Kira had to think back to that first day when the ship had landed. "Yes. He said he had demonstrated a small spell."

"They scanned him while he was doing it. Not a surface scan or a shallow scan, a full deep scan. Which is hugely illegal to do without permission from the subject. Massive invasion of individual privacy. Anything derived from such a scan would have to be destroyed along with the scan itself." He held up the triangular object, dull black with rounded edges. "That's why they loaded it all directly onto this, and only on to this, so there would be no trace in the ship's systems of what they'd done. And they also ran all their analyses and calculations off this and stored them on it. This is the only copy of all that. There's no backup that might trigger a legal investigation when the ship returns to Earth."

She looked from the object back to Jason. "Why does what's on there scare you? Is it what the foresight warned about?"

"It must be. Because they saw enough of how your dad does things to figure out how to use something like the Mage stuff to create weapons that could penetrate any known defense system back at Earth."

Kira sat down on her bed, hard. "Why would they want to build weapons like that? It would break the stalemate that's kept peace on your world."

"Because if anybody makes weapons like that, everybody would have to buy them. Every government everywhere in Earth's solar system would have to buy a lot of those weapons. Because the only way to keep from being attacked would be to have the ability to hit back the same way." Jason shook his head in despair. "I heard them arguing. Some said maybe they shouldn't. Because it would shift us from all being safe behind our defenses to being constantly worried about being attacked, and if anybody misjudged a situation or miscalculated, millions of people could die. Maybe billions. I'm not exaggerating that number. I swear it. But they rationalized going ahead, because building those weapons would be worth incalculable amounts of money to ULS's defense industries and earn huge bonuses for them as individuals. Someone would invent something like this someday, they said. It might as well be them. And all ULS would be doing was manufacturing the weapons. It wouldn't be their fault if someone else misused them."

Kira studied Jason, appalled, hoping she would see falsehood in him, some sign that he was lying about any of this. But she saw nothing but desperate truth.

"It's all on this Invictus Drive," Jason said, his voice as grim as his expression. "Without this, they can't do anything."

"You're sure of that?" Kira demanded. "They can't remember enough to recreate their work without it?"