The official looked sick. Then his face became an enraged, mottled red. "If you think you can get away with this...." he sputtered.
Pell laughed at him and flipped the vizer off. He looked at his instruments ... another minute now. The back of his shoulders crawled as he contemplated the unpleasant possibility of a planet-mounted blaster burning the little ship to a cinder. Over his vizi-phone he heard the official trying to contact the liner. Again he looked quickly at his instruments. Now!
Savagely he opened the converter feed valves and the little ship leaped forward. His fingers played with practiced ease on the jet keys, forcing the ship into a wildly spiralling trajectory. Its path soon resembled a jagged fork of lightning. Let 'em try to get a fix on that, he reflected.
Far off to his left he fancied he saw the dim, almost-spent radiance of a blaster probing for him. Laughing to himself, he straightened the course of the ship and piled on the acceleration. Like the second hand of a clock, the acceleration dial moved up the scale.
An eye-searing 12 G's ... then 15 ... 18.... Finally the needle came to quivering rest at a lung-torturing, bone-crushing 20 G's. The converter screamed just above audio-frequency. The wheezy thing seemed to be pushing like a little trooper, Pell reflected.
His inter-com crackled for a moment, then he heard the labored voice of Gret Helmuth.
"Nice work, Pell. Do you think there will be any more trouble getting out of the system?"
"No, but hold tight, just in case. How's Heintz?"
"He's ... asleep."
Pell grunted to himself. He was worried about the fat man; the acceleration wouldn't do his heart much good. He tried to settle back in his shock suit more comfortably, then realized that the acceleration held him like a vise. Already the oil-cushioned buoyancy pads seemed to thrust into him like spikes. Breathing deeply, he manipulated the massagers in his shock suit.