"But I see no one!"
"It is taken, it is paid for, and no one may enter. I will have your
lamp brought here."
"No," said Stark. "The hell with it. I'm going."
He flung down a coin and went out. Moving swiftly outside, he placed
his eye to a crack in the nearest shutter, and waited.
Luhar of Venus came out of the empty room. His face was worried, and
Stark smiled. He went back and stood flat against the wall beside the
door.
In a moment it opened and the Venusian came out, drawing his gun as he
did so.
Stark jumped him.
Luhar let out one angry cry. His gun went off a vicious streak of flame
across the moonlight, and then Stark's great hand crushed the bones
of his wrist together so that he dropped it clashing on the stones.
He whirled around, raking Stark's face with his nails as he clawed
for the Earthman's eyes, and Stark hit him. Luhar fell, rolling over,
and before he could scramble up again Stark had picked up the gun and
thrown it away into the ruins across the street.
Luhar came up from the pavement in one catlike spring. Stark fell with
him, back through Kala's door, and they rolled together among the foul
furs and cushions. Luhar was built of spring steel, with no softness in
him anywhere, and his long fingers were locked around Stark's throat.
Kala screamed with fury. She caught a whip from among her cushions--a
traditional weapon along the Low-Canals--and began to lash the two men
impartially, her hair flying in tangled locks across her face. The
bestial figures under the lamps shambled to their feet, and growled.
The long lash ripped Stark's shirt and the flesh of his back beneath
it. He snarled and staggered to his feet, with Luhar still clinging to
the death grip on his throat. He pushed Luhar's face away from him with
both hands and threw himself forward, over a table, so that Luhar was
crushed beneath him.
The Venusian's breath left him with a whistling grunt. His fingers
relaxed. Stark struck his hands away. He rose and bent over Luhar and
picked him up, gripping him cruelly so that he turned white with the
pain, and raised him high and flung him bodily into the growling,
beast-faced men who were shambling toward him.
Kala leaped at Stark, cursing, striking him with the coiling lash.
He turned. The thin veneer of civilization was gone from Stark now,
erased in a second by the first hint of battle. His eyes blazed with
a cold light. He took the whip out of Kala's hand and laid his palm
across her evil face, and she fell and lay still.
He faced the ring of bestial, Shanga-sodden men who walled him off from
what he had been sent to do. There was a reddish tinge to his vision,
partly blood, partly sheer rage. He could see Freka standing erect in
the corner, his head weaving from side to side brutishly.
Stark raised the whip and strode into the ring of men who were no
longer quite men.
* * * * *
Hands struck and clawed him. Bodies reeled and fell away. Blank eyes
glittered, and red mouths squealed, and there was a mingling of snarls
and bestial laughter in his ears. The blood-lust had spread to these
creatures now. They swarmed upon Stark and bore him down with the
weight of their writhing bodies.
They bit him and savaged him in a blind way, and he fought his way up
again, shaking them off with his great shoulders, trampling them under
his boots. The lash hissed and sang, and the smell of blood rose on the
choking air.
Freka's dazed, brutish face swam before Stark. The Martian growled and
flung himself forward. Stark swung the loaded butt of the whip. It
cracked solidly on the Shunni's temple, and he sagged into Stark's arms.
Out of the corner of his eyes, Stark saw Luhar. He had risen and crept
around the edge of the fight. He was behind Stark now, and there was a
knife in his hand.
Hampered by Freka's weight, Stark could not leap aside. As Luhar rushed
in, he crouched and went backward, his head and shoulders taking the
Venusian low in the belly. He felt the hot kiss of the blade in his
flesh, but the wound was glancing, and before Luhar could strike again,
Stark twisted like a great cat and struck down. Luhar's skull rang on
the flagging. The Earthman's fist rose and fell twice. After that,
Luhar did not move.
Stark got to his feet. He stood with his knees bent and his shoulders
flexed, looking from side to side, and the sound that came out of his
throat was one of pure savagery.
He moved forward a step or two, half naked, bleeding, towering like a
dark colossus over the lean Martians, and the brutish throng gave back
from him. They had taken more mauling than they liked, and there was
something about the Outlander's simple desire to rend them apart that
penetrated even their Shanga-clouded minds.