"No way," Jason said, shaking his head. "I took a look at it, and it's just like I heard some of them comment. This stuff is incredibly complex. Without the reference of the scan of your father's work, there's no way they could rebuild it."

"Then destroy that thing!"

"I can't. You can't. It's called an Invictus Drive for a reason." Jason turned a bit, waving toward the night outside. "Drop it in a volcano, and it wouldn't even notice. Drop it in the deepest water, and the pressure wouldn't hurt it. Fasten it to a bomb, and it wouldn't even be dented. If we could shoot it into a star, like your sun, the fusion explosions and intense radiation would do the job. But there's no way to do that."

"Why can't we hide it?" Kira asked, belatedly realizing that by saying "we" she had taken partial ownership of the situation.

"It's got a beacon tied to biometric detectors. A transmitter. If it isn't within ten meters of at least one member of the crew, the beacon automatically activates, and my mom's ship finds it within seconds."

Kira studied the object that Jason held. "I guess you're a member of the crew?"

"Yeah. By default. If they had taken time to look at the list of authorized holders they would have deleted me, but they were probably in a rush when they initialized it."

"You have to be within ten meters? That's about five lances." Not very far at all. "Can they call that thing? Make it tell them where it is?"

He smiled shakily at her. "I knew you'd be smart enough to ask about that. Normally, yes, they could broadcast a call and it would answer. Unless the Invictus Drive was set to quiet mode, which is what they did to make sure that inspectors back on Earth wouldn't discover it. They didn't think they'd ever have to look for it themselves."

Kira bit her lower lip as she thought. "What if your mother knew where you were, but you were being protected by people from this world? What would she do?"

"She wouldn't care about me," Jason said, "but the drive, that's another thing. There are so-called defensive weapons on the ship. Stuff way beyond what you guys have. She'd use those weapons to get me and the drive back, and justify it by saying you kidnapped me or something. She'd destroy whatever she had to. Trust me."

Once again he wasn't lying. "You must have some idea of what to do," Kira said. "You came here and said you needed me."