Behind me, I caught a glimpse of a ship's officer running, armed with a stun-pistol. My breath rasped in my throat and the plastiskin sheath on my body shifted sickeningly.
"You there! Halt!" The voice was high-pitched and excited. I flung through another bulkhead hatch and out into the dorsal blister. I seemed to be suspended between Earth and sky. The stars glittered through the steelglass of the blister, and the desert lay below, streaked with searchlights and covered with tiny milling figures. The warning light on the control bunker turned from amber to red as I watched, chest heaving.
"It is H minus three," the timer said. "Rig ship for space."
I slammed the hatch shut and spun the wheel lock. I stood filled with a mixture of triumph and fear. They could never get me out of the ship in time now—but I would have to face blast away in the blister, unprotected. A shock that could kill....
Through the speaker, the captain's talker snapped orders: "Abandon pursuit! Too late to dump him now. Pick him up after acceleration is completed." And then maliciously, knowing that I could hear: "Scrape him off the deck when we're in space. That kind can't take much."
I felt a blaze of red fury. That kind. The Earthbound kind! I wanted to live, then, more than I had ever wanted to live before. To make a liar out of that sneering, superior voice. To prove that I was as good as all of them.
"It is H minus one," said the timer.
Orders filtered through the speaker.
"Outer valves closed. Inner valves closed."
"Minus thirty seconds. Condition red."