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He stepped inside, and crossing to the small viewport, looked out over the dead landscape of the tiny world for a sign of Quent Miles. He saw the black-clad spaceman returning toward the hut. Roger held his breath. If Miles went into the hut this time and found him missing, he would know that the cadet was aboard the ship.
He ran toward the base of the ship and met Morgan coming toward him. "Find anything, Sergeant?" he called. "Nothing, sir," replied Morgan. "The ship is ready to blast off and her cargo holds are full. But that's all." "Full of what?" "I couldn't see, sir. The main hatch was locked and I could only see through the viewport. But it just looked like general cargo to me."
"I'm ready," Mryna said steadily. "Send up your warships and destroy me." She waited. Less than ten minutes were left. Her shuttle began to move more slowly. She was no more than a mile above Earth. She saw the soaring cities and the white highways twisting through green fields. Seven minutes left. Where were the warships? She looked anxiously through the viewport and the sky was empty.
The Lhari were waiting, a few poised over their instruments, a few more standing at the quartz window watching the star-trails, some squirming and scratching and grousing about "space fleas" the characteristic itching reaction that seemed to be deep down inside the bones. Bart checked his panels, noted the time when they were due to snap back into normal space, and went to stand by the viewport.
He closed the panel and brushed dust over it, and when the Second Officer came back, Bart was at his own station. As Antares fell toward them in the viewport, he found himself worrying about Mentorians. They would be in cold sleep, presumably in a safe part of the ship, behind shielding, or Montano would have made provisions for them. Still, he wished there were a way to warn Meta.
There were blotchy worms of light like the star-trails of peaking warp-drive through the viewport, colors shifting and receding, a green star, the red eye of Antares. Then the peak-point faded, his mind began to decelerate and angle slowly down and down into the field of awareness, and he became fuzzily aware that he was lying full length on a sort of couch. He shook his head groggily. It hurt.
There was a couch opposite the viewport where they could sit and still see Dis. "I hate to think of a magter deprived of his symbiote," she said. "If his system can stand the shock, I imagine there will be nothing left except a brainless hulk. This is one series of experiments I don't care to witness. I rest secure in the knowledge that the Nyjorders will find the most humane solution."
Space, through the viewport, was no longer space as he had come to know it, but a strange eerie limbo, the star-tracks lengthening, shifting color until they filled the whole viewport with shimmering, gray, recrossing light. The unbelievable reaction of warp-drive thrust them through space faster than the lights of the surrounding stars, faster than imagination could follow.
The next moment, before the horrified eyes of thousands of people, the Space Lance exploded a few miles above the ground. Astro stood frozen at the viewport of the Good Company, his eyes glazed with shock as he watched the Martian ship disintegrate far above him. All he could do was mutter brokenly, "Tom ... Tom ..." "Blast off!"
He glanced at the astral chronometer. "Blast off, minus five, four, three, two, one zero!" Tom, Roger, and Astro crowded to the viewport in Strong's command shack to watch the bulky Martian's ship take to space. With Sticoon at the controls, there was no hesitation. He gave the ship full throttle from the moment of blast-off and in three seconds was out of sight.
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