"It is H minus ten. Ready yourselves for the takeoff."
I thought of Kane and the men I had known and worked with for half of my twenty-nine years. They, too, were forbidden the sky. Tragic men, really, with their need and their dream written in the lines of pain and yearning on their faces.
The speaker suddenly snapped:
"There is an illegal passenger on board! All persons will remain in their quarters until he is apprehended! Repeat: there is an illegal passenger on board! Remain in your quarters!"
My heart seemed to stop beating. Somehow, my deception had been uncovered. How, it didn't matter, but it had. And the important thing now was simply to stay on board at all costs. A space ship departure could not be delayed. The orbit was computed. The blastaway timed to the millisecond....
I leaped to the deck and out of my cubicle. A spidery catwalk led upward, toward the nose of the ship. Below me I could hear the first sounds of the search.
I ran up the walk, my footsteps sounding hollowly in the steel shaft. A bulkhead blocked my progress ahead and I sought the next deck.
The timer said: "It is H minus six."
It was a passenger deck. I could see frightened faces peering out of cubicles as I ran past. Behind me, the pursuit grew louder, nearer.
I slammed open a bulkhead and found another walk leading upward toward the astrogation blisters in the topmost point of the Queen.