#Gamma Ray Burst countdown 0

[a-nuclear-adventure]

A flash

With a flash Echo shines a bright white as a massive pulse of gamma ray energy bursts forth in all directions bathing everything in intense radiation, lethal amounts in close proximity. After the pulse passed Echo lay still his glow near enough non-existent, the water gurgling by him as it flowed to sea no longer hissing and bubbling.

Elsewhere Nicholas was still scanning around for Echo when he detected a large burst of radiation coming from Echo’s direction. Relaying to Jac about what happened he picks up the pace having found Echo’s trail again

[ Echo is Unconscious and Nicholas is on his way ]

[ask-de-writer]

LEZON (part 3 of 3), a Science Fiction tale.

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Lezon

by

Glen Ten-Eyck (De Writer)

17837 words

copyright 2020 by Glen Ten-Eyck

written, 2003

All   rights reserved. This document may not be copied or distributed on  or   to any medium or placed in any mass storage system except by the   express  written consent of the author.

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K’ress started working at her keyboard and touch screens. Lezon went to work on hers as well. The unsteady but somewhat rhythmic pounding of the guns became ragged and further spaced, giving a last few weak blasts and falling silent. Shortly, even the inertial drive went dead, leaving the D’ancer boosting on the ramjet alone.

The voice of T’cill came over the intercom. “Lezon, K’sere had an idea. Shut down life support and funnel its energy into the capsule too. It’s not much but it will help. We can live for several days with the system off line so it shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Give her a hug for us,” said K’ress as she reached for the engineering panels. Soon, only the dim emergency lights were on in a ship now ghostly quiet. The silent fusion flame of the ramjet burning the thin interstellar hydrogen in the vacuum behind the craft was the only sign of life onboard.

///////////////////////////

“What in the name of Treh the Huntress are you doing?” demanded M’ase as she strode over to the pilot’s station. The pilot had cut power so abruptly that M’ase had felt it through the grav compensators.

“Your order was to follow no closer than 15 C seconds,” replied the pilot. “We almost lost the Clanner by running past it entirely when it cut power.”

“It cut power?” said M’ase skeptically.

“I have a copy of the last five minutes of targeting data that we can replay,” said fire control. “You may want to see it. It appears that they have had an onboard system failure.”

“Put the information onto the command screen,” M’ase ordered.

“Coming on, now,” said fire control. “The left side of the screen is the current situation. The right is the last three minutes,” where the failure appears to begin.”

M’ase watched the ragged performance of the guns begin shortly after the last attempt to start the Restriction field. She saw the shields begin to flicker out, getting weaker in time to the gun fire. She saw the guns give one last blast and the shields fall to less than a tenth of the necessary strength. A few seconds later, even life support power went out.

She smiled tightly, remembering other traps set by this enemy. “Send out repair crews to do as much exterior work as possible.”

M’ase raised a hand in salute to the enemy on her screen. “You remind me too much of a mouse faking a broken leg in order to lure a tiger into reach. Does this mouse have hungry little kits at home with a taste for tiger meat? This tiger will take the time to sharpen her fangs and claws before she pounces.”

Damage control’s outside teams began to report in. The Hand of Claws would need professional radiation decontamination on several areas of the hull. The forward tachyon battery that had been put out of action when the Talon was hit could be back to service in less than an hour. The one that had just been hit was a total loss. The forward disruptor battery was severely damaged and considered dangerous to fire. Out of action for practical purposes. The primary sensor array was damaged but repairable. Overload damage mostly, though it would need realignment for real accuracy.

None of the Talon bays could be got into action without a full ship yard to repair them if it were done properly. However two of them could be put into action by sacrificing the doors and servicing the craft themselves in vacuum suits. It would be uncomfortable but possible.

Through her comm links, M’ase ordered damage control, “Repair the long range sensors and forward tachyon battery as first priority. Get a Talon bay going only if time and effort can be spared.”

/////////////////////////

Lezon was studying passive scan intelligence of her enemy. K’ress and K’sere were looking at the screens with her. The emergency lights lent a surreal appearance to the whole scene. K’sere’s tail tip was twitching in concentration. She pointed at one of the readouts.

“What is this little power that comes and goes?” she asked Lezon.

“They are welding on the outside of the hull,” Lezon replied. “Do you see that there are several of them? When there is a little spike in the reading, more than one are working at once.”

“I see,” said K’ress. Then it was her turn to point. “What’re these low-level tachyon pulses? They don’t seem to be doing anything.”

Lezon responded, “They are aligning the main sensor array. See, they are trying to restore the quarter wave spacing between the elements. There — now she has eyes again. Time to be mean once more.”

“What are you going to do?” both K’ress and K’sere asked at once.

Lezon was already working at the engineering panels. “They are exactly dead astern. We have enough power stored now to start the Restriction field and some to spare. I’m going to ignite a second fusion point in the ramjet.

“K’sere, it is school time again. What will happen if I space the two fusion points by any even multiple of the wavelength of a gamma ray?”

K’sere twitched her ears and tapped one of her fangs absently as she thought. She knew that there was something of a clue in the question itself. She brightened. “The space between them will become a laser cavity,” she announced triumphantly. “You will make a gamma ray laser out of the ramjet!”

“Right you are, kitten,” Lezon said. “Now, how much warning will they have to get under cover? Assume that their detection and fire control officers are good.”

K’ress looked with pride at the young second daughter of her Clan as the child began to calculate on her fingers, muttering the while. “Fifteen C seconds — tachyon propagation speed — I think I have it, Lezon. They will have just under seven minutes warning. If they have any lag in the command structure or don’t understand what they are seeing, they will have less.”

“Salvo on target, K’sere. Now, what could I do to hide what I’m doing while they watch me do it?”

“You could start the Restriction field. That would make it look like you were igniting the second point to get more power, especially if the extra fusion point was snuffed out right after you got the field started, like it were unstable or something.” Fiercely she added, “I hope that you burn a hole through them from stem to stern!”

//////////////////////////////

“Commander M’ase, they’re attempting to restart the restriction field again,” detection said, happy, now that her equipment was working properly. She and fire control were working on reestablishing information sharing protocols.

M’ase approved. Busy as detection was with getting the system up, she was keeping an eye on the enemy. It was engineering who pointed out, “They might make it, this time. They’re setting up a second fusion point in the ramjet for more power. It’s a trick that I’ve seen before, during the last war. It makes the ramjet unstable but if they are lucky, they’ll get the power that they need before it has to be snuffed.”

“Restriction field up,” announced detection. “There goes the second fusion point, looks like it may have blown before they snuffed it. They are bringing power up in the life support. The main drive is still offline.”

“We should have taken them,” muttered the pilot under her breath.

Just then, fire control called out, “Get damage control under cover! We have six minutes to maneuver out of the line of fire. We have an incoming attack.”

M’ase was torn. If she maneuvered to prevent damage to the ship, she could lose all of her damage control techs who were outside. “Drop tools and get inside,” she sent to damage control. “Five point five minutes to full power maneuver.” To the pilot she said, “Set up vector 20, 0, 0 and prepare to boost full power at my mark.”

Detection had set up a countdown clock on the main and pilot’s screens without needing an order.

“What’s incoming?” M’ase asked fire control.

“A ten second gamma ray laser burst. EM doesn’t show on the tachyon screens so I almost missed it. It was the spacing of the fusion points in their ramjet that tipped me off.”

M’ase was both admiring her adversary and angry at the same time. Damage control can’t possibly all get inside in time. Once again you’ve done the unexpected. Almost got away with it, too. The countdown inexorably continued. With only a minute to spare, M’ase began to get the first reports of damage control personnel reaching safety.

“Commence maneuver,” M’ase told the pilot, outwardly calm, as the clock hit zero. Those inside, felt little or nothing as the big ship began to boost. The damage control crews still outside the hull had no chance. Full power boost peaked out at nearly 350 gravities. Nearly a third of the damage control crew were killed outright or left behind as their ship dodged the oncoming laser attack.

“Get me the identification of the missing,” M’ase told engineering. “They will have Names to take with them to the Cave of Life.”

“May Lezon receive them as the heroes they are,” engineering responded ritually.

They barely dodged the laser beam. Where the beam hit the exhaust of their ramjet, a small glowing nebula down its length told of perfectly aimed death, narrowly escaped.

Detection sang out, “Target’s main drive is online. 240 g’s and climbing. Tachyon fire commencing again. Restriction field strength at .24 and increasing slowly. It will not be long before they have gone over lightspeed.”

“Continue to follow no closer than 15 C seconds and whatever you do, don’t get directly in the line of their exhaust again,” M’ase ordered the pilot.

Fire control and detection were working together again on the problem of the enemy’s guns.

////////////////////////

“We missed, Lezon,” said K’sere with disappointment.

“Learn from this, kitten,” Lezon replied quietly. “We did not hit them but we did the worst damage that we have done so far.”

K’ress looked up sharply at that. “How did we hurt them? They have more power and speed than we do still. They have more and deadlier weapons. What did we do by a miss?”

“We gave M’rel company on the journey to the Cave of Life,” said Lezon from the inner calm imposed by the training of the Warrior’s Way. “They had some of the most important people on the ship, their damage control engineers, outside working on the guns and sensors when they were forced to maneuver. They lost many of them at the least.”

“K’ress looked at Lezon as if she were seeing something even stranger than a Feront. In a way, she was. “Weren’t those people your friends? How could you?” Lezon’s answer showed her the depth of the gulf between them.

“All life is precious. It may be spent to the goal of the Warrior but never cast aside lightly. Once the goal is known, life is the only tool that can achieve it. My goal is your safety. Theirs, your destruction. I cannot regret the use of their lives in achieving my goal.

“I will light a candle for them to help them find the Cave of Life. I have done that for the fallen of both sides after every battle of my lifetime. When she has healed the wounds of their souls, Lezon will send them out to live again.”

K’sere’s curiosity piqued, she asked, “Do you really believe that?”

Lezon smiled indulgently and stretched, finally having little to do. “School time, K’sere. State for me the Principle of Conservation.”

Mystified by what it had to do with her question but knowing her teacher, she answered, “Mass and energy are interchangeable, each being a manifestation of the other. The combined total of all mass and energy never changes.”

“Well said,” approved Lezon. “Now, is life a phenomenon composed of energy and matter?”

“Of course it is…” K’sere trailed off as she realized the implications.

“Now that you have laid the foundations, I will elucidate. I believe that the myth of Lezon and the Cave of Life contains some truth. The rituals connected to that myth are almost certainly of no real value to the dead. They do help the living to go on.

“Very little in this universe is lost forever. Conservation says that life is changed but continues. That is what I believe. Some are more literal.”

K’ress realized that Lezon had not mentioned T’cass going to the Cave of Life and asked, “Lezon, why do you say only M’rel is going to the Cave of Life. Wasn’t T’cass’s ship destroyed too?”

“K’ress, Ma’am, it was. There is a large difference, though. My ship was destroyed but I lived. T’cass found me. I hope that she had time and sense enough to get clear before the Talons struck. Until we can go look, it is too soon to light a candle for her.”

“I see,” said K’ress.

She had long ago learned that it paid to be observant around Lezon, and was first to notice the information on the screens. The Restriction field had climbed to an intensity of 0.45 and the inertial drive was well past the limits given in the manual and supposedly locked into the software. She tapped a few keys and read before speaking.

She said, “Lezon, I know that we are fleeing for our lives. I just looked at the safety factors on the drive before bringing this up. According to the computer, we should be vapor. Do we have to help our enemies by overloading our systems?”

Lezon got that kitten caught in the snacks look again. “During the last refit, I found a used drive in better shape than our old one. It was cheap because they had just scrapped it out of an old shot-up Treaty Commission Messenger Packet.

“About half of the money I spent went to the drive and the other half went to modifying the engine bay to get it to fit. I still saved you money compared to an overhaul of the old drive. I should have deleted that old software.” Seeing the skeptical look in K’ress’s eye, Lezon hastened to add, “We are still inside class limits. I asked the T.C. to be sure.”

K’ress’s eyes slitted, her ears laid back and her tail tip began to twitch. “Lezon,” she purred, “before I married into this Clan, I was a Messenger pilot myself. Would I recognize what’s in our engine bay?”

Lezon managed to look utterly guileless as she said, “Probably. You did do time as a capital ship engineer, too, didn’t you?

“They were scrapping a T.C. System Defense heavy cruiser at the same time as the messenger. I think that we have one its four main drives down there.

“If anybody made a mistake, it was a T.C. clerk. Maybe she was the same one that sold us the drive and inspected the installation. It goes like the Feront on a hot rock doesn’t it?”

Lezon tapped at her screens and brought up an information display. K’ress sucked in a breath as she read the drive specifications and saw the Treaty Commission seal. It only took a few quick calculations to realize that the drive could boost them at just about 320 g’s and that their little ship’s total power resources couldn’t begin to overload it.

/////////////////////////////

“I am beginning to wonder just what we have run into,” M’ase said thoughtfully. “No ship in their class registry should boost like that.”

She was leaning over detection’s shoulder to see the screen better. The story that it told was as bad as it could get. The furthest that they could detect the Clanner was only 2 C hours. They could try a wide sweep around it, to block it from the triple sun. Fine, in theory…

More and more, M’ase wished that Lezon were still here to lend her unorthodox mind to the problem. Her loss at M’onafar had been the primary reason for the M’cratt defeat in the last war.

Her musing was interrupted by the pilot complaining, “I hate stern chases. There’s nothing to do.”

M’ase stalked over to the pilot’s station and leaned close. “Try a little math problem. Ahead is a closely grouped triple sun system that rotates about its center of mass very quickly. Calculate all possible courses through them or near them that will go toward any of these four Clan colonies.” She pointed out the target destinations on the pilot’s screen. “Figure the whole range from 0.5 to 38 C.”

Almost contemptuously, the pilot began to call up data. “I’ve been doing nav problems since I was a kit,” she muttered under her breath. A few minutes later, she frowned and approached the problem a different way. And yet again.

M’ase was watching sardonically as the pilot growled and went at the problem from the very start.

“This has to be wrong,” stated the pilot in a puzzled voice. “What am I missing? I can’t find any solution to this that allows us to pursue that Clanner.”

“What difficulty do you find with this simple little problem?” purred M’ase sarcastically.

“Every possible course through or near that system will force us out of detection range, making it nearly impossible to find them again.” The pilot laid her ears back in frustration. “I even tried to figure out how to just run around them and cut them off from the target system. If we begin the maneuver, inertia will prevent us from following in time if they cut away from us. They will be out of detection range before we can come about.”

“That is what detection realized before they even began their turn,” M’ase said, her own ears laid back a bit. “Unfortunately, star ships can’t change course rapidly once they are near or over the speed of light. Basic laws of motion still apply, especially that pesky one about inertia. Turn from the enemy’s course and the enemy turns away from you. By the time that you can turn back to their course, they are out of detection range, hidden by simple immensity.”

“And I would have just tried to follow them through that trap of suns,” said the pilot ruefully. She tapped her right fang as she thought. Brightening, she said, “Actually, I think that it may be our best course of action. Keep them crowded for now in the hopes of overloading their generators. They are short one radiator. When we get close to the system, we should fall back to about one C hour behind so that we can see the course that they commit to and try to work out an intercept instead of a direct follow. Then we can use the gravity of the stars to slingshot across their course at an angle, out of their effective range. The angle should bring our working batteries to bear.

“If detection had all of this figured out before they even committed to the course, she has my admiration and deserves that Name that you promised her.”

M’ase smiled. “You are bright. You did figure out what we are going to do. That is why you are on my bridge. Detection is inspired. She reminds me of a young Lezon.”

//////////////////////////

Lezon looked up thankfully as T’cill brought in food and drink. “Lezon, we’ve been thinking. How much power would it take to boost the tachyons from our guns up a quantum number? If we could do that, it would bleed the Restriction field energy a lot faster.

“K’sere came up with the idea. We have all been looking it over and we can’t find anything basically wrong with it.”

Lezon actually grinned, showing all of her fangs. “I am pleased to see you thinking on the nature of our problem. The idea of next quantum state tachyon weapons has actually been around for quite a while. The difficulty with your idea is that the generation of second quanta tachyons takes equipment that only a few high-tech labs have. Nobody has ever been able to contain the generated tachyons, either. The damage has usually been minor due to the small amount of particles involved. A few times, it has been spectacular.”

The crestfallen kit asked, “Why did the experiments fail?”

Lezon reached out and ruffled T’cill’s juvenile mane and said, “Two reasons that act in concert. One, it takes a Restriction field strength of at least .85 to hold them in the accelerator. The other is that those pesky tachyons have a really short half-life before they decay to first quantum state, yielding all of the energy that made them try to go so fast in the first place. Usually they don’t get out of the accelerator before they go bang. That makes the accelerator’s Restriction field go bang too.”

Lezon looked wistful, “If it wasn’t so big and expensive it could make a lovely bomb.” Changing moods briskly, she added the dreaded, “School time, T’cill. You and the others too. Figure the yield if only twelve percent of the tachyons in our field now got to second quantum. Since I know that it is not in your references, assume a half life of 9.74x10-130 seconds.”

T’cill’s eyes widened. “That short?” She scooted before the lesson could deteriorate with other nasty surprises.

///////////////////////////

Detection called M’ase to the bridge. “Sorry to interrupt your meal, Ma’am. The situation is changing. The Clanner’s restriction field is headed for overload. They have begun braking at just over 320 g’s. The drive is showing signs of flutter too.”

M’ase silently looked at the data. She turned, “Pilot, are you maintaining our separation?”

“Yes, Ma’am. As small as they are and as heavy as that field is, it’s not easy to match them. I’ve had to run our field up pretty high to assist braking. We are coming up on the target star system and perhaps the gravitational flux is messing them up. I’ve looked at what Detection and Fire Control worked out, and it has to be something of a jury rig.

“They are feeding the excess tachyon flux into the guns. That’s one reason for their continuous fire.”

“Are we close enough to project their course?” M’ase asked, more than idly curious.

“That bothers me,” said Detection. “So far, they have been holding their options as open as possible. Now, they are making for the equidistant point between the stars, as you can see. If they hold steady through there, the courses open for a small energy expenditure are like so.”

She keyed her screens and displayed probability cones in a nightmare of profusion. “If we assume that they want to make for one of the nearby colonies, this is the result.” The nightmare resolved into only a few probable courses.

“What if they go sub-light?” M’ase asked hopefully.

“That is figured into these, Ma’am. It includes the whole set from .5 to 12 C. Those are the upper and lower limits that they can reach with the changes presently in effect.”

“This I understand,” said the pilot almost smugly, “and we have them. We can break off and do a double gravity slingshot through the system’s center of mass. Our orbit and theirs will intersect here, less than .15 C year on the other side of the system. We will have time to finish repairs to the forward batteries and be able to bring in other guns besides.”

Detection and Fire Control both added, “I concur.”

“Do it,” M’ase said. Turning to Detection, she added, “I have not forgotten my promise. What is your Name?”

“I will be Treh, the huntress of the Stars.”

“A good name. It is so logged. After your shift, Treh, in the wardroom, we will have the ceremony for the crew.” M’ase put her hand once more on Treh’s shoulder. This time in the proper familiar greeting of the Named. The rest of the Bridge Crew raised their hands in salute.

Treh pointed out, “They are still braking hard. They are firing their bow battery as well as the stern to keep the restriction field from overload.”

“Yes,” said Engineering. “If it fails before they slow down below C they will be dead and save us further trouble.”

“Breaking off pursuit to go for the intercept,” announced the Pilot.

“They will be going through the equidistant point between the stars at just below C,” said Treh. Her screen promptly displayed a new and much more restricted set of courses for their prey. Pilot immediately refined her course through the gravitational center of mass of the system, increasing her probability of an intercept to a near certainty.

///////////////////////////

Aboard the D’ancer, Lezon called, “Gather round, everyone. You may as well be here on the bridge to witness the end of the chase. It has the best view and most information in the ship. Besides, I want the ones that I love close by.”

At Lezon’s use of the word love, K’ress looked up from her seat at the engineering board. The kits charged into the room.

“T’cill, you take copilot,” Lezon ordered. “K’sere, you have detection, and T’lass, you have the main computer.”

K’sere glanced at her screen and immediately said, “Lezon, they are breaking off and diving for the System Mass Center. They will be behind us for a while but …”

“I know, K’sere. They will complete a double gravitational slingshot and have an intercept in about 1/8th of a C year,” Lezon finished for her. Turning to K’ress, Lezon asked, “Are we ready for Restriction field shutdown?”

“We are, Warrior. I have to wonder why though. This close to C, we will never be able to restart it.”

“True. We will need to brake for a long time before we can restart it. Fortunately, we will have that time. I had hoped that M’ase would break off the chase sooner. Now she has led the Hand of Claws into the Cave of Life. I will have to light another candle.”

T’lass, her brow knitted, was punching information into the computer. She looked up, amazed at the answers. “Lezon,” she said quietly, “shall I start the cameras on superfast?”

“Set them to continuous aperture and to engage one thousandth of a second before Restriction field shutdown,” Lezon replied, grinning to herself. She had long ago realized that little T’lass was a mathematical prodigy and had set out encourage the talent. It appeared that T’lass might have figured out what was about to happen. She opened the communication channel for the first time in the whole chase.

////////////////////////

The pilot had finished setting up her maneuver and said with utter confidence, “Whether they try to boost or just fall free through there, this course will put them into our claws. See, they are down to .8 C and trying to drop their Restriction field. At that speed, the only explanation has to be a serious malfunction. They’ll never get it restarted in time to avoid us.”

Treh suddenly had a thought. “Falling free —“ she began to type rapidly. She stared in disbelief at her screen. Silently, she put the result onto the main screen.

M’ase was looking at the plots with horror when the comm channel called for her attention. The ID code being used was one that had been retired after the battle at M’onafar. Lezon was calling in after an absence of more than ten years.

M’ase opened the comm channel and saw Lezon surrounded by the kits of the Clan D’ancer. “M’ase, I feared that you might still be in command,” said Lezon without preamble. “I called to say farewell. You are too committed to your course to escape. You have just less than one hour to prepare for the Cave of Life. I am sorry that the weapon that I am using will not allow your survival. I will light a candle for you all.” The screen went dark.

Treh put the detection screen information onto the main screen where all could see how they had been trapped.

“Relativity Frames of Reference Theory,” said M’ase softly. “We are so used to working around it with the Restriction field, that we tend to forget that it still applies.”

“Their restriction field collapsed while they were doing .8 C. The energy transfer has boosted them to just over .97 C,” said Treh. Rhetorically she added, “So this is what it is like to fight a legend. Who but Lezon would use the Law of the Universe itself as a weapon?”

//////////////////////////

K’ress and the kits were watching the screens as the Restriction field was collapsed. The universe changed. The stars of the system vanished. Though they were braking, there were stars visible only in a wide belt around the D’ancer. Toward the bow they faded away into the infrared. Toward the stern they became visible from the ultraviolet. Only around the waist of the ship did the colors of the stars seem normal but even there, they appeared to be squashed by relativity.

Aboard the ship, they replayed the camera’s pictures and watched the destruction that Lezon had wrought with the little ship that they had always thought of as home and safety.

They saw the pursuing Hand of Claws seized by the gravity wave that propagated from their little ship as the collapsing Restriction field boosted its speed to over .97 C forcing their mass to increase to nearly the total of all of the rest of the system combined. Their speed had also forced time to slow down for them, causing the system that they were in to seem to disappear. Their gravity wave, traveling at the speed of light, reached the stars in a little less than a half of an hour, causing them to flare and be drawn in toward the little ship. Its enormous speed and the inertia of the in-falling matter kept the dying stars from catching it.

The Hand of Claws was not so lucky. Trying frantically to accelerate out of the trap, her shields were overloaded by the intersecting wave fronts of three stars flaring into novas at once. An expanding puff of vapor was all that was left by the time that the in-falling matter of the triple suns got there. The collapse of the stars continued until there was only one left, now struggling to find stability as a supergiant.

In the rest of the universe, nearly six months passed before the D’ancer was able to brake sufficiently to be able to restart her Restriction field.

//////////////////////////

Staring at the sky from the shade of the shelter that she had improvised from the wreckage of her blasted ship, T’cass heard the sonic boom of the D’ancer before she saw the ship itself. The craft swung about in a graceful arc and settled into a textbook perfect landing. Heaving herself erect in the 1.85 g pull of the large planet, she began to walk toward the airlock of the ship that she had long known as home, scarcely daring to believe that she was saved at last. She had been marooned for the last eight months, at first hoping for rescue then giving up and just surviving, sure that her Clan was gone. Lezon came out and met her.

“To quote somebody from years ago, ‘I thought that you were too tough to die.’ I’m glad to see you, T’cass.”

“I’m relieved that you came back for me. What took so long?”

“I’ll let T’cill, K’sere, and T’lass tell you the whole story. You didn’t leave me at M’onafar and I couldn’t leave you here. It looked like there was a good chance that you’d survived the attack, so we came back to see. We did come back as quick as we could. We had a few problems along the way.”

—THE END—

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