"The time paradox has bewildered many. Your presentiment of involvement with the crater is unusual, but similar incidents are reported in the annals of psychic phenomena."
"Are they?" Jaxom asked facetiously. "I'm not at all sure I appreciate the position you've put me in-that is, if I understand you correctly."
"How do you understand what has been said?"
"That somehow I, on Ruth, with enough dragonriders to perform the task, took an engine back in time and deposited it in that Rift? Where it blew up to form the crater I find on my initial trip to the Red Star some eighteen hundred Turns in the later?"
"You have done it twice. The second time was six hundred Turns ago. It is the only explanation. Furthermore, you know that you've done it."
"I don't want to do it," Jaxom protested, thinking how far back he would have to ask Ruth to take him and the others. Yet Aivas had been accurate in so many other unlikely things. "What if something went wrong?"
"True to the time paradox, if something had, you wouldn't be here, and there would be some thirty or forty dragons missing from this time."
"No, that's wrong," Jaxom said, struggling to understand. "We wouldn't have gone yet. So wed still be here. We won't be here if we fail when we try it. No, no!" He waved one hand irritably at his confusion.
"You have gone. You have been successful, and each of those previous explosions has caused Long Intervals-which are inexplicable by any other rationale-thus setting up the planet for the final orbital dislocation."
"Now wait a minute," Jaxom said, waggling his finger at the screen in an aggravated fashion. "We've done a lot of queer things to propitiate you, Aivas, and we've done them because you've proved to be right..."
"This facility is correct in its findings and conclusions in this matter, as well, Lord Jaxom."
"Don't try that tact on me, friend. It doesn't work! The dragonriders are not going to go along with this. Timing it has always been extremely tricky. You know that Lessa nearly died going back four hundred Turns. You want us to go back eighteen hundred?"
"You will be carrying your own oxygen supplies, so you will not suffer from asphyxia as she did. You are aware of the sensory deprivation syndrome and will not be disturbed by the disorientation..."
Jaxom kept shaking his head. "You can't ask bronzes to do that, even if they are able to. I don't think F'lar times it. In fact, the only one I do know who has is Lessa."
"And your Ruth. Furthermore, you have been proud of the fact that the white dragon always knows where and when he is going."
"You have said that Ruth always knows where and when he is going."
"I have, but-"
"If Ruth knows where and when he is going-and specific guides are available-he can supply the necessary visual coordinates."
"But I know that the other riders won't stand for this..."
"They will not know!"
Jaxom stared straight at the screen for another long moment.
"How;" he asked at last in a very patient, saccharine tone, 'will they not know'?"
"Because you will not tell them. And since you now have been to the Red Star on several occasions, and since the distance in terms of travel between will not be appreciably longer than what they would expect, they will not know that they have been transported back in time and to the Red Star in the position required by the equations that cover the two disparate explosions."
Jaxom mulled that over and, inhaling deeply, realized that in his state of shock he had not been breathing regularly.
I think we can do it, Ruth remarked with more confidence than Jaxom was feeling at that moment.
Jaxom turned toward his beloved friend. "You may think we can, but I'm going to be bloody sure we can. Now, Aivas, let's go through this again... The other riders are not to know the time of our destination. But there are to be three teams of us, taking the three engines..."
"Hamian will not have sufficient space suits for the three hundred beasts required to shift all three engines at the same time. You will lead two of the three groups. F'lar will, as planned, head the third. He will be the only one depositing an engine in this time. As you know," Aivas went on, overriding Jaxom's protest, "the locations chosen are not in sight of each other. Since F'lar will think that you are at one end of the Rift, N'ton at the other, he will not know what you are doing."
"The timing's wrong, Aivas. I cannot be in two places at once. Nor doing that kind of timing without a respite. Ruth doesn't have auxiliary oxygen."
"You missed the point about insufficient space suits. Your team will have to get out of their suits and turn them over to the members of the second unit. That should allow Ruth sufficient time to regain energy. You will, of course, be certain that he eats well beforehand and can feed immediately afterward to restore himself."
I could do it the way Aivas suggests, Ruth said amiably.
"I haven't said I'll risk us!" Jaxom roared, bringing both fists down on the console with such force that he hurt his hands. Rubbing them, he grumbled to himself.
"You already have, or there would not be two craters on the Rift, and there would not have been records of bright flashes."
"You're inveigling me, Aivas. And I'm not going to let you."
"You already have, Lord Jaxom. You are the only one who can, could, would, has. Think this proposal over carefully and you will see that the project is not only within the capabilities of yourself and Ruth, but feasible. And essential! Three explosions at this point in time will not have the desired effect on the future path of the Red Star."
Jaxom sighed deeply, almost as if he already felt it needful to fill his lungs for a jump timed eighteen hundred Turns away. His mind refused to settle into a logical examination of the affair.
"Since this is a confessional moment, tell me why you are so obsessed with this project you've involved Sharra in? Especially," he added with an ironic laugh, "if you say you know I've already succeeded even before I've begun."
"You do succeed, and there is an easy way to prove it," Aivas said, his tone not quite ingratiating but as close to that as Jaxom had ever heard.
"No, first explain to me about these zebedee things."
"It is extrapolated by the closer examination of the Thread ovoids that there is life, not as you know it, and not even as we see it brought here by the Red Star, but a whole ecology of life forms throughout the Oort Cloud. Some of them are probably quite intelligent, judging by the complexity of their nervous systems; but when they arrive here, they have lost most of their liquid helium and so can be termed only 'rude mechanicals.' It is these degenerate, warmth-tolerating forms that make it to the surface of Pern; they don't live long enough to replicate themselves there, of course, or on the Red Planet. It is only these 'mechanicals' that can reproduce without helium in Pern's orbit. But if these mechanicals could be contaminated, infected with our disimproved parasite, they would carry it with them to destroy all similar life-forms in the Oort Cloud itself, probably including the more intelligent ones, too. Then, no matter what happens, Pern will forever be freed of this menace. That is why there were Long Intervals: The disimproved zebedees that you will establish-have established long ago-on the surface of the Red Planet, twice in the past and once in the future will infect the Cloud when the Red Star cuts through it twice in every orbit."
"I'm also to be a disease carrier?" Jaxom was not sure which he felt more keenly: indignation, fury, or incredulity at the audacity of Aivas's scheme.
"You will seed the Red Star three times. That is why it is so important to breed up the disimproved zebedees. A triple thrust in two different areas."