Boone turned in his seat. "Hatches—?"
"Secured and sealed," a brawny, blond-haired giant behind him grunted.
For the fraction of a second Boone stared at the rocky face, the grim-set jaw.
The others, too: four stone-featured crewmen, each waiting in silence despite the tension.
A tightness came to Boone's throat.
Only then, once again, the sphere-ship captain's voice was rasping: "Boone, those blips are coming closer!"
Tight-lipped, Boone pressed the third button ... the button that triggered this final carrier.
He jarred back, then, as the pressure of the craft's swift acceleration hit him.
But it only lasted for a moment. Free of the sphere-ship, the carrier sped out into space along the path slashed by the two before it. Behind it, the hurtling mother-globe was already fading, as it raced on across Saturn's orbit towards Uranus.
Down, down the carriers lanced, straight for Hyperion's ice-masked surface ... closer and closer, faster and faster.