I'd timed it right. A lot of Burgundy had gone down, followed by Sauterne and Chablis.
"That's where my Martian—friends come in," he said. Pat leaned forward. This was a part she'd never heard before, an answer to a question nobody but an old hand at expeditionary forces would ask.
"The Marties think they're going to get the System back, some day." He laughed. "They've been trying to persuade me to help them for a long time, now. Well, I'm going to. After my fleet has the drive. We'll invade Earth, then. The TSN won't be able to stand up to us—not when torps start coming out of nowhere. Picture it—all of Earth, busy fighting us off, all its attention on the invasion, and on nothing else. Then, when the fighting's going nicely, my men and I will raid a few choice supply dumps I've had spotted for a long time. We'll load up on equipment and supplies, and take off, leaving some badly disconcerted Marties to finish their little revolt any way they want to—with no Earth for them to conquer!"
"What?" It ripped out of me. Pat was sitting there, her mouth open too, the same stunned question written on her face.
Thorsten laughed his omnipotent laugh again.
"Certainly! Didn't you know, Holcomb? Ordinarily, of course, a hyperspatial ship will take off from a planet on standard atomic drive, and cut to her hyperspatial engines when it's out in deep space. But it's possible to take off directly into hyperspace—the only trouble being that the warp changes a hundred cubic miles of adjacent mass to C-T matter."
"Seetee! You mean contraterrene?" That was Pat, tense-faced.
I couldn't say anything. I sat there, staring at Thorsten—calm, laughing, deliberate bringer of death to a world and its billions.
Because C-T atoms, in contact with normal matter, reacted violently. A hundred cubic miles, detonating instantaneously, would leave a ring of dust where Earth and Moon now swung.
"There will be no cancer of humanity in space!" Thorsten declared.