That thin cold laugh again. Ward didn’t know why he shuddered. “These psychocells fool your duration sense, Doc. We’re already inside Mars gravity. You been in there a long time. Here’s some food concentrate. Now rest up and be ready. See you.”
Later, Ward’s tautly waiting senses were jarred by a thunderous explosion. For a moment it seemed the whole ship would fall apart as the liquid oxygen and its catalyst power units beneath the control turret went off. Even inside the padded walls of his psychocell, Ward could hear the repercussions of the dreadful explosions—cries and screams of fear, horror, confusion, mass hysteria. From an inter-ship audio in the corridor outside his cell door, he heard the Captain’s frantic desperate tone, the voice of a man unused to emergencies.
“What has happened down there, Thomas?”
“Forward fuel-injectors completely destroyed, sir. Braking rockets beyond repair.”
Panic was ill-concealed in the Captain’s voice now. “Break out pressure suits. And prepare air-sleds! Neutralize gravity plates! Abandon ship on signal!”
The Sol was a doomed ship. She was well inside Mars’ maximum gravity pull, and even its tellalloy hull couldn’t stand the unbraked friction of its inevitable roaring drive. The neutralized gravity procedure of the Captain was a frantic irrational command, such a method being employed on asteroids and moons or such byway stops. The Sol would soon blister and melt and smash into Mars, a charred shell.
The door opened quickly. The Executive Officer’s gross mass filled the glaring light of the opening. Ward struggled to his feet, hopelessly unprepared for fight. He wasn’t an aggressive man, physically, and had never been athletic. But he knew the theoretical value of attack, and he leaped with all his minimized strength straight at the massive barrel chest.
Then they were struggling in the narrow, shuddering corridor. The creature made no sound, but fought with a stolid, elephantine power, without emotion or expression. And Ward was like tinsel in those alien arms. His clawing hands found no flesh, but only thick, leatheroid syntheskin, hard and unresilient. He struggled, writhed, and struck frantically, but nothing about this creature was vulnerable to such an attack. His fists were bruised and smashed. The creature’s arms tightened in inexorable jerks about him. His brain was swelling, preparing to burst....
The sound was familiar now, the sharp thunggg of Red’s needle-gun. The plopping sound as it pierced the anthropomorphic. He felt the creature stiffen and its arms flew away from Ward, flailing in terrible anguish. An inhuman cry rang in his ears. He saw Red crouched there in that tigerish, fiendish manner he had displayed in the Federal Building.