Metafire

"And you get to join Metafire One and Two?"

"Yes."

"No. We want all the hostages that you have there. You will still have the hostages on Metafire Two, so what do you care?"

"You'll blow us up. No."

"OK. All but one hostage from your capsule goes back to Discovery."

"OK. There are only two. Same thing as I was proposing."

"OK." Ferguson was pretty amazed at how fast and clear this guy thought. "Sounds all right. I will have our people look at it. I'll get back to you on it."

"Sorry. This is a good deal for you. In ten minutes we will kill the hostage that makes it work. You have ten minutes. Kill us if you want to." George's usual suicide threat was not new to Ferguson, but George didn't know it.

Ferguson turned off the microphone. "This gets us over half the hostages back, and it gets us the Discovery back. They get to join up. Is it possible they can do something joined that they can't do otherwise?"