"But if someone could escape and get word back.... This contraption is a potential bomb big enough to blow Io out of space! The experts think it only takes a fraction of a gram of the pure stuff to power a disintegrator shell."
There was a pulse beating hard under his jaw and his grey-green eyes were bright.
Loris said, "Escape." He said it as though it were the most infinitely beautiful word in existence, and as though it burned his mouth.
"Escape," whispered the man with the shimmering, deadly sheathe of aquamarine. "There is no escape but—this."
MacVickers said, into the silence that followed, "I'm going to try. One thing or the other, I'm going to try."
Pendleton's incredibly tired eyes looked at the livid burns on MacVickers' face. "It's been tried. And it's no use."
Birek moved suddenly out of his queer, dazed stillness. He looked up and made a hoarse sound in his throat. MacVickers caught a flicker of motion overhead, but he didn't pay attention to it. He went on, speaking quietly in a flat, level voice.
"There's a war on. We're all in it. Soldiers, civilians, and kings, the big fellows and the little ones. When I got my master's ticket, they told me a man's duty wasn't done until his ship was cradled or he was dead.
"My ship's gone. But I haven't died, yet."