This was the first test of the deadly arts he had learned; he had never killed a man before.
He was abruptly trembling, faint.
“John?” whispered Hal Samdu, uncertainly.
“I’m—I’m all right,” he stammered, and tried to get possession of himself.
There had been no choice.
He had had to kill as he would surely have to kill again.
A few lives, he told himself sternly, were nothing against the safety of the Green Hall.
Or—whispered another part of him—the safety of Aladoree!
He fumbled weakly for the dropped light-tube.
“The guards———” “They’re all dead!” he whispered dully.
“I killed them—all.”
“You’ve a proton gun?”
Hal Samdu did not sense his horror.
“Dead!”
But the question brought him back to the needs of the moment.
“Yes.
Useless, though, until I find an extra cell. Burned out.”
Forcing himself to it, he searched the body by him, found no extra, and moved on to those the ray had slain.
Jay Kalam came up.
“You used the proton blast? Full power?
No use, then, to look for weapons, or light-tubes either. Anything electrical. Burned out.”
He found another proton gun; half fused, reeking with burned insulation, it was still so hot it seared his fingers.
Far down the shaft, toward the prison, he heard a command; he saw a flicker of warning light.
“They’re coming again.
We must get on.
To the left, this time.”
Giles Habibula came noisily up; he blundered into Jay Kalam, wheezing:
“Time we rested!
I’ve lost ten mortal pounds, already, scampering through these foul and endless rat-holes.
Ah, but I’m hot as———”
“Come on!” retorted Hal Samdu.
“You’ll be hotter when a proton blast catches you in the rear!”
On they tumbled, desperate, bruised, gasping for breath, again without a weapon—save for the useless proton gun—still without light.
Running on all fours. Colliding painfully with rivets and flanges,
“Playing an evil game of rat-and-ferret,” sobbed Giles Habibula.
John Star, now ahead, reported suddenly:
“Another shaft! Larger.
Runs both up and down.”
“Up, then!” said Jay Kalam.
“The intake must be above us.
Probably on the roof.”
They ascended flimsy metal rungs, in close-walled, smothering dark.
“The roof!” John Star whispered suddenly.
“Can we get to the landing stage, above the tower?
There are ships on it.”
“Possibly,” said Jay Kalam.
“But we must pass the fans—easy to do if they keep them stopped.
But there are guards on the landing stage, and we’ve no weapon.”
They climbed rungs without end, up through rayless gloom.
Breath came with painful effort.