Green light winked around them. “Visors down!” Whitbread screamed. They dove behind the torpedoes while the beam swung wildly around the compartment. It slashed holes in the bulkheads, then through compartment walls beyond, finally through the hull itself. Air rushed out and the beam stopped swinging, but it remained on, pouring energy through the hull into the Field beyond.
Staley swung his sun visor up. It was fogged with silver metal deposits. He ducked carefully under the beam to look at its source.
It was a heavy hand laser. Half a dozen miniatures had been needed to carry it. Some of them, dead and dry, clung to the double hand hold.
“Let’s move,” Staley ordered. He inserted a key into the lock on the torpedo panel. Beside him Potter did the same thing. They turned the keys—and had ten minutes to live. Staley rushed to the intercom. “Mission accomplished, sir.”
They moved through the airtight open compartment’s door into the main after corridor and rushed sternward, flinging themselves from hand hold to hand hold. Null-gee races were a favorite if slightly non-regulation game with midshipmen, and they were glad of the practice they’d had. Behind them the timer would be clicking away—
“Should be here,” Staley said. He blasted through an airtight door, then fired a man-sized gap through the outer hull itself. Air whistled out—the miniatures had somehow again enclosed them in the stinking atmosphere of Mote Prime even as they had come aft. Wisps of ice-crystal fog hung in the vacuum.
Potter found the lifeboat inflation controls and smashed the glass cover with his pistol butt. They stepped out of the way and waited for the lifeboats to inflate.
Instead the flooring swung up. Stored beneath the deck was a line of cones, each two meters across at the base, each about eight meters long.
“The Midnight Brownie strikes again,” said Whitbread.
The cones were all identical, and fabricated from scratch. The miniatures must have worked for weeks beneath the deck, tearing up the lifeboats and other equipment to replace them with—these things. Each cone had a contoured crash chair in the big end and a flared rocket nozzle in the point.
“Look at the damn things, Potter,” Staley ordered. “See if there’s anywhere Brownies could hide in them.” There didn’t seem to be. Except for the conical hull, which was solid, everything was open framework. Potter tapped and pried while his friends stood guard.
He was looking for an opening in the cone when he caught a flicker of motion in the corner of his eye. He snatched a grenade from his belt and turned. A space suit floated out of the corridor wall. It held a heavy laser in both hands.
Staley’s nerves showed in his voice. “You! Identify yourself!”
The figure raised its weapon. Potter threw the grenade.
Intense green light lashed out through the explosion, lighting the corridor weirdly and tearing up one of the conical lifeboats. “Was it a man?” Potter cried. “Was it? The arms bent wrong! Its legs stuck straight out—what was it?”
“An enemy,” Staley said. “I think we’d better get out of here. Board the boats while we’ve still got ‘em.” He climbed into the reclined contour seat of one of the undamaged cones. After a moment the others each selected a seat.
Horst found a control panel on a bar and swung it out in front of him. There were no labels anywhere. Sentient or nonsentient, all Moties seemed to be expected to solve the workings of a machine at a glance.
“I’m going to try the big square button,” Staley said firmly. His voice sounded oddly hollow through the suit radio. Grimly he pushed the button.
A section of the hull blew away beneath him. The cone swung out as on a sling. Rockets flared briefly. Cold and blackness—and he was outside the Field.
Two other cones popped out of the black sea. Frantically Horst directed his suit radio toward the looming black hulk of
A fourth cone popped from the blackness. Staley turned in his seat. It looked like a man— Three hand weapons fired simultaneously. The fourth cone glowed and melted, but they fired for a long time. “One of the—uh—” Staley didn’t know what to report. His circuit might not be secure.
“We have you on the screens, Midshipman,” a heavily accented voice said. “Move away from
“Yes, sir.” Staley glanced at his watch. “Four minutes to go, sir.”
“Then move fast, Mister,” the voice ordered.
But how? Staley wondered. The controls had no obvious function. While he searched frantically, his rocket fired. But what—he hadn’t touched anything.
“My rocket’s firing again,” said Whitbread’s voice. He sounded calm—much calmer than Staley felt.
“Aye, and mine,” Potter added. “Never look a gift horse in the mouth. We’re movin’ away from you ship.”