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He crashed head-on into the safety officer. The safety officer was driven across the deck, his arms pumping for balance. He grabbed at the nearest thing, which happened to be the deputy cruiser commander. The pre-set control clock reached firing time. The valve slid shut and the take-off bell reverberated through the ship.
The physical and emotional shock of the conversion hit Jack and Tiger like a sledge hammer, and during the long hours while the ship was traveling through the time-less, distance-less universe of the drive to the pre-set co-ordinates where it materialized again into conventional space-time, the Earthmen were retching violently, too sick to budge from the bunk room.
Rockets flared, deep under water. But the flames set off bombs and the rocket-nozzles cracked and were useless. A midship compartment was flooding. A forward compartment's wall caved in, and still bombs burst.... The skipper of the assassin cruiser screamed an order to fire all missiles. They were already set on target. They were pre-set for the spot where the space-navy of Kandar waited to rise.
It was as though someone had drawn layer after layer of gauze between the boy and the marmoset, but he understood that Prince Machiavelli was still alive, and in far better shape than he was. The vibrating, paralyzing scream of the rocket suddenly cut off. Silence flooded in. End of burning for stage three! Pegasus had altered course slightly, in response to its pre-set mechanisms.
Spewing a solid tail of purple fire, the Atlas leaped like a wasp-stung heifer from the launching pads and thundered into space. The fuel orifices continued to expand to maximum pre-set opening. In ten seconds the nose cone turned from cherry-red to white heat and began sloughing its outer ceramic coating.
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