The bomb sped truly. Into that awful crater, through that fantastic hell of heat and of lethal radiation and of noxious gas. It struck the vortex itself, dead center. It penetrated just deeply enough. The extremely refractory casing of neocarballoy, so carefully computed as to thickness, held just long enough. The carefully-weighed charge of duodec exploded, its energy and that of the vortex combining in a detonation whose like no inhabitant of that solar system had even dimly imagined. The gases and the pall of smoke and pulverized tufa blew aside; the frightful waves of fluid lava quieted down. The vortex was out and would remain out. The Vortex Blaster went back to his cruiser and stored his flitter away. "Oh, you did it--thanks! I didn't believe, really, that you--that anybody--could do it!" Luda was almost hysterical in her joyous relief. "Nothing to it," Cloud deprecated. "How are your folks coming along with the mopping up?" "Practically clean," Luda answered, grimly. "We now know who is who, I think. Those who fought against us or who did not fight for us very soon will be dead. But the Uhalian fleet comes. Does yours? Ours goes to meet it in moments." "Wait a minute!" Cloud sat down at his plate, made observations and measurements, calculated mentally. He energized his longest-range communicator and conferred briefly. "The Uhalian fleet will be here in seven hours and eighteen minutes. If your people go out to meet them it will mean a war that not even the Patrol can stop without destroying practically all of the ships and men you have in space. The Patrol flotilla will arrive in seven hours, thirty-one minutes. Therefore I suggest that you hold your fleet here, in formation but quiescent, under instructions not to move until you yourself signal them to do so, while you and I go out and see if we can't stop the Uhalians." "_Stop_ them?" Luda's thought was a distinctly unladylike one. "What with, pray?" "I don't know," Cloud confessed, "but it wouldn't do any harm to try, would it?" "No--probably not." And so it was done. All the way out Cloud pondered ways and means. As the cruiser neared the on-rushing fleet he sent a quick thought to Luda: "Darjeeb is undoubtedly with that fleet. He knows that this is the only inertialess ship in this part of space. He wants it worse than he wants anything else in the universe. Now, if we could only make him listen to reason--if we could make him see--"