Lattimer's lips twisted. They were about to utter curses. But then, beyond the window, there was a dazzling flare of light. The men didn't ask what kind of missile had been launched against them. That they fairly tumbled down the spiral was all that saved their lives.
The terrible roar of sound itself seemed enough to kill. Automatic portals clanged above them to shut off the outrush of air and the influx of vaporized metal and radioactivity.
"We've got to block all entrances to the jet room!" Rick shrieked. "And we've got to see that there are no tin soldiers running around loose. Then...." Rick's voice trailed away.
With the blaster that had been Fane's, Lattimer brought down tunnel-roofs, barricading himself and his companions in the hall where the bases of the tubes were, behind tons of wreckage. It might help.
"Fane will try to dig us out, but now it should take a little time, I hope," Rick said. "We're buried deep in rock and snow and congealed atmosphere. And he probably hasn't enough war engines assembled around here to really try to blast through to us."
"So what do we do?" Finden demanded.
"Look around to see what we can do," Lattimer shot back at him.
They went down the row of great jet-tubes. To Rick's and Lattimer's trained eyes basic principles of function of these jets were not too hard to trace out. Regardless of what monsters on what world invented a thing, natural law remained the same. And so the shaping of metal and the directing of forces in any device had to remain the same everywhere.
"The setup isn't quite finished," Rick said. "Certain breech details aren't hooked together yet. But you can see where they go. Say, Fane must have spent most of his first six months on Mercury here in this vault trying to put what was left to do in order! A lot of these final touches must be his. He thought he could complete everything alone."