"Talk! What the seven hells is going on?"
"Run, you fool! Let go! The Rings are coming in on us! The whole damn planetoid is starting to break up! Ow—damn you! It's the Geejay. Earth's been going to hell for over an hour now!"
"And they let it hit here without warning? ANSWER ME!"
"You crazy? Warp beams are only for the ITA. Old fashioned radio's all we've got, and it takes eighty minutes—"
"Thanks!" Jon released the desperate man and thrust him aside, fought his way back into the crowded corridor.
He had to get out of the building but he was trapped in this crazy mob.
Another tremor, this one worse than any of the rest, sent the choked corridor into a maelstrom of kicking, clawing confusion. And Jon was the first to see the small panel now blinking EMERGENCY EXIT, sliding slowly, grudgingly back against a bent frame.
He was through it first. He broke into an open prison yard where the squat, streamlined form of a jetgiro was parked. Crazy thing, jetgiro sitting that way in a prison yard, as though it were just waiting for somebody who'd be coming out the emergency exit. He bolted for it. Had to hurry—the others weren't far behind, and if they caught up he'd never get the thing into the air. They'd claw him down.
He took a quick look upward at the sky, and it seemed to be on fire. Even in the brightness of Titan's artificial daylight the hurtling particles from the disturbed rings flamed blindingly. Saturn itself filled half the sky, and even to the naked eye the great rings were flaring dangerously at the edges.
He got behind the controls of the giro just as the mob broke through the exit.