The conference was brief. When it was over Wyatt and Burdick went to the wall of rods and talked to the Alpha Centaurians.
Thurne of Obran spoke for them all. "We will fight," he said. "We will fight gladly." He turned and pointed, his eyes blazing with a feral light that made him look more like a black panther than a human man. Wyatt followed his gesture and saw a misty blue planet rushing toward them in the golden glare of the primary.
Burdick said matter-of-factly, "Before we do any fighting we got to get out of here, so we better start looking for holes."
They looked. They had no way of knowing whether they were being watched as they had been on the flagship, but they had to risk that. They tested every rod and searched in vain for a weak spot. They tried by main force and by cleverness and there was no way. And the blue misty planet rushed closer and spread into a vast globe, and the blue color faded into greens and browns and ochres, splotched with the harsher blue of water. A high-pitched shrieking began and grew in intensity. The blaze of the sun was softened and the stars were blotted out. Clouds whipped and rolled and were gone, and the wild downward rush stopped. The ship hung in a greenish sky, and there was a yellow desert of sand and tumbled rock below. Cutting through the desert was a gorge with a river in the bottom of it, and where the river left the gorge at the edge of the desert was a green and most beautiful land full of little streamlets and flashing lakes, with queer-colored orchards and many-colored fields. And in the middle of the land there was a city.
"Obran," Thurne said.
Wyatt took the rods in his hands and strained until the veins swelled to bursting on his forehead and his face was crimson.
He could not budge them, but the other rods that barred the corridor suddenly slid up out of the way and Makvern stood there with another officer behind him.
Makvern said, "Wyatt—"
But Wyatt had already spun around and launched himself like a charging bull at Makvern.