About midway down, she paused before a metal door numbered seventeen, swung it open, disclosing blackness. Gavin stepped inside.
The girl allowed her face to relax. She said in a softer voice, "Lie down. The Nova's take-off is pretty rugged. Five G's." The metal door clanged shut.
Gavin heard a bolt snick into place. Blackness, utter impenetrable blackness engulfed him.
He spent precious minutes searching for the light switch, as the roar of the jets whined up an ascending scale. With a grunt of satisfaction, he found them, snapped them on. The cabin flooded with brilliance.
The body of Trev, the Martian was stretched stark and cold on the metal deck!
Gavin bent shakily over the broker of slaves and scientific secrets. Trev's black eyes were open, glassy. A thin three cornered sliver of metal protruded from his throat. The Martian would never steal the Nova's space drive now. He had been shot with a poisoned dart.
Suddenly, a tremendous weight fell on Gavin's shoulders. He was squashed flat to the deck beside the dead Martian, pinned there. The breath was crushed from his chest, and he struggled wildly to inflate his lungs.
The Nova, he realized in desperation, was off!
Gavin managed to roll to his belly, push himself to hands and knees. The pressure didn't relax. He crawled to a corner, got his legs braced against a stanchion. If the strange ship above the clouds should prove unfriendly, the Nova would be bucking like a crazed steer in her efforts to dodge. Anyone caught unprepared would be flipped from bulkhead to bulkhead until he was a bundle of splintered bones.