He turned the two of them into a side corridor, and did not stop to use the welder. The mob might bypass an open door ... and they would need to be able to get to their homes.... They were running along the dome's inside curve, now, in a section where the dome should have been braced--it hadn't been done--and he cursed Falconer for a spiteful ass while their feet scattered the slimy puddles and they tripped over the concrete forms that had been thrown down carelessly. "All right," Brendan growled to himself and to Falconer, "all right, you'll think about that when the time comes." They reached the corridor section that fronted on his office, and there were teeth and claws to meet them. Brendan hewed through the knot of people, and now it was too late to worry whether he killed them or not. Sally was running blood down her shoulder and back, and his own cheek had been ripped back by a throat-slash that missed. He swallowed gulps of his own blood, and spat it out as he worked toward his door, and with murder and mutilation he cleared the way for himself and the mother of his boy, until he had her safe inside, and the edge of the door sealed all around. Then he could stop, and see the terrible wound in Sally's side, and realize the bones of his leg were dripping and jagged as they thrust out through the flesh. "Didn't I tell you?" he reproached her as he went to his knees beside her where she lay on the floor. "I told you to go straight here, instead of to the auditorium." He pressed his hands to her side, and sobbed at the thick well of her blood over his gnarled fingers with the tufts of sopping fur caught in their claws. "Damn you for loving me!" She twitched her lips in a rueful smile, and shook her head slightly. "Go let Donel out," she whispered. They were hammering on the office door. And there were cutting torches available, just as much as welders. He turned and made his way to the control cubicle, half-dragging himself. He pulled the lever that would open the gates, once the gate motors were started, and, pulling aside the panels on cabinets that should have had nothing to do with it, he went through the complicated series of switchings that diverted power from the dome pile into those motors. The plain's mud had piled against the base of the gate, and the hinges were old. The motors strained to push it aside, and the dome thrummed with their effort. The lighting coils dimmed, and outside his office door, Brendan could hear a great sigh. He pulled the listening earphones to his skull, and heard the children shout. Then he smiled with his ruined mouth, and pulled himself back into his office, to the outside viewscreen, and turned it on. He got Sally and propped her up. "Look," he mumbled. "Look at our son." There was blurred combat on the plain, and death on that morning, and no pity for the animals. He watched, and it was quicker than he could ever have imagined. "Which one is Donel?" Sally whispered.