He pushed the unsealed door inward, and fell rather than jumped inside. As the other two Planeteers leaped in after him, through the bellowing thunder came a shout of voices.
Atom-shells flicked into the inertrum wall of the ship and exploded in bright little bomb-bursts of light. The guards running across the court toward them were shooting.
"Seal the door, Gunner!” Thorn yelled wildly. “I'll take her up!"
He pitched forward in darkness toward the control-room, Sual Av at his heels. He heard the door grinding shut as he pawed frantically for the controls, standardized in all ships.
More atom-shells flared outside. By their glare, Thorn found the injector lever and pulled it frantically. The power-chamber of the little ship burst into a roar,
The panel-lights sprang on as Sual Av found the switch, Thorn leaping to the firing-keys. His fingers flashed down.
With a nerve-shattering roar of all keel tubes blasting, the little cruiser shot almost vertically upward, rising on spuming fire-jets out of the big court at the heart of the citadel.
Thorn cut in all stern tubes, and the little ship screamed up on a steep slant through the raging storm. Rocked by buffeting bursts of thunder, lit by the dancing flares of red lightning, it roared up across storm-swept Saturnopolis with dizzying speed.
Sual Av had the oxygenators throbbing by now. Gunner Welk came staggering into the control-room, fighting the terrific acceleration pressure. Up through the storm they climbed till they were above the tempest, the roar of air outside now fading away.