The ELI Event B007R5LTNS

star’s attitude. The star wobbles, ever so slightly, as the planet moves around it. By carefully plotting and back-tracing the star’s gravitational variations, they can infer the existence of the planet and precisely determine its position, even though they can’t see it.”
    Sazar sighed. “Jalin, if there’s a point here…”
    “There is. We’ll be the star!” she said excitedly. “I’ll transmit a strong but false temporal disruption signal from the cruiser. I’ve got plenty of template frequencies from the Science Ministry’s relocator that Lokus used. I’ll use that data to accurately mimic a relocator wave, broadcast it, and then look for wobble. Even though they’re no longer transmitting, there should be enough residual radiation to make our signal wobble at a specific point. When that happens, I’ll back-trace—“
    “I get the picture,” Sazar interrupted roughly. “Do it!”

    * * *

    Lucinda sat at the dark console, despondent. Pan-Li sat wordlessly by her side. Neither knew if Aurora and Denes were still alive, and even if they were, there was no way to know where and when they might be. Pan-Li deeply regretted his attempt to retrieve them simultaneously and knew that Lucinda resented him for it, but he had no choice at the time, and in any case he could not change it now. Their friends were gone, most likely forever.
    Arty, at least, had been deposited at the correct points in time, that much was certain. After a brief stop in 2015 Colby, where Arty had helped the boy Robin escape Major Pettis at the orphanage, Pan-Li had snatched him back up and sent him on to Wheeler’s apartment. Whether he would succeed in preventing Wheeler’s death, or in helping him and his partner, Kelly Duncan, stop the Eli Event, was anyone’s guess.
    Occasionally he and Lucinda looked at each other briefly, silently, searching the other’s face for solace. Then they looked away again, each grieving their losses and knowing there was nothing to be said.
    The explosions were deafening, one large one followed by two smaller ones in quick succession.
    “Pan-Li,” Lucinda cried. “Pulse cannons! They’ve found us!”
    “They’ve breached the surface entrance,” Pan-Li said. He sprang from his seat and began powering up the relocator.
    “What are you doing?” Lucinda screamed over the din. “Don’t—”
    “We’re found,” Pan-Li shouted back. “No harm now. Security doors!”
    As the console came to life she quickly checked the interior safety barrier between the surface entrance and the laboratory. “Closed and locked,” she reported.
    Pan-Li snatched a note tablet from the console and with a finger frantically scratched at its writing surface as he ran for the transmission chamber. “Set for Arty’s current location,” he shouted over his shoulder. “Activate the moment the relocator reaches full power. Do you hear me? The second it’s ready to transmit, do it!”
    She did as Pan-Li said, not knowing what he had in mind. She searched for and quickly found Arty’s callback unit and locked in its coordinates. The transmission chamber’s power meters began to rise.
    The explosions had ceased, but now there were repeated concussions at the security doors, loud and insistent, accompanied by a terrible screech—the rending of metal, she guessed—as Lokus’s soldiers tore their way through the doors. The cacophony grew as shouted commands and replies were added to the mix. She shuddered, knowing she was almost certainly about to die. The power meters hovered momentarily at sixty percent, then gradually moved upward.
    “They’re close,” she shouted to Pan-Li. “Whatever you’re going to do, do it quickly!”
    A few seconds passed with no reply, just the noise from the direction of the entrance, soldiers clamoring down the hallway, almost upon them. She watched the power meters anxiously, her finger hovering over the Transmit button. Seventy percent, eighty, ninety…
    “They’re here!” Pan-Li shouted. “Now! Activate now!”
    The meters weren’t quite to one hundred percent, but there was no more time. She punched the red button as the glass doors to the lab shattered and four heavily-armed soldiers burst in, followed by another man, clearly their leader, and a woman. The temporal relocator hummed; the transmission chamber glowed, then flashed brightly. She glanced back at the chamber. Pan-Li stood beside it, hands clasped in front of him. He looked at her calmly and