Almost instantly curt, crisp reports sounded nearby. The landing-party came smartly back to the airlock, while explosions continued in the building they'd left.
"Launcher-tubes train on targets," Bors commanded. He pressed another button. "Rocket-room, make ready for lift." Back to the launcher-tube communicator. "Fire missiles one, two, three, four, five, six."
There were boomings, which rose to bellowings as devastation tore away from the _Isis's_ launching-tubes. Bors said irritably to the rocket-room:
And then the ship lifted on her rockets--they were not solely for emergency use, as on cargo-ships--and rushed toward the sky. As the ship mounted on its column of writhing smoke, other smoky columns spouted up. Six of them. But they were limited. They went up two thousand feet and then tended to mushroom. Bits of debris went higher and spread more widely, and for a time there were fragments of buildings and their contents flying wildly about.
But the ship went straight upward. The city and the open country beyond it shrank swiftly. The spouted smokes of explosions in the city were left behind. Mountains appeared at one horizon and a sea at another. Then the vast expanse of the planet suddenly acquired a curved edge, and the ship again went up and up--while the sky turned dark and some stars appeared in futile competition with the sun--and the surface of Tralee became visibly the near side of an enormous globe.
Then the planet became plainly what it was, a great ball floating in space, one-half of it brilliant in the sunshine and one part of it bathed in night.
Bors put on the solar-system drive and changed course. A voice came through:
"_Calling pirate ship ... calling pirate ship.... Space yacht_ Sylva _calling pirate ship...._"
Bors growled into a microphone, "What the devil are you doing in this place. What's happened?"
Gwenlyn's voice, bland and amused. "_Nothing happened. But we've got some news for you. Make rendezvous at the fourth planet?_"
Bors swore again. That was where he was to meet the cargo-ship captured and sent aloft, supposedly destroyed on Tralee. But he drove on out, around and away from Tralee.
He was reasonably satisfied with his landing on Tralee. With some luck, the news of the landing of a lone survivor of the Kandarian fleet might reach Mekin before it was aware of what had happened to its occupation force. With a little more luck, the attention of Mekin would be devoted more to a ship which dared to turn pirate than to Kandar itself. With unlimited favorable fortune, Mekin might actually send ships to hunt the _Isis_ instead of asking questions on Kandar.