“Inert?” Boo repeated.

“Inactive. Unresponsive. Essentially lacking all potential energy or function.”

“Like you after six or seven drinks,” Kat said Baz.

The captain opened his mouth to argue, then closed it again, conceding the point. “So you’re saying there is a way to alter the ventasium so that the Djarik can no longer use it as a weapon?”

“I am saying there might be a way to alter it such that it cannot do anything.”

The entire hangar went silent.

Leo stared at the small hunk of rock sitting in the Aykari’s palm. It was the very thing that he’d imagined, but now that Crayt was suggesting that it was possible, Leo’s brain wrestled with the implications. What was a planet worth if it didn’t have any V? Yes, humans had gone thousands of years not knowing the element even existed, but Leo hadn’t known that Earth. His Earth had always been riddled with holes. His skies always filled with silver ships. The Earth he knew, the Earth he remembered, had been built on V.

“Okay. Let’s say you do this,” Baz ventured. “You make the ventasium hungover—”

“Inert,” Crayt corrected.

“Right. And the Djarik drop their little bomb or whatever it is, and what, nothing happens? The whole planet’s a dud?”

“Theoretically, yes, the element will not activate because the countermeasure will have already made it useless. No reaction. No release.”

“Sort of like popping some Tums before hitting the Taco Bell,” Baz said.

“Who makes a bell out of tacos?” Kat asked.

“What’s a Tums?” Boo wanted to know.

“If we do this,” Leo said, ignoring the pirates and looking only at Crayt, “if we take away the ventasium’s power, then that means you can’t use it for anything else, right? It’s just done . . . gone . . . like, forever.”

Crayt nodded soberly. “As I told you before, everything comes at a cost.”

Baz let out a low whistle, the ramifications catching up to him as well. “Taking away all the Earth’s V . . . I mean, that’s heavy-duty.”

“Better than blowing it up,” Leo said.

He looked out the bay doors into the giant chasm that had been violently ripped into this planet’s skin, at the massive titanium drill that had pierced its surface, its makers abandoning it, leaving it there to serve as fodder for ghost stories and superstitions. He thought of the Orin slowly rebuilding their walls, their roads, stacking one mud brick upon another. Putting their lives back together piece by piece.

That could be Earth someday. Or Earth could be nothing. An asteroid field. Nothing left but a collection of books and cards stashed away in a pirate’s chest. Leo recalled his father pointing up at the clouds, at the blindingly beautiful Aykari ships arcing above them. There it is, Leo. That’s the future. Out there. And we’re going to be a part of it. But you couldn’t get there without V. Even six-year-old Leo had known that.