"Behind me," Flim insisted. "What were the commands?"
Jak croaked, "Load, aim, fire."
"I'm already loaded. Aim!"
Flim extended his right arm at full length. Jak licked the dry inner surfaces of his mouth with a drier tongue.
"Fire!"
Sparks spurted from the muzzle of the Morgia. Flim, his magnetic boots ripped from the plates by the recoil, crashed into Ger and Looge. A tangle of spacesuited legs and arms accelerated back along the course of the Box to become a luminous spot in the blackness.
Yanking a pair of snippers from his tool kit, Jak trudged along the edge of the Box and cut the cables of the grapplers. He clutched the low hand rail and shoved the curvilinear side of the spacecopter. For a moment, he watched as the space between the weightless vessels widened. He dropped into the airlock.
Drusilla reclined on the astrogator's couch. She had exchanged her concealing red robe for a suit of skintight translucent cover-alls. "Back so soon, captain?" she mewed. "Did he put up a last heroic struggle, or did he devitalize like the coward he was?"