He twisted around and stared at the forward visors. The smoke was a cloud and there was a ruddy reflection in it, the reflection of the fire that blazed around the ship.
How much longer, he wondered. How much longer before they'd have to open the port and make a dash for it, knowing even as they did that it was a hopeless thing to do, for the Hellhounds would be waiting just outside the port.
The shell of the spaceship crawled with a dull, dead heat, the kind of heat that comes up off a dusty road on a still, hot day in August.
And soon, he knew, it would be a live heat, not a dead heat any longer, but a blasting furnace heat that would pour from every angle of the steel around them, that would shrivel the leather of their shoes and scorch the clothing that they wore. But long before the leather of their shoes shriveled and curled, they would have to make their break, a hopeless dash for freedom that could end in nothing but death at the hands of the things that waited by the port.
Like an oven, like two rabbits roasting in an oven.
We must turn, thought Gary. We must keep turning about so that we will roast evenly on all sides.
"Gary!" cried Caroline.
He swung around.
"Hair?" she asked. "I just thought of it. Would hair make you a bowstring?”
He gasped at the thought. "Hair," he shouted. "Human hair! Why, of course… it's the best material there is.”