"Well, the important thing is that you did it before someone tried to get me on board with a high-energy physics project."

"I will thank FIndekano."

"From a safe distance, maybe."

He looks vaguely anguished. 

"Sorry."

And suddenly his face is perfectly normal. "No, that was fairly incisive. It's just that we were once very good friends and he ordered his people in because I was obviously about to die and he didn't realize we had started it and - it is not really the most important thing to regret about Alqualonde but I nonetheless regret it tremendously."

Very good friends, huh. ...Not touching it. Nod.

Oh, for the love of - if people find out now - 

"Are you planning to head out separately from us, then, and if so is there any way to have defensible ships for landing on Endore?"

"...good question. Suppose it'll count as following if we take separate routes or something, if I stop in some random midpoint and then meet you there to make armored-up landers?"

"I don't know. I do think that if you ask the Valar before you go back whether you're Doomed, they'd answer usefully and truthfully? They're good for that much."

"And you don't think they'll do something actively antihelpful and/or assholish just because they become aware I exist or something?"

"I very much dislike and mistrust the Valar but - no. No one's worse off for having met them unless you can't restrain yourself from being very rude to them and even then they'll just exile you from this system."

"It seems like very slowly enforced exile, too."

"They're over a billion of our Years old. They'll get around to exiling us in a century if we haven't gone, and they'll get around to stopping the Enemy probably before the millenium is out."

"Grand. - It is probably well worth testing whether summoning works as normal for here. It may not, because it seems a little implausible that I'd be the first accidental summoning, but the field managed to remain secret on my world for a long time so it's not impossible. If it works I'm qualified to teach college-level summoning!"

"It also could not work in Valinor proper because the Valar prevent it. Could be commonplace in Endore for all I know. How do we test that?"

"I make most of a circle, somebody who is comfortable with maybe turning into a daeva when they die finishes it, we see if we get a daeva, you let me do all the talking, summoner dismisses the daeva, I teach a class."

"Okay. Should I get a volunteer for that now? We are leaving in eleven hours."

"Yeah. Not enough time for me to teach the class but plenty of time to see if it works at all."

He blinks. "My father wants to. Is that okay?"

"Why wouldn't it be? I mean, can he be trusted not to get his Doom all over the Earth? I like the Earth."

"I think Earth is completely safe unless the daeva agrees to follow us, in which case it's probably still safe."

"I meant on his own behalf. I didn't feel this summon any differently from a normal one, so if he took to grabbing random summons instead of waiting to be called up in particular..."

"My father if he became a demon would definitely take summons." He shakes his head. "It's going to be hard to keep it from him while teaching classes on it, but we can do someone else as first volunteer."

"I mean it sounds like he'd have a ton of fun being a daeva, but I really like the Earth. Maybe the Valar can limit the Doom to their own damn universe or something if I ask nicely."