Rapidly the three groups of guards closed in on Leithgow and Friday. The two men made their advance as uncomfortable as possible, but they could do no accurate shooting at such difficult targets as crawling men, from within the cramped interiors of their cumbrous suits. Not even Friday, who was a crack shot. They could not hold out long—nor did they expect to.
They had been too occupied to notice what had become of Carse. Within their suits all was silence; they heard neither their friend's shots as he struck down the three coolies nor their own. Quick glances at the ship's open port revealed no one; nothing. Probably, they thought, the Hawk was dead. Even if he were not, they would soon be. A matter of a minute. Maybe two. Their suits were still intact, but they could not remain so much longer. Ku Sui had this time ordered them destroyed.
And now half a dozen coolies were leaving the ring tightening around them and creeping to the Scorpion as additional guards....
It was then, in those last few seconds, with death staring them in the face, that Friday did a magnificent thing. It happened that Carse saw him do it as the adventurer jumped out of the Scorpion again and with frantic speed slipped into the space-suit he had left waiting. Friday stood straight up, a hundred feet from the enemy—a great bloated monster in his padded suit—and charged. Leithgow and the Hawk heard, by their suit helmet-radios, his battle yell of defiance, but the coolies did not. All silent, apparently, he rushed them—slowly, because of his hampering suit—his ray-gun spitting orange contempt—and other pencils of fiery death passing him narrowly by.
And then, while he still charged, the rays stopped stabbing past him, and he saw the faces of the coolie-guards turn upward. So surprised was the expression on their faces, that he turned and looked too—and saw the Scorpion, her entrance ports still open, forty feet off the ground and rising with swift acceleration.
Faster and faster she rose; all ray-guns were silenced before her astounding ascent. Higher and higher—faster and faster—till with a stunning, ear-deafening crash she struck the great dome and was through.
Then came chaos.
A huge, jagged gash marked the ship's passage, and through this the air inside the dome poured with cyclonic force, snatching into in maelstrom everything unfastened within the dome and hurling it crazily into space. For seconds the flood rushed out, a visible thing, gray from the soil which it scooped up; and while its fury lasted every building on the asteroid quivered and groaned from the terrific strain.
And where, a moment before, men had stood—two white men and a black, and a score of coolie-guards—there was now nothing save the flat rock under the gaping hole. The upper soil had been ripped out and flung forth like a concealing veil around the bodies that had gone with it....