eakers.
They jumped and came toward her, clumsily fighting the weightlessness.

Mryna caught at the door jamb and swung herself toward the ceiling. At
the same time the armed man fired. The discharge missed her and washed
against the transmission machinery. Blue fire exploded from the room.
The three men screamed in agony. Concussion threw Mryna helplessly
toward the rim again.

And the Guardian Wheel was plunged into darkness. Mryna's head swam; her
shoulder seethed with pain where she had banged into the wall. She tried
to creep toward the circular room, but she had lost her sense of
direction and she found herself back on the rim.

The clanging bell had stopped when the lights went out, but Mryna heard
the panic of frightened voices. Far away someone was screaming. Running
feet clattered toward her. Mryna flattened herself against the outer
wall. An indistinct body of men shot past her.

"From Rythar," one of them was saying. "A woman from Rythar!"

"And we've blasted the communication center. We've no way of sending the
warning back to Earth--"

They were gone.

Mryna moved back into the spoke corridor. She felt her way silently
toward the circular hub room and the god-car. Suddenly very close she
heard voices which she recognized--the man and the woman who had been
talking in the supply room.

"You're still all right, Dick," the woman said. "She hasn't been here
long enough to--"

"We don't know that. We don't know how it spreads or how quickly. We
can't take the chance."

"Then ... then we've no choice?" Her voice was a small whisper, choked
with terror.

"None. These have been standing emergency orders for twenty years. We
always faced the possibility that one of them would escape. If we'd been
allowed to use a different policy of education--but the politicians
wouldn't permit that. The Wheel has to be destroyed, and we must die
with it."

"Couldn't we wait and make sure?"

"It works too fast. None of us would be able to do the job--afterward."

The voices moved away. Mryna floated toward the hub room. She found the
air lock and pulled herself into the god-car. The metal lock hissed
closed and light came on. Then she knew she had made a mistake. This
ship was not the one she had used when she came up from Rythar. The tiny
cabin was fitted with a sleeping lounge, a food cabinet and a file of
reading films. Above the lounge a mica viewplate gave her a broad view
of the sky.

Mryna remembere