I jumped up. "Come on, all of you," I snapped. "Stick together and follow me quick. We've got to lay that field waste, before we're catapulted into the void. And don't lag, because Cuff could take any one of us between two fingers and snap us in half."
Howard led us to the control room of the armory. Here the viewers hadn't been affected by my sabotage. We saw the field again, and the three-stage rockets—they had all been brought to Odo by this time—in the last moments of their attaching. The solar mirrors had slowly collapsed, letting the great wheel down to earth again. It didn't look as if we had more than a couple of minutes to go. Howard sat down, his movements irritatingly deliberate, and began to point out the trigger assemblies, the sighters, and the ammo reserve levers.
I waited till I got the set-up, then shoved him aside and sat down in his place. "This is my job, son," I said. "Allow me the dirty work. I feel just savage enough to enjoy it."
I sprayed the field with a hail of dumdum slugs from the supermachine guns; then, when I'd picked off everyone in sight, I turned to the atomic heat throwers. I couldn't use the explosive shells and rockets because of what the concussion and fragmentation might do to the space station itself, so I trained the heaters on the top third of each rocket in turn, and simply melted it into thick silvery goo. The lower portions I avoided, for fear of setting off the stored fuel. The three-stage rockets, naturally, carried no weapons. They couldn't fight back. It was wholesale murder, but I kept at it. It was their deaths, or that of mankind.
At last I leaned back. "That's it," I said. "All but for Cuff and Skagarach, that's it." And the thousands of Old Companions hidden all over the world, I thought; but that was a problem for the future, and for better men than I.
Nessa said, "I want to speak to Ray. Alone. Please."
"Be careful," I said to Howard, as he and the three scientists moved out of the armory chamber. Then I was standing to face my wife.
"Ray," she said quietly, "I know why you told them about Odo. I didn't know at the time because I was confused by your wild talk. I just thought you'd become one of them. I know now you did it to save me from torture." She put her slim hands on my shoulders. "I don't have to ask this, I don't need reassurance on it—but I want to hear you tell me. It's true, isn't it?"
"Yes, Nessa. I banked on beating them, but I didn't honestly have an idea that I could. Still I knew that I couldn't see them touch you."