CHAPTER VII
Brinna's face was now absolutely white, with her red mouth showing on it like a smear of blood. She dropped her hand to the grip of her own stunner.
She almost made it but not quite. Makvern hit her full on with a crackling charge and she fell and lay still and senseless.
Makvern sighed. "Poor Brinna. This is like snatching food from someone that's starving—I almost regret it—"
"I'll bet you do," said Wyatt. If he could have got his hands between the rods and around Makvern's throat he would have killed him. Burdick and Bill Whitfield, the Australian, had joined him now, and Whitfield asked, "What's up?"
"Nothing," said Wyatt with intense bitterness. "Not a damn thing, thanks to me. I had to get smart."
He felt sick with the knowledge of his own folly. He had taken the chance on Makvern in the hope of sparing Earth any attack at all, and this was what had come of it. He and Brinna would now go together to the pit, and what would happen to Earth would happen.
He pushed Burdick aside and went across the narrow room to the curving glassite-panelled wall on the other side and stood there. The others left him alone.
He heard movement and voices in the corridor, but he paid no attention to them. Nothing was important now. He looked out into space, lighted with the baleful light of the twin suns, and saw the whole great Task Force spread between him and the stars overhead, the destroyers coursing ahead of the main body, all their hulls glittering bright, beautiful, swift, deadly, a brazen spear for the slaying of planets.
The small craft in which he and the others were imprisoned was dropping below the fleet. It was extremely difficult to judge speeds here where there was nothing to go by but the stars, but Wyatt thought the Task Force must have been decelerating for some time as it approached its target, and that the small craft was moving considerably faster than the main body. He watched, simply because the ships were before his eyes, and he began to realize that this little ship was leading all the others down to battle.