Tchassen began to run toward the ruined administrative center. He had to find out if there were any other survivors and he had to make emergency contact with the occupation base on the coast. He ran with considerable difficulty. After less than a hundred yards, he was gasping for breath. He slowed to a walk. He could feel the hammering of his heart; his throat was dry and ice cold.
To the escaped prisoners, watching from beyond the camp, the Captain's weakness was unbelievable—for Tchassen, in his twenties, had a magnificent build. Typical of the occupation army, he wore the regulation military uniform, knee-high boots and tight-fitting, silver colored trousers. Above the waist he was naked, except for the neck-chain which carried the emblem of his rank. His body was deeply tanned. His hair was a bristling, yellow crown. Yet, despite his appearance, his sudden exhaustion was very real; Captain Tchassen had been on Earth only five days and he was still not adjusted to the atmospheric differences.
As he passed the row of officers' cottages, he fell against a wall, panting for breath. The flat-roofed buildings were nearly a mile from the crater of the explosion, yet even here windows had been broken by concussion. A cold, arid wind whipped past the dwellings; somewhere a door, torn loose from its frame, was banging back and forth.
Then Tchassen heard a muffled cry. In one of the officer's cottages he found Tynia. She had been thrown from her bed and the bed was overturned above her. It was a fortunate accident; the mattress had protected her from the flying glass.
Tchassen helped her to her feet. She clung to him, trembling. He was very conscious of her sensuous beauty, as he had been since he first came to the Nevada station. Tynia was the wife of the commanding officer: Tchassen kept reminding himself of that, as if it could somehow build a barrier against her attractiveness. She was strikingly beautiful—and thirty years younger than her husband. It was common gossip that she had been flirting with most of the junior officers assigned to the station. Tchassen was, in fact, a security investigator sent to probe the potential scandal and recommend a means for heading it off.
He gave Tynia a shock pill from his pouch. Her hysteria subsided. She became suddenly modest about the semi-transparent bedgown she was wearing, and she zipped into a tight coverall, made from the same silver-hued material as the Captain's trousers. They went outside. She stood a foot shorter than Tchassen. Her dark hair framed her face in graceful waves; make-up emphasized the size of her eyes and the lush, scarlet bow of her lips.
Tynia glanced toward the crater, shielding her face from the noon sun. "What happened, Captain?"
"The flight beam failed; the supply ship exploded."
"And killed them all." She said it flatly, without feeling—but Tchassen doubted that she would have mourned the loss of her husband in any case.
"I'll have to get word through to the coast. We'll need a rescue helio and—"