28
Ali sat stunned. How could this be? How could the plan have failed so badly? What had gone wrong?
“I don’t understand,” said Clay. “Did the detonator go off or not?”
“I don’t know,” replied Jess. “It should have. I don’t see how it could have failed.”
“So it went off and didn’t trigger the chain reaction,” said Ali. “How could that be?”
“I don’t know. I don’t see… oh! Oh no!”
“What? What is it?”
“The area we left the detonator in… it was more stable than anywhere else. Maybe it was too stable. Maybe the detonator went off but the area was too stable for the chain reaction to develop. Damn! Damn, damn, damn!”
“So the theory was sound but the implementation had an issue,” said Clay. “Can you create another detonator and deploy it?”
“Not in time. The Limited fleet
