MacVickers flung himself bodily on the short hose of the oil-pump.
Birek, Loris, Pendleton, the dying Earthman, the hard faces behind them. The guards were manning the shockers. Up in the control boxes black tentacles were flashing across banks of switches. He had to work fast, before they cut the pressure.
Birek was ahead of the others, very close. MacVickers gave him the oil-stream full in the face. It blinded him. Then the nearest shocker came on, focussed expertly on MacVickers.
He shut his teeth hard, whimpering through them, and turned the hard forced stream of oil into the hoarsely shrieking blast from the open pipe.
Oil sprayed up in a heavy, blinding fog. Burning, shuddering agony shook MacVickers, but he held his hose, his feet braced wide, praying to stand up long enough.
The catwalks were hidden in the oily mist. The ventilating blowers caught it, thrusting it across the whole space. MacVickers yelled through it, his voice hardly recognizable as human.
"You, out there! All of you. This is your chance. Are you going to take it?"
Something fell, close by, with a heavy thrashing thud. Something black and tentacled and writhing, covered with a dull film.
MacVickers laughed, and the laughter was less human than the voice.
"Cowards!" he cried. "All right. I'll do it all myself."