“Do what you must, Captain. But you should know that I might have found a way.”

Suddenly the Aykari had everyone’s attention.

Baz shook his head. “What?”

Crayt took a step farther into the hangar. “Tell me, Captain, how do you disarm a bomb?”

“That’s easy. You cut the black wire.”

“Pretty sure that’s not true,” Kat countered.

“Almost positive it is. Haven’t you seen a single movie?”

“Enough to know that red is the one you cut and black . . . black is just annoying.”

The captain cocked his head. “You’re not funny.”

Crayt interrupted them. “I have studied the files Dr. Fender compiled. The blueprints. The formulas. Everything. I know how it works now. The Djarik’s weapon is designed to trigger a chain reaction, much the way one split atom might cause others to split, releasing an exponential increase in the amount of energy—”

“Causing planets to blow themselves up, yeah, we get it,” Baz finished, handing the copper tubing to Leo. “And seeing as how my planet—our planet—is first on the chopping block, you won’t mind if we don’t sit around and listen to a lecture explaining the hows and whys—especially not from someone like you.” Baz bent down and continued to dig through the container.

“What if I told you we could stop the reaction from occurring in the first place?”

The captain froze.

“Is that possible?” Kat asked.

“I did not think so at first. It was so far outside of my understanding that I could not even entertain the idea. But he could.”

Crayt pointed at Leo, who thrust his thumbs at his chest. “Um . . . I did what now?”

“After you left I went back through all the files on your father’s chip. Most of the information is concerned with the weapon the Djarik are creating—probably have already created—as well as their plans to use it. But Dr. Fender included some crucial research of his own. Your father is truly a genius.”

“Relative to his kind,” Kat amended.

“To any kind,” Crayt replied. “He understands EL-four eight six as well as anyone, including myself. Granted I have only cracked the surface of what is on that chip, but given what we know about the Djarik’s attempts to weaponize the element and Dr. Fender’s own research into its reactive qualities, I believe it might be possible to do the very reverse of what the Djarik intend. The very thing you suggested.” He looked again at Leo.

“The reverse,” Baz echoed. “You mean un–blow up a planet?”

“I mean render the entire reaction impossible.”

“And how, exactly, would you do that?” Kat asked.

“By cutting every wire at once, thereby turning this”—Crayt held up the ventasium core—“into this.”

He opened the palm of his other hand to reveal the rock he’d been holding, much like a street magician producing the missing Queen of Hearts. Leo’s rock.

“The Djarik weapon works by instantly destabilizing EL-four eight six, causing it to unleash all its latent energy at once in a catastrophic chain. But the element cannot be destabilized if it has already been rendered inert.”