"The converter is set to go when we jump, Arn. What's keeping you?"

"The navigation, of course. This is a galactic jump we're making. Give me a few more seconds."

"Idiot"

The shimmer took form. Gyrd turned from Arn and saw what had materialized behind them.

"Mother!"

But for her physical perfection she looked much like her remote ancestors, who tamed fire in Africa and--scant millennia later--played with fission under a stadium in Chicago. There was fear on her face, the fear of a parent who has discovered anew that untrained children are essentially monsters--and that if those children are godlings, then their evil can be satanic. She stared at her daughter, Gyrd, for a long moment, then said slowly, "Why are you here?"

Arn said, "Because we're lost?"

The woman shook her head. "I defused the converter, Arn, right where Gyrd dropped it. You can make no successful lie, or excuse, for what you've done. A million different races, all with the potential to become what we are, would have been destroyed by what you planned."

Gyrd pulled nervously at one of her pigtails. "But they're just festering in their nests. They don't feel pain the way we can. It would be fun--"

"Fun?" the woman said, and Gyrd screamed.

"Go home now. She frowned in a moment of concentration. "The arithmetic has been done. The machine is ready to jump. I'll be following right behind you."

Both Arn and Gyrd were silent now, dazed. Arn made an adjustment in the controls, and their craft vanished, leaving the woman standing penisively in space.

Lal only caught the last part of the sentence.

"... Gone from the galaxy"

"Damn it! Why didn't you say that in the first place?" snapped Harl.

"Never mind, General," said Lal. He turned back to the aide. "Say that again."

"Puissance, our instruments indicate that the intruder jumped before any attempt to annihilate the sun."