist mulled over in his mind the assignment to which he had set himself.