ed her over. Blood smeared her face, trickled
from her lips. Although she did not move, she wasn't dead. Temple half
dragged, half carried her from the vault into an adjoining room. He
stretched her out comfortably as he could on the floor, ran back into
the vault.

Molten metal had collected in one corner of the room, crept sluggishly
toward him across the floor, heating it white-hot. He skirted it,
climbed over a twisted girder, pushed his way past other debris, found
himself at the gun emplacement.

"How dumb can I get?" Temple said aloud. "Sophia ran to the gun, must
have assumed I set up the shields." Again, it was an item of
information stored in his mind by the wisdom of the space station.
Protective shields made it impossible for anything but a direct hit on
the emplacement to do them any harm, only Temple had never set the
shields in place. He did so now, merely by tripping a series of
levers, but glancing at a dial to his left he realized with alarm that
the damage possibly had already been done. The needle, which measured
lethal radiation, hovered half way between negative and the critical
area marked in red and, even as Temple watched it, crept closer to the
red.

* * * * *

How much time did he have? Temple could not be sure, bent grimly over
the weapon. It was completely unfamiliar to his mind, completely
unfamiliar to his fingers. He toyed with it, released a blast of
radiant energy, whirled to face the viewing screen. The beam streaked
out into the void, clearly hundreds of miles from its objective.

Cursing, Temple tried again, scoring a near miss. The ships were
trading a steady stream of fire with him now, but with the shielding
up it was harmless, striking and then bouncing back into space. Temple
scored his first hit five minutes after sitting down at the gun,
whooped triumphantly and fired again. Five ships left.

But the dial indicated an increase in radioactivity as newly created
neutrons spread their poison like a cancer. Behind Temple, the vault
was a shambles. The pool of molten metal had increased in size, almost
cutting off any possibility of escape. He could jump it now, Temple
realized, but it might grow larger. Consolidating its gains now, it
had sheared a pit in the floor, had commenced vaporizing the rock
below it, hissing and lapping with white-hot insistence.

Something boomed, grated, boomed again and Temple watched another
girder bounce off th