The Zolotoyan reeled. Holbrook staggered back, the gun in his hands. The other two guards trilled and slewed their own weapons about. Holbrook whipped the blaster up and squeezed its single switch. Lightning crashed between blue walls.
A signal hooted. Automatic alarms—there would be guards coming, swarming all over, and their only reaction was to kill. "The computer!" bawled Holbrook. "We've got to get the computer!" Two hideously charred bodies were collapsing. The stench of burnt flesh grabbed his gullet.
"You murdering fool!" Grushenko roared it out, leaping at him. Holbrook reversed his blaster and struck with the butt. Grushenko fell to the floor, dazed. The third black Zolotoyan fumbled after a dropped gun. Holbrook destroyed him.
"The computer," he shouted. "It's not a brain, only an automaton." He reached down, caught Ekaterina by the wrist and hauled her up. His heart seemed about to burst; rags of darkness swirled before his eyes. "But it is the interstellar commissar," he groaned. "It's the only thing able to decide about us ... and now it's sure to decide on killing—"
"You're insane!" shrieked the woman, from light-years away. She clawed after his weapon. He swayed in black mists, batted her away with his own strengthless hands.
"I haven't time now," he whispered. "I love you. Will you come with me?"
He turned and staggered through the door, past the scuttering red servitor, over the corpses and into the hall. The siren squealed before him, around him, through him. His feet were leaden clogs; Christ, what had become of the low gravity—help me, help me.
Hands caught his arm. "Lean on me, Eben Petrovitch," she said.
They went down a vaulted corridor full of howling. His temples beat, as if his brain were trying to escape the skull, but vision cleared a little. He saw the wall at the end. He stopped by the control stud.
"Let me go through first," he said in his burning throat. "If the guards get me, remember the computer must be destroyed. We're safe if it can be destroyed. Wait, now."