"Like this," and, taking down a sheet of drafting paper, Cloud sketched rapidly. "This is the crater, here, with the vortex at the bottom, there. From the observers' instruments or from a shielded set-up of my own I get my data on mass, emission, maxima, minima, and so on. Then I have them make me three duodec bombs--one on the mark of the activity I'm figuring on shooting at, and one each five percent over and under that figure--cased in neocarballoy of exactly the computed thickness to last until it gets to the center of the vortex. Then I take off in a flying suit, armored and shielded, say about here...." "If you take off at all, you'll take off in a suit, inside a one-man flitter," the Lensman interrupted. "Too many instruments for a suit, to say nothing of bombs, and you'll need more screen than a suit can deliver. We can adapt a flitter for bomb-throwing easily enough." "QX; that would be better, of course. In that case, I set my flitter into a projectile trajectory like this, whose objective is the center of the vortex, there. See? Ten seconds or so away, at about this point, I take my instantaneous readings, solve the equations at that particular warped surface for some certain zero time...." "But suppose that the cycle won't give you a ten-second solution?" "Then I'll swing around and try again until a long 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 postulated value...." "Assume that it isn't--it probably won't be," the Chief grunted. "I accelerate or decelerate--" "Solving new equations all the while?" "Sure--don't interrupt so--until at zero time the activity, extrapolated to zero time, matches one of my bombs. I cut that bomb loose, shoot myself off in a sharp curve, and Z-W-E-E-E-T--POWIE! She's out!" With an expressive, sweeping gesture. "You hope," the Lensman was frankly dubious. "And there you are, right in the middle of that explosion, with two duodec bombs outside your armor--or just inside your flitter." "Oh, no. I've shot them away several seconds ago, so that they explode somewhere else, nowhere near me." "_I_ hope. But do you realize just how busy a man you are going to be during those ten or twelve seconds?" "Fully." Cloud's face grew somber. "But I will be in full control. I won't be afraid of anything that can happen--_anything_. And," he went on, under his breath, "that's the hell of it." "QX," the Lensman admitted finally, "you can go. There are a lot of things you haven't mentioned, but you'll probably be able to work them out as you go along. I think I'll go out and work with the boys in the lookout station while you're doing your stuff. When are you figuring on starting?" "How long will it take to get the flitter ready?" "A couple of days. Say we meet you there Saturday morning?" "Saturday the tenth, at eight o'clock. I'll be there." * * * * *