There was no explosion. The impact killed the rockets. Dust plumed up like a geyser, disappeared swiftly in the wind, leaving the ship hanging there tail out, stuck in the building like an arrow.
Norman and Dorothy were at the door before the debris stopped falling. The front room was choked with dust and bits of torn plastic rained from the ceiling as they ran down the shadowy corridor. The door leading to the tower stairs hung on its hinges, admitting a beam of sunlight from the demolished upper story. They ran up the broken stairs, swaying precariously. The cracked hull of the ship lay in the debris of what remained of the tower. The wall had been sheared off level with the floor on one side and swaying out from the foundation below a misty rainbow sparkled its colors in the sunlight, hissing softly as the red fluid escaped from a pipe hidden in the wreckage. Sade's well around which the house was built had split in the crash.
Leaving Dorothy at the top of the stairs, Norman climbed over the chunks of plastic into the tower room. Then he realized his foolhardiness. Too late. A chill tingled the back of his neck as he saw the ship's port hanging open.
He heard Dorothy's warning cry behind him as he turned around slowly.
Sade's grimy bulk stood beside a chunk of plastic at the edge of the littered floor. The sunlight glistened on the pistol in his hand, as it squirted a stream of red flame upon the barrel of Norman's rifle. The gun dropped from Norman's blistered fingers.
"You thought you could escape what Vulcan and I can do," Sade said. "None can escape us, for Vulcan and I control the universe from now on." He pointed his pistol to the floor at Norman's feet and pulled the trigger. Norman stepped back as the flame licked up around his shoes. "Keep walking until you fall into that rainbow down there!"
"Wait, Sade!" Norman stepped back again as the line of fire followed him. "There's no time for this. That pipe's going to burst wide open any moment!" He shifted from one foot to another, the soles of his shoes burning.
"Jump," Sade said quietly. He raised the gun higher.
Norman retreated another step. Two feet lay between him and the edge of the sheared wall, the end of the floor, and then the misty lethal colors hissing ten feet below.