He was through it almost before the wadded tunic he had dropped hit the floor behind him.
He kept moving with all the strength that was in him down the long, wide corridor.
But there were no guards. Peculiar.
Suddenly a strange vibration shook the corridor floor. Probably something in the planetoid's artificial gravity rectifier that needed looking after. Lord, if the ITA took care of the rectifier the way it did the air conditioner alarm, everybody'd soon be floundering in the normal, unpleasantly-slight gravitation of the tiny planetoid. A man would be lucky if he weighed forty pounds!
The corridor trembled again, this time more violently; it threw him momentarily off balance, and he could not regain it before the next one hit and sent him sprawling.
He struggled to his knees, and there was a terrible rending sound above him. He looked up. A jagged rent was splitting the corridor even as he watched! A 'quake of some kind.
He paused for a moment, catching his breath, trying to think. And then suddenly there was the sound of running feet and a guard commander's voice booming in a resounding echo down the smooth corridor sides.
"Man the control boards. Let 'em out!"
Doors slid open at every side of him; some were already buckled and opened only partially, but the men inside got out, and within seconds the corridor was full of running, howling humanity from every colony in the system.
Jon almost bowled a guard off his feet. He grabbed the man at the shoulder, thumbs digging in at the painful points.