Chapter VI

Slowly Nixon realized that he was coming back to consciousness. He felt that he was lying on the ground. He tried to move, but something was holding him. At first the roaring in his head was the only sound. Then he heard Orite voices; and now he could feel the tread of Orite feet upon his chest.

He opened his eyes to a swaying glare of light. A foot above his chest and neck a hooded light cast its lurid orange glare down on him. As his eyelids fluttered up, the Orite voices, speaking in their own language, sounded startled.

Nixon's gaze swung. There were other Orites on the ground, with a ladder leading up to his chest. And nearby, a crowd of Orites and Gorts stood watching with awe. Nixon saw that he was approximately where he thought he had fallen. The rock butte was some twenty feet away, with the barrage bars futilely standing before it. Again Nixon tried to move one of his legs, and then he realized that he was chained, with chains and ropes that were pegged to the ground.

"You recovered too quickly, giant," Tork's voice said. "For your own good you should have been unconscious as we planned."

With a rush of horror, Nixon realized that these little figures up by his neck were Orite surgeons. Their paraphernalia was mounted there at the base of his throat. The orange light gleamed on their instruments. One who was goggled held a tiny circular blade. It whirled with a faint humming; a revolving knife, electronically heated. Nixon could feel its radiating heat on the skin of his throat as the surgeon held it poised.

Vivisection! Nona and Loto had been right. Tork at last had persuaded the Orite leaders to order this.

"Wait!" Nixon muttered. He was still dazed, bathed with the sweat of weakness. "Where is Frane? Get Frane!"

This damnable roaring in his head made everything seem so blurred and far away. Nixon's eyelids drooped, but he opened them, fighting the drowsiness. And it seemed that his head was clearing. The shock of the violet bolt had knocked him into temporary unconsciousness. But now the poison, or the drug, was wearing off. If he could stall this for a time--

It was a vague, formless thought that he knew was hopeless. "Frane," he said again. "Get Frane."

"He is not needed," Tork's suave voice said.

From the ground beside Nixon, Frane's voice sounded. He was talking in his own language, angrily expostulating. Then he called, in English, "I tell them this is not necessary."

"But your success with the drug is postponed too long," one of the Orite leaders said. "Tork says you are doing your best, but--"

"I will succeed within another night," Frane desperately promised. "One more experiment--" Surely the aged scientist was doing what he could to stall this. But they had lost confidence in him. He should have used the panther, and then this giant man long ago. Frane was a brilliant chemist, but he had no qualities of dominating leadership.

"Only this can help you," the leader said. His voice carried finality. He gestured, added a command in the Orite language to the surgeons.

Nixon could feel the figures on his neck moving to begin their gruesome work on the prone, half-conscious giant. But Nixon was more conscious, stronger now than they realized. He strained at the cables, but found that he could move far less than when he had been bound on the Spaceship. His head could shift a little so that he could glance sidewise, but that was all.

"Stop it!" he gasped suddenly. "You damn little butchers--" He'd frighten them with his voice. Roaring, bellowing and twisting his head. That was all he could think of to do.... The end of Allen Nixon.... A vision of the rippleless Florida bayou, his brother Ralph, their cabin under the grey oaks and cedars came to him....

Then suddenly, out in the moonlit distance of the rock-slope between the pyramid-cities, cries were sounding. The surgeons on Nixon's neck stood tense, peering, listening. A turmoil of wild cries sounded off there. It spread to the cities. Cries, then Orites screaming. And in another moment a huge tawny shape came leaping from the shadows. The panther!

* * * * *

Nixon gasped. Then his roar held his mingled horror and a queer sort of triumph. "So now you've got something else to worry about!" he shouted. "There it is--mean and hungry. Take a look at that critter, you damn butchers, and see what you're going to do about it!"

The panther was loose. Nixon remembered now, how Loto had said it was in a cave with a purple barrage barring the entrance. Loto and Nixon had never thought of it--that when Loto pulled the barrage-switch, for that moment the panther's barrage had blacked out the same as Nixon's!

Tork was stammering, "Why I--I sent men to verify that it was still there! The darkness of the cave--the barrage was only off for a moment--they must have thought--"

"Well, it isn't there, it's here!" Nixon roared. "Go ahead--carve me up, if that panther gives you time!"

It was the supreme catastrophe, that raging tawny beast loose among the scurrying, tiny human figures. The screams were horrible as it pounced on a group of them who were trying to reach the shelter of one of the pyramids. With sunken sides showing its ribs and madly lashing tail, the panther gobbled up the tiny figures. Orite humans, each of them hardly a mouth. Then with another leap, the great amber-eyed cat was pouncing again. A line of Gorts with suicidal willingness to attack, stood their ground as it came at them. A sweep of its huge paw knocked them away.

Around Nixon, for those few horrible seconds, the Orites stood stricken. "Go ahead," Nixon said. "Kill it. Why don't you folks kill it? If you don't it sure as shooting will kill you."

Now the beast seemed to see the giant figure lying here in the orange glare. It stood with bared fangs and red-rimmed eyes. Then a rush of Gorts distracted it, so that it turned and leaped over them. Down on the ground beside Nixon, the crowd of Orites were milling around in terror. The surgeons and their assistants were trying to get down the little ladder at his side.

"You can't kill it!" Nixon roared. "But _I_ can. Turn me loose, you little fools!"

He strained at his bonds. Life or death now, for himself as well as hundreds of them. Nixon knew it. That panther would be here any minute, ripping him apart.

"You can kill it?" Frane gasped from the ground beside him.

"I'll damn sure try!"

Frane shouted at the panic-stricken Orite leaders. And suddenly in their emergency they trusted him. Gorts came rushing, casting loose the chains so that in a moment Nixon was staggering up. The chains fell from him with a thin clatter. For a moment dizziness swept him, but then it passed. He was free. And to Nixon of the bayous freedom was strength.

Off across the moonlit slope, strewn with dead and dying Orites, the panther was crouching. Its purring snarl mingled with the lashing of its tail as it saw Nixon rise up. Then with a roar it leaped at him.

Nixon made no move to jump aside. He had ripped off his jacket and shirt, wound them around his left forearm. There was an instant when the moonlight gleamed on the beast's wild eyes and opened jaws as it leaped. Then Nixon thrust his padded, crooked arm outward and up as the jaws came at his throat. The impact of the huge tawny body knocked him backward. He felt the jaws closing on his arm as he fell with the beast on top of him. In a moment they were rolling, with Nixon desperately squirming and lunging, trying to get a grip on the great cat's throat. He could feel the claws ripping his clothing, his flesh, with his blood spurting and white streaks of hot pain shooting into him.

* * * * *

Nixon's fingers gripped the loose skin of the panther's neck. But at once he knew it was no use. The beast's strength was too great. He felt the rippling muscles under the loose skin resisting his clutch. Then the great jerking body tore loose; the jaws relaxed their grip, dropped his arm, came again at his throat....

As the giant went down, a horror-stricken cry had gone up from the crowds of watching Orites. Now the great antagonists were rolling. In a moment they had crossed from the edge of the rock-slope almost to the sward where the Spaceship cylinder had landed. Nixon could feel the crackling sward under him. Hot blood in his eyes blurred everything. He managed to wipe it away, and thrust out his padded arm again for the brute's jaws to grip.

Then Nixon's right hand, brushing the bristling sward, came upon a jagged sliver of rock in that very fragment blasted from the cliff by that first storm upon his arrival. Both heavy and sharp, it made a terrible weapon. With a whirling lunge he jammed that clumsy spear of rock into the panther's slavering jaws--on down into its hot and roaring gullet. In a moment the beast's snarls were choked with blood. With its human antagonist momentarily ignored, the puzzled, choking brute was staggering, flinging its head from side to side. Then it was rolling on the ground, with paws frantically fumbling at its mouth.

It was Nixon's chance now. He flung himself on the beast. His frantic fingers closed about its windpipe. The panther screamed and writhed, but Nixon's grip was inexorable. The screams died to slobbering gasps. At last the tawny shape was lying on its side. For a moment the paws convulsively jerked. Then it was motionless.