Simultaneously I was aware that Shorty and Taro were smashing at the control apparatus. It crackled, tinkled like breaking glass, with a huge flash of colored light and sparks that sent Shorty and Taro reeling backward, dazed so that they did not see what was happening to me. Then they were up, at it again, hurling broken fragments of the controls at the nearby grids, tubes and prisms. And in that same second, the multi-colored flash spread—deranged—weird current. Like burning powder-trains it leaped everywhere around the grotto. Puffs, sparks of fountain-glare, the hissing, whining, screeching of breaking machines....
On the floor I struggled with Ratan on top of me. He had no gun—just a long, thin knife with polished blade that glittered as he tried to thrust it into my throat. My own knife was gone. I reached, clutched at the grey wrist, turning the knife so that it went past my throat. Then I heaved upward. In the struggle Ratan dropped his knife and neither of us could reach it. Locked together we rolled, pummeling, scrambling. Then I knew that I had him. My fist landed on his hawk-nosed grey face—a solid blow that made him scream with revulsion and pain.
Then I had heaved him off, staggered to my feet. I seemed to be in a cloud of yellow-green, choking, acrid vapour through which only dimly I could see Ratan struggling erect. And there was Shorty's voice:
"Bob! Bob, where are you? Got to get out of here! Taro—Taro—"
It seemed that somewhere near me, Taro was coughing, choking. Then I realized that the shape of Ratan was plunging at me through the heavy chemical smoke. I was swaying, but I squared off, hit him solidly in the face again. He went down, and I leaped on him, lifting his head and shoulders, then banging his head back against the corner of a mechanism-frame—pounding it again and again until suddenly I was aware that it had smashed and was dripping upon me.
With a shudder I cast the inert body away and leaped to my feet.
"Bob! Got to get out of here! Taro—" Shorty was still shouting.
Green-yellow vapour was swirling around me. Electrolyte flashes seemed everywhere—the whole grotto, an inferno of pyrotechnics. Then I saw the figure of Shorty staggering to help Taro from where he had fallen. I swayed and joined them.
"That ramp," I gasped. "Behind us! Come on—"
We tried to hold our breath as we staggered up the ramp. Then there seemed a little puff of breathable air. As we plunged into the exit tunnel, for an instant I turned. The big grotto was alive with swirling turgid smoke and flames and leaping, bursting light-fire. And a bedlam of weird bursting sounds. The death of the monstrous Radak science, screaming with its agony of dissolution.