"You're out of your head, Mr. Tayne! I'm Senior Quadrate Blair, remember? I know how to operate the panel as well or better than you do. Get going!" He dug the tip deeper, and fresh blood started.
But, Tayne's fingers remained immobile.
"Mad or sane, Senior Quadrate Blair or—or something else, if you knew how to use the panel, you would not have taken the risk of forcing me to do it! I would already be dead—"
There was a sudden, empty space in Doug's stomach.
"Thirty seconds, Blair."
The white mass of the sky was scant miles below them. He would need all of the thirty seconds, and there was no time to think—only time to realize that if he were to live, he must kill Tayne. It was like that time so long ago on the beaches of Normandy....
With all his strength he plunged the sword through Tayne's neck. And his own hands were at the control panel before Tayne's gurgling corpse had slumped to the deck. The life-blood seeped from it far more slowly than the seconds slipped beneath Doug's taut fingers.
Not the buttons, not the dials, for he had seen them. But part of the panel itself—it had to be!