The Ring of Charon — Roger MacBride Allen

BREAKTHROUGH!

The commlink from JPL went dead. In the middle of View Screen Three, Earth flashed out of existence. The Moon hung in the telescope view.

Alone.

Larry sat there, watching the monitor screen in frozen horror. The comm people were already jumping up, checking their gear. "It's everything," one of them said. All comm links with Earth just went dead".

Everything. Larry sat motionless, his heart pounding. Somehow, impossibly, the harmless gravity-wave beam, so weakened at that range that it couldn't have mussed a child's hair

Somehow it had vaporized the Earth.

Eyes began to turn toward Larry. Eyes that were no longer friendly or excited. Larry could feel project director Simon Raphael's malevolent stare drilling into the back of his skull.

Larry Chao had destroyed the Earth. And that was only the beginning...