"I was a First Order Scientist, I'm now an Analyst," Guerlan said brusquely. "Nothing in my tests indicates such an accident." But the whining crescendo of the vat's machinery was threnody in major and minor warning of sudden, devastating trouble, as its originally smooth purr changed to a cacophony of sound.
"Twelve seconds!" Came the placid voice in reply. "Care to test my prediction?"
For an answer Guerlan scrambled up the hetero-plastic ladder to the upper catwalk with the agility of dread, his mane of blue-black hair tangled and dishevelled, his face white and strained.
Guerlan towered beside the fragile figure of the scientist, whose wasp-like waist and marvelously slender hands gave him an elfin quality in comparison with Vyrl's streamlined strength. For an instant Guerlan felt an overpowering desire to seize the delicate body in his own great hands and break it in two. But the luminous violet eyes on the abnormally lovely face, appraising him now as if he were a particularly obnoxious specimen, held him in check with their utterly calm detachment. It was then he remembered where he'd last heard those impersonal tones, that sexless voice that seemed devoid of all emotion.
"Why ... you're the scientist of the golden mask when I was at the ..." but a cool hand was suddenly pressed against his lips. A vague fragrance as of Venusian jasmines was in Guerlan's nostrils and before he could say any more, a livid crack appeared down the length of the vat, growing swiftly until the vat where Guerlan had been working on the defective coupling, split into two halves with a prodigious hiss, like an apple cloven in two.
A cataract of spuming acid flooded into the safety moat, while hundreds of analysts and technicians came scrambling up the opaque hetero-plastic ladders that surpassed columbium steel in tensile strength and cycle-endurance for unlike metal, there was no fatigue factor. A babel of voices rose above the broken hum of the machinery and the swirling hiss of the released acid. Intolerable fumes taxing the conditioners in the safety towers, burned the membranes of their nostrils and mouths as they gasped for air.
And, above the hum of the machinery, the growing turmoil of panic-stricken technicians and tumult of excited voices, rose the crystalline tones of the slender scientist once more:
"Vat 66 explodes in twelve minutes!"
A desperate look—the look of a trapped animal glazed Guerlan's green eyes. If this was true, it was the end for him.
"The organic acid vat!... But, it's impossible!" He gasped. Yet, inwardly, even as he denied the possibility, he knew with soul-wrenching dread, and the certitude of a perceptive that it was true.