Snap swung at them. "Get ahead of us! The manual controls--our only
chance--we need all you men at the compressor pumps!"
But it was instinct to try and get on deck, as though here below we
were rats caught in a trap. The men tore away from us and ran. Their
shouts of panic resounded through the dim, blue lit corridors.
Coniston came lurching from the control room. "I say--falling! Haljan,
my God, look!"
Hahn was sprawled at the gravity plate switchboard. Sprawled, head
down. Dead. Killed? Or a suicide?
I bent over him. His hands gripped the main switch. He had ripped it
loose. And his left hand had reached and broken the fragile line of
tubes that intensified the current of the pneumatic plate-shifters. A
suicide? With his last frenzy, determined to kill us all? Why?
Then I saw that Hahn had been killed! Not a suicide! In his hand he
gripped a small segment of black fabric, a piece torn from an
invisible cloak!
Snap was rigging the hand compressors. If he could get the pressure
back in the tanks....