from the
control room, began to slide swiftly shut.

He was through first, with Fenrir and Sigyn. Lake and Craig, together
with six men and four prowlers, squeezed through barely in time. Then
the airlocks were closed and they were sealed in the ship.

Alarm bells added their sound to the shrieking of the siren and from the
multiple-compartments shafts came the whir of elevators dropping with
Gern forces to kill the humans trapped inside the ship.

They ran past the elevator shafts without pausing, light and swift in
the artificial gravity that was only two-thirds that of Ragnarok. They
split forces as long ago planned; three men and four prowlers going with
Charley Craig in the attempt to take the drive room, Lake and the other
three men going with him in the attempt to take the control room.

They found the manway ladder and began to climb, Fenrir and Sigyn
impatiently crowding their heels.

There was nothing on the control room level and they ran down the short
corridor that their maps had showed. They turned left, into the corridor
that had the control room at its end, and into the concentrated fire of
nine waiting Gerns.

Fenrir and Sigyn went into the Gerns, under their fire before they could
drop the muzzles of their blasters, with an attack so vicious and
unexpected that what would have been a certain and lethal trap for the
humans was suddenly a fighting chance.

The corridor became an inferno of blaster beams that cracked and hissed
as they met and crossed, throwing little chips of metal from the walls
with snapping sounds and going through flesh with sounds like soft
tappings. It was over within seconds, the last Gern down and one man
still standing beside him, the blond and nerveless Lake.

Thomsen and Barber were dead and Billy West was bracing himself against
the wall with a blaster hole through his stomach, trying to say
something and sliding to the floor before it was ever spoken.

And Sigyn was down, blood welling and bubbling from a wound in her
chest, while Fenrir stood over her with his snarling a raging scream as
he swung his head in search of a still-living Gern.

Humbolt and Lake ran on, Fenrir raging beside them, and into the control
room.

Six officers, one wearing the uniform of a commander, were gaping in
astonishment and bringing up their blasters in the way that seemed so
curiously slow to Humbolt. Fenrir, in his fury, killed two of them as
Lake's blaster and his own killed thre