Chapter 17. Take the weight off your feet. Immediately Bond felt as if he was in a vehicle that

had crashed into a brick wall. The handle tore itself from his grasp and he smashed against an

unidentifiable object with a force that threatened to break both shoulder and collarbone. He slid

across the floor and arrived against the wall of the globe. Around him was every article of furniture that had not been anchored to the floor,

and most of the people in the chamber.

The lights flickered madly and the air was full of the screams of men crying out in pain and terror.

Bond tried to struggle to his feet and felt himself at the mercy of total weightlessness.

Something bumped into him, and he pushed it away to feel a sticky substance on his hand.

It was blood.

Blood from one of the Drax guards that Jaws had dealt with.

The side of his head was smashed like an empty egg shell.

Bond shook free of the dead embrace and looked out of a window into space.

Keeping pace with the space station a hundred feet from it was a US shuttle, the white star plainly visible

on the fuselage.

From an open hatch, a stream of space marines poured out as if making an inverted parachute

drop.

Bond's heart exalted as he saw the white spacesuits, helmets and backpacks with built-in

oxygen supplies and hand-operated

propulsion units. Like a skein of geese, the Marines converged on the space station. Bonn turned away

from the window as a streak of bright laser light passed above his shoulder. There was no side

of Drax, and Holly had also disappeared. The main action concentrated around Jaws,

who was manoeuvring an unanchored console like a battering ram.

...