“Abandon ship!  Abandon ship! The converters are backfiring, and rocket-fuel is leaking back toward the engine-rooms!  An explosion is imminent!  Abandon ship, all hands!”

Kalvar Dard and Seldar Glav grabbed the girls and literally threw them through the hatch, into the rocket-boat.  Dard pushed Glav in ahead of him, then jumped in.  Before he had picked himself up, two or three of the girls were at the hatch, dogging the cover down.

“All right, Glav, blast off!” Dard ordered.  “We’ve got to be at least a hundred miles from this ship when she blows, or we’ll blow with her!”

“Don’t I know!” Seldar Glav retorted over his shoulder, racing for the controls.  “Grab hold of something, everybody; I’m going to fire all jets at once!”

An instant later, while Kalvar Dard and the girls clung to stanchions and pieces of fixed furniture, the boat shot forward out of its housing.  When Dard’s head had cleared, it was in free flight.

“How was that?” Glav yelled.  “Everybody all right?” He hesitated for a moment.  “I think I blacked out for about ten seconds.”

Kalvar Dard looked the girls over.  Eldra was using a corner of her smock to stanch a nosebleed, and Olva had a bruise over one eye.  Otherwise, everybody was in good shape.

“Wonder we didn’t all black out, permanently,” he said.  “Well, put on the visiscreens, and let’s see what’s going on outside.  Olva, get on the radio and try to see if anybody else got away.”

“Set course for Tareesh?” Glav asked.  “We haven’t fuel enough to make it back to Doorsha.”

“I was afraid of that,” Dard nodded.  “Tareesh it is; northern hemisphere, daylight side.  Try to get about the edge of the temperate zone, as near water as you can....”

2

They were flung off their feet again, this time backward along the boat.  As they picked themselves up, Seldar Glav was shaking his head, sadly.  “That was the ship going up,” he said; “the blast must have caught us dead astern.”

“All right.”  Kalvar Dard rubbed a bruised forehead.  “Set course for Tareesh, then cut out the jets till we’re ready to land.  And get the screens on, somebody; I want to see what’s happened.”

The screens glowed; then full vision came on.  The planet on which they would land loomed huge before them, its north pole toward them, and its single satellite on the port side.  There was no sign of any rocket-boat in either side screen, and the rear-view screen was a blur of yellow flame from the jets.

“Cut the jets, Glav,” Dard repeated.  “Didn’t you hear me?”

“But I did, sir!” Seldar Glav indicated the firing-panel.  Then he glanced at the rear-view screen.  “The gods help us!  It’s yellow flame; the jets are burning out!”

Kalvar Dard had not boasted idly when he had said that his people would not panic.  All the girls went white, and one or two gave low cries of consternation, but that was all.