"The usual thing?" She swallowed. "That's what I was afraid of!"
* * * * *
"You're easily resigned," he observed dryly, and urged her toward the
door at the rear of the chamber. "You need to get out of that wet
tunic." He grinned, regarded the rent in the back of the garment. "It
isn't doing its duty any longer anyway."
"I think you're horrible!" She grabbed the tear together, sidled
crabwise through the door, her cheeks hot.
Cosmo followed chuckling. A long narrow corridor burrowed ahead of them
straight into the heart of the mountain. Flaring gas jets hissed at
regular intervals along the walls.
All at once the grin was wiped from his face. He seized Mia's arm,
said: "Hold it!"
Mia bit her lip, gasped.
Three men had edged into the corridor from a bisecting passage. They
were huge, almost seven feet tall with skin a vivid blue. They were
quite naked and the muscles bulged beneath their blue hides.
"Jovian Dawn Men!" Mia whispered. "My God! They're running amok!"
Cosmo felt the cold breath of death blow up his spine. His hand slid
automatically to his shoulder holster. It was empty. With a curse, he
remembered that it had been taken by the Blue Venus. Her dart gun, he'd
tossed aside, once free of the Bemmelman plantation.
The three naked giants minced daintily closer, nostrils flaring as they
caught their scent. "They're not amok," he said over his shoulder. "The
rutting season is months off yet. There's something else behind this."
Mia said with incredulity: "Look at their left shoulders. See that
scar. The fern leaf! That's Hal Bemmelman's brand! Cosmo, those are
Bemmelman's slaves!"
The blue giants crouched. Their violet eyes were passionless, their
handsome faces calm, inscrutable.
"Back!" Cosmo suddenly shouted in a tone of authority, and took a step
toward them. A low snarl rumbled in their throats. Then like cats on a
mouse, they pounced.
Mia screamed.
Cosmo kicked one of them in the belly, heard him grunt. With balled
fist he swung at the placid handsome features of the second blue giant.
Pain, like a hot iron, shot up his arm from his bruised knuckles. The
Jovian shook his head, grabbed Cosmo's wrist, jerked. His arm felt as
if it were being torn from the socket.
He kicked, slugged the emotionless face with his free hand. The grip
never relaxed. He heard Mia scream again like a rabbit in a steel trap.
Then the Jovian clouted him brutally alongside the temple with his open
fist. Cosmo's head snapped sideways like a punching bag. His knees
collapsed. He seemed to be falling into the chasm of the waterfall,
down, down into stygian blackness.