'I'm sure you did.' If Burley noticed Isaacs's facetious tone, he gave no sign.

'Thank you, Mr Burley. I appreciate the fast work.'

'Anytime, sir. That's our job.' The young man spun smartly on his heel and marched out. Isaacs exchanged an amused, wry smile with Bans.

'Boy Scout. Place is crawling with them,' said Bans.

Isaacs's smile faded as he extracted and read the hand— scrawled note. It was very brief.

I know. I have to tell them. You must hurry.

Isaacs had briefed Baris on his interchange with Korolev. He banded the piece of rough, light brown Russian paper to Earls.

'Know?' he asked. 'Know what?'

'I'm afraid damn near everything we do,' Isaacs replied. He thumbed the intercom.

'Yes?'

'Kathleen, get me Martinelli.'

Isaacs put a hand on the phone in anticipation and looked at Bans.

'At the very least Korolev knows everything we did when Pat and I first went to talk to Jason because of the synopsis I sent him. There's a very good chance he followed the same line of reasoning as Runyan. As wild an idea as a black hole is, it has a certain inevitability in hindsight. Korolev didn't have direct access to our physical evidence from Nagasaki and Dallas , but he had his own from the Novorossiisk.'

The phone buzzed and Isaacs jerked the receiver to his ear.

'Vince? I want to know about Soviet ship deployment. Particularly along thirty-two degrees forty-seven minutes, both north and south longitude.' He listened for a moment. 'Anytime in the last six weeks. I'd rather have that now and fresh stuff when you can get it.' He listened again. 'That's just the ticket. Thanks, Vince.'

He hung up and looked intently at Baris. 'We have to assume Korolev also guessed we were dealing with a black hole. I sent him my memo in late June. He's had six weeks to ponder it and move to do something about it. I also tipped off Zamyatin to watch Nagasaki. We can also assume they have at least a rough idea what went on there. If they have penetrated the Japanese with any efficiency, they probably have the full report. Korolev could pick up quickly on the parallels between the holes drilled in Nagasaki , and those in the Novorossiisk. For that matter, they may know about Dallas.

'In any case,' Isaacs continued, 'we lost three weeks sitting on our duffs waiting for Dallas to happen, three more before we got back to Jason, and Gantt got the real dope. That's six weeks when Korolev could have been pushing for some monitoring programme in Russia. The trajectory doesn't pass through Russia , so they'd have to mobilize somewhere else. It makes most sense to me to use their Navy. We would have moved faster if ours hadn't been so recalcitrant.

'I don't know what their response time would be, but I certainly got the idea from Zamyatin that Korolev has clout at high levels in the Kremlin. If they put properly instrumented ships on the trajectory, they could learn everything we have.'

'I see what you mean,' Baris said. 'If Korolev suspected a black hole, he'd have a gravimeter put on board to measure the mass.'

'Seems obvious enough,' Isaacs agreed. 'Gantt considered a shipboard experiment, but elected to put his apparatus on dry land to make it as stable as possible. We know now it wouldn't have made much difference. They'd have to be a bit careful, but an inertially mounted device, isolated from the worst pitching of the ship, would do the job.'

'Accurate timing would be easy,' Isaacs continued. 'With sonar monitors and some regular data acquisition they would know how long the thing hovered above sea level and could figure out the altitude to which it rose, just as we did.'

'So they'd look along the trajectory at that altitude, just as we did,' said Saris following the logic.

'And they would find this lab,' Isaacs slapped his palm on the stack of folders in front of them, 'just as we did. I think that must be what Korolev's note means. He's found Krone's lab, and, having raised a ruckus, he has to report his findings to the boys at the top.'

The phone rang and Isaacs jerked it up.

'Yes? Right.'

He reached for a pad and scribbled some numbers.

'Yes. Yes. Got that.' He listened, then spoke again. 'How far is that? Yes, dammit, no question. They're onto it. Sure, when they come in, but this is just what we needed. Thanks for the quick work. Great. Right.'

He hung up and relayed the message from Martinelli to Baris.

'There are five small flotillas in the Pacific, three along thirty-two degrees forty-seven minutes north, two south. Each has a research vessel, a tender, and a destroyer. They're spaced 1170 miles apart, sailing steadily westward, about 190 miles per day.'

'So they're tracking it,' Earls summarized.

'They're tracking it,' Isaacs confirmed.

'How long?' Saris inquired.

'Seven to ten days. Some got on station earlier.'

'That's plenty of time to collect a good timing record,' said Baris.

'I think there's no doubt now that Korolev has followed the same path that Runyan led us on,' Isaacs said. 'We've got to get to that lab and find out what's going on.'

'And damn quickly,' Saris said. 'If you've got this right and Korolev reports to the top brass in the Kremlin that a black hole was made and released at a secret US government lab, oh, boy.' Saris leaned back in his chair. 'Can you imagine what the chest-medal crowd will do with that? We'll be right back to square one when they thought we'd zapped their carrier. Damned if they weren't right!'

Isaacs stood up and moved to the window. He clasped his hands behind his back and stared out over the trees, rocking up on his toes. He could feel the mid-August heat which smothered the tree tops.

'We've got a powder keg already up there in orbit,' Isaacs mused. 'I don't know whether we can possibly move quickly enough to neutralize this situation. We've got to hope we can find an explanation that will satisfy the Soviets that this wasn't an intentional, government sanctioned plan.'

He spun suddenly.

'It wasn't, was it?'

'Whoa,' said Saris thoughtfully. 'There's no clue in any of the files here.' He pointed at the material on Isaacs's desk. 'But that's pretty clean stuff. I just pulled it out of our library. Our job's to know everything the bad guys are up to, not everything our team does, so maybe there's an outside chance. Still, if I read this guy Krone right, he's the kind who would tackle something like this on his own. Remember these were Krone Industries resources being squandered. Unless there was some heavy-duty laundering, there wasn't much government funding. I'll check more deeply, but I think we're clean.'

'We've got no choice but to get the whole story on Krone and that lab as fast as possible,' said Isaacs, regaining his seat. 'Bill, I want you to keep digging here. Track down everything you can going in and out of that lab that could be related to the manufacture of a black hole.

'Someone's got to go out to the site, though, and under the circumstances, I think I'd better take that one on myself.

'I'll call Pat and get her there too. And I might as well bring Runyan along. He knows Krone and is on top of the scientific aspects. I want you to get a team busy working up a reaction estimate. As things stand, how will the Soviets react if they're informed of Krone's lab? What will it take to keep them under control? Okay?'

'Right.'

'Any questions?'

'A procedural one. Before you go, have you told the Director yet?'

'I spent three hours with him last night. Trying to explain about the black hole. Left him numb. I'll have to see him now and report on Krone and the message from Korolev. I guess we'll see what kind of stuff he's really made of.'

'Is he going to want to go to the President? Or expect us to draw up a national intelligence estimate to circulate? The black hole is one thing, and perhaps an emergency in itself, but potential Russian reaction is a key issue now.'