“Science fiction, yes. Thank you. You can for yourself imagine what may happen if our luck is very bad.”

“I’ve done that more than once. Probably everybody who’s had anything to do with the Glomar Explorer has,” Jerry said.

“Yes, probably,” Kalyakin said. “It is thought that cannot help coming up. But so is thought of all we can gain if we succeed here. Sometimes is necessary to gamble.”

The other choice, as Jerry Pournelle had said, was sinking Humpty Dumpty somewhere like the Marianas Trench and hoping no one ever figured out how to bring it up from there. But somebody would surely try, and, with the better technology the future would have, might well do it. Then the problem would start all over again.

If it happens, let it happen while I’m here to see it, Jerry thought. He sighed, but he said, “Yeah, sometimes it is.”

Jerry found himself at the meeting that officially decided things because Nikolai Kalyakin invited him to sit in as part of the Soviet foursome along with himself, Vitaly Yushchenko, and a spaceflight doctor named Pyotr Shuvalov. On the U.S. side of the table were Dale Neuwirth, Dave Schoals, Jack Porter, and Jerry Pournelle. They all looked less than thrilled to have Jerry there. That, of course, would also have been a big part of why Kalyakin asked him to come along.

His presence turned out not to matter much. As often happened, the meeting just formalized what everybody had already decided: they were going to try to revive one of the centaurowls. They did settle on a date and time there—Tuesday, the fifteenth of April, at noon Midway time.

“You’ll have the chance to pass this on to your government, of course,” Dale told Kalyakin.

“Yes, of course,” the Russian said. “What do we do in case something goes wrong? We need to plan now.”

“I’ll speak to that,” Jack said. “We have military rifles on this ship.”

“Bozhe moi!” Vitaly Yushchenko exploded. “Why?”

“For the same reason we brought liquor aboard: to defend the ship in case Soviet sailors boarded us,” the security director answered.

“Liquor is better notion,” Yushchenko said.

“Yeah, I think so, too,” Jack said. “But we have them. Armed men will be in the chamber when we attempt the revival. They’ll try to disable or kill the centaurowl if it wants to take control of the ship. If that fails, you and we will both have lines out to warn our people on the bridge to warn our governments. And they will do what they do, and may God have mercy on our souls.” He crossed himself.

“And if even two thermonuclear missiles don’t solve things, the rest of the planet will put up the best fight it can,” Jerry Pournelle added.