Then, almost all the way down to the main floor, I heard the murmur of voices. We were nearing the terminal lobby, the point where passengers were checked on and off the planet. As we turned at the landing, I saw that the lobby was filled with a throng of people, some of them patiently answering questions of the flight-listing robots, others having baggage weighed, and still others engaging off-duty pilots and technicians in casual conversation. It was a normal enough scene, one to be found in any rocket terminal on Earth or off it. But there was something wrong about it. I slowed my descent of the stairs and tried to place the uncertainty, the queasy foreboding I felt centering about my heart. Then I had it. There were no women present. Not one woman could I see in that apparently casual group of passengers. And there was a quiver of tingling tension in the air, a very palpable sensation of mental concentration trembling on the brink of action. Baxter sensed it too. I could feel his own progress slowing behind me on the stairs. "What--?" he said. Then it happened. At the far end of the immense room, one of the security guards let out a cry. I shot my gaze toward the sound, and saw that a man beside him had yanked his collapser from his holster. Other guards came alert all over the place, and they started toward the man on a run. And they were all of them neatly tripped, shoved, and clubbed, while a brilliant crackle of free electrons sealed the fate of the first guard. The Neo-Martian revolution was starting. Some of the guards managed to get shots off before they were overcome by weight of numbers. People vanished in blinding flares of energy, amid shouts of fierce rage from their companions. "There's one!" someone shouted, and a clump of these desperate insurgents turned toward the stairs, where Clatclit and I stood. They were looking past us, at Baxter. Then the Security Chief fired the collapser in his hand, the humming bolt of dissolving-power buzzing right past my ear. But he hadn't fired at the men below. He'd fired directly at the fluorescent fixture that glowed in the center of the ceiling. Suddenly, the flash that marked its passage was the only lighting in that room. Then the cascade of sparks died, and we were standing in blackness. I grabbed Clatclit's arm, hoping we could make a break for freedom in the dark, but Baxter had out-thought me there, too. Another throbbing beam of energy from behind us, and the floor was gone before our feet, leaving a dizzy drop into emptiness, then even the view of the abyss faded as the sparks of energy died. I stifled a cry of alarm in my throat as Baxter's free hand flattened itself on my back and shoved. I staggered forward, and my foot came down on air. Then, my grip on Clatclit's arm throwing him off balance, we plunged into the empty space.