"Maybe, but snap out of it, girl—our hearts are still beating! We're not dead yet, and maybe we won't be. Perhaps they want to capture us alive, as they did before; if so, we may be able to hide out on them somewhere and pull off another escape. Things don't look very bright, I know, but we're not checking out until our numbers are actually run up!"
He hooked a hand under her belt as the shocks came closer, and stood tense and ready. The lancing plane cut through one end of their control room, and Stevens leaped with his companion toward the new-made opening; while the air shrieked outward into space and their suits bulged suddenly with the abrupt increase in pressure differential. While they were in midflight, the frightful blade of destruction cleaved its way through the control board a
