Here in the hub there was a walkway seven feet wide at the point the spokes mated with it and the elevators debouched.
The plane of the walkway was continued by solid flooring across the hub, so that the sphere was separated into slightly unequal volumes. The larger one was the open, northern portion which served for zero-gravity transport between the lobes and from them through the docking module to the rest of the universe. Beneath the flooring, the other moiety of the hub was given over to the controls which ruled both the defensive array and the three thousand fusion warheads waiting for the command that would trip their retro rockets to set them on the path to reentry.
The elevators to the other lobe of the dumbbell were not moving, and the circular doorway to the control section was closed and flush with the floor across which Kelly’s boots floated. The portal to the docking module above him, however, at the north pole, was sphinctering open. Keeping the pole within the circle of his arms, Kelly leaned backward and aimed the flame gun toward the opening portal.
The recoil of two gallons of thickened gasoline shoved him down against the floor this time, but the pole anchored him well enough to send most of the three-second burst into the docking module. Ammunition carried by some of the men inside blew up with a violence that sprayed bits of metal, plastic, and bodies down into the dome.
Only after the explosion did it occur to Kelly to wonder whose arrival had caused the personnel who had conquered Fortress to draw themselves up for inspection. Well, it didn’t matter now.
The second jet of flame, though of longer duration than the first, had a more limited effect because the chamber’s oxygen had been depleted faster than the ventilation system could replenish it. Napalm spluttered, each drop wrapped in a cloud of black smoke as it drifted lazily back toward Kelly.
It was time to move anyway. He dropped the flame gun and let it trail behind him from its hose as he thrust himself toward the control room door.
The doorway was surrounded by a waist-high trio of inverted U’s made of aluminum girder. There was room for a man, even suited and laden as Tom Kelly was, to walk between each adjacent pair, but the U’s provided not only handholds the way the wands did but also protection for the doorway in the event that any high-inertia object sailed down from the docking module.
Kelly braked himself left-handed, tensing his muscles fiercely to halt his considerable mass without using his gun hand as well. The trigger guard of his shotgun had been cut away so that he could use the weapon with gloves. He was by no means certain that his motor control in his present garb was fine enough that he could count on not putting a charge of shot god knew where.
He might well need all five of the rounds in the gun.
The door handle was a flat semicircle that the veteran had to flip up before he could turn it. The men who briefed him on the Airborne Command Post assured him there was no locking mechanism, but that didn’t mean the Nazis hadn’t welded a bolt in place after they took over. There was the explosive tape if they had, but –
The handle turned. Kelly swung the door up, gripping a stanchion between his booted feet so that he could point the shotgun muzzle down the opening with his right hand.
If the job Kelly set himself had been to clear Fortress of the Nazis who had captured it, he would have squirted his remaining gallon of napalm into the control room before he went in himself with the shotgun. Some of the men arguing on the Airborne Command Post had considered that at least the most desirable option.
The trouble was that the Soviets, driven to the wall by the fact of Fortress, had almost certainly been pushed beyond that point when the weapon was actually used against them. If something very final did not convince Moscow of America’s good faith, the Soviets would themselves precipitate the holocaust they assumed was certain in any event.