Polly reached far across to the seat on her right. A bar moved under her hand, and at the aft end of the Planck, two fins moved in response. The ship listed to the side and drifted back to nudge the Hospital, almost gently-once, twice.
Live flame roared through the Hospital. It was water vapor heated beyond incandescence, to the point where oxygen dissociated itself from hydrogen, and it cut where it hit. Like death's hurricane it roared through the corridors, cutting its way through walls where there were no corridors. It killed men before they knew what was killing them, for the first touch of the superheated steam made them blind.
The drive flame spread its fiery death through a third of the ground floor.
To men inside and outside the Hospital, to men who had never met and never would, this was the night everything happened at once. Sane men locked their doors and found something to hide under while they waited for things to stop happening.
"Laney. It must be Laney," said Jay Hood. "She got through."
"Elaine Mattson?"
"Right. And she got to the Planck. Can you imagine?"
"She must have a wonderful sense of timing. Do you know what will happen when she blows the drive?"
"Oh, my God. What'll we do?"
"Keep flying," said Parlette. "We'd never get out of range now. We might just as well bull through with this and hope Miss Mattson realizes the colonists are winning."
"More police cars," said Harry Kane. "Left and right, both."
Polly touched the bar again. The ship tilted to the other side and began to drift ponderously away from the Hospital.
She dared tilt the ship no farther. How much clearance did she have under the landing skirt? A foot? A yard? Ten? If the skirt touched the ground, the ship would go over on its side.
That was not part of Polly's plan.
Behind her the door had turned red hot. Polly glanced back with bared teeth. She moved her hands over the board, but in the end left the settings just the way they were. She'd have to circle all the way around the Hospital, but then she'd have a gliding run at the Arthur Clarke.
And she'd hit it again and again until one ship failed.
She never noticed when the red spot on the door turned white and burned through.
The ship jumped three feet upward, and Matt's head snapped down against the closet floor. When he looked up, the outer hull side of the room was tearing away like tissue paper, except for the agonized scream of old metal dying. And Matt was looking straight into Castro's office.
He couldn't think; he couldn't move. The scene had a quality of nightmare; it was beyond the rational. Magic! he thought, and, Not again!
The Hospital was drifting away, dreamlike. His ears had gone dead, so that it all took place in an eerie silence. The ship was taking off...
And there was no air in his helmet. The tank had held only one last wheeze. He was suffocating. He pulled the clamps up with fingers gone limp and tingly, tossed the helmet away, and gulped air. Then he remembered the gas.
But it was clean hot air, air from outside, howling through the gaping hole in the outer hull. He sucked at it, pulling it to him. There were spots before his eyes.
The ship was going up and down in a seasick manner. Wavering in the drive, Matt thought, and tried to ignore it. But one thing he couldn't ignore:
Polly had reached the controls. Apparently she was taking the ship up. No telling how high they were already; the lights of the Hospital had dwindled to the point where everything outside was uniformly black against the lighted room. They were going up, and the room was wide open to naked space, and Matt had no helmet.
The room seemed steadier. He jumped for the ladder. The suit was awkward, but he caught the ladder and made his way down, fighting the imbalance caused by his backpack. It wasn't until he touched bottom that the backpack caught his conscious attention.
After all, if the Planck's landing motors still worked, why not a spacesuit's backpack?
He peered down at a control panel meant to be read by fingertips. With the helmet on, he couldn't have done it. The backpack was studded with small rocket motors; he wanted the ones on the bottom, of course.
How high was he now?
He tried the two buttons on the bottom, and something exploded on his back. It felt about right, as if it were trying to lift him. There was only one throttle knob. Doubtless it controlled all the jets at once, or all that were turned on at a given time.
Well, what else did he need to know? How high was he?
He took one last deep breath and went out the hole in the wall. He saw blackness around him, and he twisted the throttle hard over. It didn't move. It was already on full. Matt had something like one second to realize that the backpack was for use in space, that it probably wouldn't have lifted its own weight against gravity.
He hit.
Moving carefully, so as not to interfere with the men using welding torches, Major Jansen peered up into the hole in the flight-control-room door.
They had pushed a platform into position under the door, so that two men could work at once. The platform rose and settled, rose and settled, so that the major had to brace himself with his hands flat on the ceiling. He could see raven hair over the top of a control chair, and one slender brown arm hanging down.
Jesus Pietro, standing below, called, "How long?"
"A few seconds," said one of the men with cutting torches. "Unless she welded the hinge side too."
"Do you know where we're going?" called the Head. "I do."
Major Jansen looked down, surprised. The Head sounded so odd! And he looked like an old man in poor health. He seemed unable to concentrate on what was going on. He's ready for retirement, Major Jansen thought with compassion. If we live through this ...
"I do," Jesus Pietro repeated, and nodded to himself.
Major Jansen turned away. He had no time to feel sympathy for the Head, not while this was going on.
"She welded the hinge side," said one of the cutters.
"How long?"
"Three minutes if we work from both ends."
The ship continued to move, drifting along on its cushion of fire.
Fire swept along the edge of the trapped forest, leaving a line of licking red and orange flame, ignored by the embattled aircars above. Presently there were explosions among the trees, and then the whole tongue of forest was aflame.
Now the Planck had left the defense perimeter and moved into a place of shops and houses. The crew who lived in those houses were awake, of course; nobody could have slept through that continuous roar. Some stayed where they were; some made for the street and tried to run for it. The ones who reached their basements were the ones who lived. A block-wide path of exploded, burning houses was the wake of the Planck.
But now the houses were empty, and they didn't burn. They were of architectural coral, and they had been deserted, most of them, for upwards of thirty years.
"We're through, sir." The words were hardly necessary. The cutters were pushing the door aside, their hands protected by thick gloves. Major Jansen shoved through and went up the ladder with panic at his back.
Polly's control board bewildered him. Knowing that he knew as much about flying spacecraft as anyone behind him, he continued to search for the dial or wheel or lever that would change the Planck's direction. Finally, puzzled, he looked up; and that was his undoing.
The flight control room was long. It projected through the cargo section to where the outer and inner hulls met, and most of it was transparent. Major Jansen looked out through the outer hull, and he saw what was happening outside.