"That," said Borisu, "does not matter. Our vengeance will not be complete until the last despised Solarian is destroyed. Only then—Stop! I warned you—"
His ray pistol, whirling to bear upon Warren, spat viciously. Its flame cracked across the turret to blast at the spot where Hugh but a moment before had stood. But its lethal tongue barely licked Warren's uniform. With a blinding movement the captain had smashed open the audio key, bawled, Engine room! Hypos on, quickly!
Then no more, for a second flare of the pistol dropped him, choking, to the floor. Its searing blast kindled the serge of his uniform. Nora Powell screamed and impetuously lunged forward to beat at the burning cloth with bare hands. A familiar thin, high, whining shuddered through the ship, and from the engine room below came the voice of Bud Howard demanding, "Why, Skipper? I thought you told us not to—"
Then the Magogean Kraedar wheeled, his face livid. "Enough," he rasped. "It will do you no good, Miss Powell, to extinguish that little burning. In a moment it and you and all of us will merge in a mightier flame ... Magog's blazing star!"
He laughed madly as his fist smashed down upon the crimson stud!
CHAPTER XIV
Escape
As Borisu's hand depressed the fateful button, a sort of sick paralysis seemed to fall upon almost everyone in the control turret. It was as though all realized that a moment hence in one brief, blinding flame would vanish all for which a lifetime of struggle had been spent. Joy and sorrow, happiness and care ... hope, love, ambition ... all these were to merge as one in the final erasing of life's futile slate.
Even Borisu, high-minded a patriot as he proclaimed himself to be, stood stricken by the irrevocable enormity of what he had done. Mad laughter froze on his lips, panic glazed his eyes, and the hand which held the threatening Haemholtz faltered and dropped to his side.