Part 32 (1/2)

They pa.s.sed through it and emerged into the north building.

Dark had never seen one of the ground-level buildings in daylight, as both times he had pa.s.sed through the south building it had been night.

He looked around the place curiously as they entered.

It was about fifty feet square, bare except for the low, hard bunks on which the Toughs slept at night. On three sides of it were windows, now closed with heavy steel shutters. The airlock was across the room, opposite the ramp entrance. The fourth wall was blank, and apparently shut off a room at the end, because there was a closed door in the center of it.

They moved out into the room, and Dark said:

”Slip into your marsuit, and we'll go out the airlock. I told Cheng to bring the groundcars over this way, and they ought to be ready to pick us up by the time we get out.”

”I don't see why we didn't stay down in the vats until the Phoenix break in,” said Maya. ”We were well hidden down there, and there might have been some way we could have helped the Phoenix from inside.”

”Primarily because I'm not sure now that the Phoenix can break in,”

answered Dark. ”I didn't know about that heavy emergency barrier the Masters let down on the south ramp, and I was surprised and relieved to find they hadn't dropped one on this ramp, too. If they had, we'd have been trapped below. If they have those barriers on all four ramps, the Phoenix can't stay around long enough to burn through them, because the Masters have probably already called for help from Mars City.”

Maya had laid her marshelmet down on one of the bunks, and was pulling the marsuit on over her tunic and trousers.

The door at the other end of the room opened, and a man emerged, a heatgun in his hand.

Vidonati stopped in his tracks, startled, at the sight of Dark and Maya.

Dark grunted in surprise, and reached for his heatgun.

Even as Dark freed his weapon, Vidonati fired. The beam missed them, melting away the top of Maya's marshelmet and setting the bunk aflame.

Then, as the beam of Dark's gun swung toward him, Vidonati ducked precipitately back into the control room.

”He got your marshelmet!” exclaimed Dark. ”We're going to have to go in and flush him out of there, and just hope there's another marsuit in there, before we can open the airlock.”

Heatgun in hand, Dark started for the door of the control room, Maya at his heels.

It was then that the Phoenix, the three groundcars drawn up with their heavy guns focused, blasted the airlock of the north building. In seconds, the airlock was burned through.

There was no emergency barrier down on this ramp. The heavy, Earth-pressured air of the north building whistled out into the desert.

As from a punctured balloon, the pressured atmosphere of the entire Canfell Hydroponic Farm rushed after it, roaring up the ramp, in a moment stripping the vats, the upper level and the north building.

Caught in the tornadic blast, Dark could only cling to a bolted-down cot with one hand, and hold onto Maya around the waist with the other. As the pressure dropped precipitately and oxygen no longer touched his lungs, he could actually feel his alternate metabolism s.h.i.+fting into gear, he could feel his breathing stop and the glow of solar energy begin to spread through his body.

As the wind faded and died, Dark released Maya and rose exultantly to his feet. Down below, he knew, Nuwell and the Masters were gasping out their lives in the thin air, like beached fish. Their recent attacker, Vidonati, lay half out of the door of the control room, his hands clutching convulsively at the floor.

”That's not the way I'd planned it, but it's just as good!” Dark exclaimed. ”We've taken the farm!”

Then he remembered. Maya had no marshelmet!

Appalled, struck to the heart, he turned in his tracks.