g."

Kliu shook his head. "I can guess what you're thinking; we've been all
over it. There's no way to get to the stars, and no way to move a planet
out of its orbit. Don't think we haven't been pounding our skulls, but
the figures are hopeless."

Tulan stared at the ulcerous image on the screen, built up by infra-red
probing through the opaque atmosphere. "She looks ready to fall apart
right now. How much of her could you blast off?"

Kliu smiled wearily and without humor. "We've worked that idea to the
bone, too. If you could build a big enough projector, and mount it on an
infinitely solid base, you could push something deep enough and
accurately enough to throw off stuff at escape velocity, but it's a
matter of energy and we can't handle one percent of what we'd need. Even
if you could generate it fast enough, your conduits would melt under the
current." He got up and walked a few steps, then sat down again.
"Ironic, isn't it? All we can do is destroy ourselves."

Tulan's mind couldn't accept it; he was used to thinking that any amount
of energy could be handled some way. "There must be something," he
repeated, feeling foolish as he said it.

He went over the figures he knew so well; the acceleration and the total
energy necessary to drive a ship to the nearest stars. Even a ship's
Pulsors, pouring energy out steadily, were pitiful compared to that job.
Schoolboys knew the figures; mankind had dreamed for generations ...

He sat up abruptly. "This hyperspace; didn't you tell me there were such
things as velocity and momentum in it?"

Kliu's eyes focussed. "Yes; why?"

"And that a projector could be built to put an entire ship into
hyperspace?"

Kliu stared at him for a second. "Kinetic energy! Built up gradually!"
He jumped to his feet. "Come on! Let's get to the computers!"

* * * * *

Several hundred hours later Tulan lay watching the pinpoint on his
viewscreen that represented Sennech. He'd been building up speed for a
long time; he ached from the steady double-gravity. The ship, vastly
beefed up, was moving at a good fraction of the speed of light. It
wouldn't be much longer.

The cargo of carefully chosen matter, shifting into hyperspace at the
right instant, would be taken deep into Sennech by the momentum he'd
accumulated in normal space. If the calculations were right, the
resulting blast would knock a chunk completely out of the planet. Each
of the thousands of