With a supreme effort—he didn't know how he did it for the ship was beyond all control—he keeled over into the metal dome as he left the field.
The painted wall of silver filled his viewplate. Each rivet stood out. He could have counted them. He saw the nose of the ship push into the metal. The glass of the viewplate caved in upon him. The instrument panel reared up, smashed him in the face with an ear-splitting explosion.
The world splintered in a hell of sound....
Oddly, Ricker wasn't knocked out. When the ship stopped bucking, he found himself sitting amidst the twisted wreckage of the controls, smoke curling through the torn hull and his face wet and sticky.
His mind was numb, unthinking as he fingered a swelling lump between his eyes. His fingers came away red. He crawled out of the ship. Wires, tubes, warped transformers and machinery were everywhere. He heard a hum of ships outside. It was dark in the room, the shadowed wreckage reared in grotesque shapes like dancing demons. He couldn't move his right arm and, looking down, saw that his whole side was stained with warm blood. A feeling of coldness penetrated his dulled senses. It was like a deep ice cave.
Ricker limped to the door of the ruined powerhouse, stared out upon a scene like a polar twilight. Gray hulks, ships, bordered the ghostly field and black silhouettes were the factory buildings across the dismal space. Where the heat units had been were scarecrow towers, a sputtering orange flame at each peak—like small dying suns. Their heat was gone. The air was deadly cold, not the biting cold of a north wind but the numb rigid cold of breathless freezing. Yet the cold was alive, moving. It seemed to push against his body like air pressure. The temperature fell degree after degree as he stood there, like a thermometer with the red fluid leaking out the bottom.
Ricker smiled. He had destroyed the powerplant, the heat units were dying. The place was returning to ice again....
He passed a weary hand across his clotted forehead. Although he had destroyed himself, the work of Trexel was also ruined. It was worth it, his thoughts came slowly. The hell inside Neptune would return to its frozen gases.
How long had it been since he crashed? It seemed hours. But it must have been seconds for ships suddenly landed out on the field in a storm of rocket fire. As he grew weak from loss of blood and the cold, he noticed a surging dark wave sweep across the field toward the ships. Then the sound of shouts, screams, shrieks reached his ears. It was the clamor of fear itself. Slowly he realized it was men racing across the field, now white with frost. The men swarmed around the ships. He could see little in the dim light of the red flares, could make out only a writhing mass of vague shapes around the silver ships which reared above them like huge turtles.
As he watched, the voices grew weaker, died to low cries of crawling terror and despair. And Ricker felt himself grow weaker. The cold crept into his bones, into his heart, into his brain. He couldn't think fast. He thought slowly, leaning against the door. The icy walls of the place seemed to be sliding toward him, the roof descending. The field was cold as a snow-covered grave.