One of the chiefs asked Price, "Is Sawyer with you?"
Price shook his head. "They've gone to free him now. He'll be here in a few minutes."
"Oh my God," said Arrin softly. "Don't let them free the Ei. Even two of them at large here—we'd have no hope at all, with their fleet coming." He looked at Price and Price's confident scorn drained slowly out of him leaving a nasty void. Nobody, Vurna or not, could counterfeit what he saw in Arrin's eyes.
"Do you wish me to go on my knees and beg?" whispered Arrin. "I'll do it. Only go up and stop them from opening that bulkhead."
And Price knew suddenly that he must do that.
He turned and ran back along the hall and up the stairs, pushing and kicking his way past the knots of tribesmen who wanted to congratulate him for what he had done, and all the way there was a chill unpleasant thing riding his back, and its first name was Doubt, and its second, Fear.
Was it possible, just barely possible, that the Vurna had been telling the truth all the time?
Uproar on the prison level guided him through a maze of corridors, to an obligato of breaking doors. He turned a corner. Burr and Twist and Sawyer were free. They formed part of the fore-front of a group that was swarming down the hall systematically breaking down the cell doors. Two Vurna guards lay prone, and a third man, probably the English-speaking guide, was trying to crawl away unnoticed, his face ashen with fear.
The bulkhead was open.