the passengers. We can't have twenty people trying to get out at once."
That was a nightmare prospect that had to be avoided at all costs. Yet it would be hard to avoid panic - even in this welldisciplined community - if a single narrow tunnel was the only means of escape from a rapidly approaching death.
Pat walked to the front of the cabin; on Earth that would have been a steep uphill climb, but here a thirty-degree slope was barely noticeable. He looked at the anxious faces ranged in front of him and said: "We're going to be out of here very soon. When the ceiling opens, a rope ladder will be dropped down. The ladies will go first, then the men - all in alphabetical order. Don't bother to use your feet. Remember how little you weigh here, and go up hand over hand, as quickly as you can. But don't crowd the person in front; you should have plenty of time, and it will take you only a few seconds to reach the top.
"Sue, please sort everyone out in the right order. Harding, Bryan, Johanson, Barrett - I'd like you to stand by as you did before. We may need your help-"
He did not finish the sentence. There was a kind of soft, muffled explosion from the rear of the cabin - nothing spectacular; the popping of a paper bag would have made more noise. But it meant that the wall was down - while the ceiling, unfortunately, was still intact.
On the other side of the roof, Lawrence laid his hoop flat against the Fiberglas and started to fix it in position with quick-drying cement. The ring was almost as wide as the little well in which he was crouching; it came to within a few centimeters of the corrugated walls. Though it was perfectly safe to handle, he treated it with exaggerated care. He had never acquired that easy familiarity with explosives that characterizes those who have to live with them.
The ring charge he was tamping in place was a perfectly conventional specimen of the art, involving no technical problems. It would make a neat clean out of exactly the desired width and thickness, doing in a thousandth of a second a job that would have taken a quarter of an hour with a power saw. That was what Lawrence had first intended to use; now he was very glad that he had changed his mind. It seemed most unlikely that he would have a quarter of an hour.
How true that was, he learned while he was still waiting for the foam to set. "The fire's through into the cabin!" yelled a voice from overhead.
Lawrence looked at his watch. For a moment it seemed as if the second hand was motionless, but that was an illusion he had experienced all his life. The watch had not stopped; it was merely that Time, as usual, was not going at the speed he wished. Until this moment it had been passing too swiftly; now, of course, it was crawling on leaden feet.
The foam should be rock-hard in another thirty seconds. Far better to leave it a little longer than to risk shooting too soon, while it was still plastic.
He started to climb the rope ladder, without haste, trailing the thin detonating wires behind him. His timing was perfect. When he had emerged from the shaft, uncrimped the short circuit he had put for the sake of safety at the end of the wires, and connected them to the exploder, there were just ten seconds to go.
"Tell them we're starting to count down from ten," he said.
As Pat raced downhill to help the Commodore - though just what he could do now, he had very little idea - he heard Sue calling in an unhurried voice: "Miss Morley, Mrs. Schuster, Mrs. Williams .. ." How ironic it was that Miss Morley would once again be the first, this time by virtue of alphabetical accident. She could hardly grumble about the treatment she was getting now.
And then a second and much grimmer thought flashed through Pat's mind. Suppose Mrs. Schuster got stuck in the tunnel and blocked the exit. Well, they could hardly leave her until last. No, she'd go up all right; she had been a deciding factor in the tube's design, and since then she had lost several kilos.
At first glance, the outer door of the toilet still seemed to be holding. Indeed, the only sign that anything had