"Y'mean the one we used to find the Empress?"
"Uh-huh. Rig it without the mirrors? Get me? D'you know what I want to do?"
"Yop. All we have to do is clear away some of the saw grass again. Not too much, though, because it hasn't been too long since we cut it before. I get you all right."
"Fine. How soon?"
"I'm in the beam control north, I've got a portable mike, and I walk over to the mirror and begin to tinker with the screws. Ouch! I've skun me a knuckle. Now look, Don, I'm going inside and crack the passage end. I've broadcast throughout the station that it is to be cracked, and the men are swarming all over the axis of the station doing just that. Come—a-running!"
Channing circled the little ship high to the north and came down toward the axis of the station. He accelerated fiercely for a portion of the time, and then made a slambang turnabout. A pilot light on the instrument panel gleamed, indicating that some of the plates were strained and that the ship was leaking air. Another light lit, indicating that the automatic pressure control was functioning, and that the pressure was maintained, though it might not long be.
Then in deceleration, Channing fought the ship on to a die-straight line with the open door at the north end. He fixed the long, long passageway in the center of his sights, and prayed.
The ship hit the opening squarely, and only then did their terrific speed become apparent. Past bulkhead after bulkhead they drove, and a thin scream came to their ears as the atmosphere down in the bowels of the station was compressed by the tiny ship's passage.
Doors slammed behind the ship as it passed, and air locks were opened, permitting the station's center to fill to its normal pressure once more.
Then the rocketing ship slowed. Channing saw a flash of green and knew that the Martian saw grass was halfway down the three-mile length of the station. He zipped past storerooms and rooms filled with machinery, and then the ship scraped lightly against one of the bulkheads.