We were both encased in spacesuits and it would have taken a battering
ram to hurt either of us. Fists were useless, even though Spartan
didn't realize this. Nor did I until I felt him hit me. The blow, I
scarcely felt, but the force behind it sent me staggering back.
I struck the rocks and bounded, like a boxer off the ropes in an arena,
back at him. I tried to wrap my arms around him, to hold him securely,
but he was a big man, in splendid physical condition, even though he
was a few years older than I. We clinched, struggling to throw each
other off balance, flailing helplessly with our fists.
Suddenly I stepped back. Spartan, crazy with anger and rage, swung
his fist toward me. I didn't try to dodge or block. I knew the fist
wouldn't hurt me. As it struck me I grabbed his arm with both hands. I
hung on as he tried to wrench free. Then I pulled back and started to
turn.
His weight, without the spacesuit, would have been in the neighborhood
of 180 pounds, perhaps more. The spacesuit weighed at least twenty
pounds. But all two hundred pounds of him was a mere eighty pounds on
Mars.
As I swung, his feet left the ground--and on Mars you don't drop very
fast. His feet stayed off the ground as I heaved and turned and then
let loose.
His body sailed in an arc, over the rocks, and thudded in the moat,
onto a heap of Martians, not all of them dead. A number of them must
have had enough consciousness left to respond to contact with an
earthling's body.
As I sprang to the edge of the moat, I saw Spartan's spacesuit turn a
cherry red. Then it glowed white. Little rivulets of metal poured over
the Martian bodies, but still that current--it must have been thousands
of volts--kept surging through.