Another voice: "The hell you did, Phil. _I_ was here. You get out of
here."
I shook my head foggily and stirred. Sam and Phil, whoever they were,
were making much too much noise. I wanted them to go away; I was
terribly tired, wanting nothing but another few hundred years of sleep.
I yawned and sat up. And gasped. For as I opened my eyes and gradually
focussed them, I saw Sam and Phil. They were having a knockdown tussle,
and it was hard to tell which one was on top.
But there was one thing I could tell: they were both female. One
seemed to be a magnificent brunette, wide-shouldered and fiery-eyed;
the other, a redhead, lithe and wiry. They wore only skin-tight blue
trunks; as they rolled over and over on the floor, I caught occasional
glimpses of bare breasts and lovely flashing thighs.
I climbed out of my somno-casket and lowered myself to the floor of the
chamber, wobbling unsteadily. They ignored me, and continued to battle
it out.
"Hold on, girls," I said finally. "This is no way to welcome a man from
the distant past."
At my words they cut out the wrestling instantly. They clambered to
their feet, glaring bitterly at each other, and turned to look at me.
They were really stacked. To my astonishment I discovered that they
stood nearly six feet tall, both of them, with high, proud breasts and
tapering, well-muscled bodies. _What a pair of amazons_, I thought
admiringly.
But they seemed to be doing some admiring too. The redhead emitted a
most feminine sigh and said, "Isn't he _lovely_!"
"He certainly is," the brunette agreed. "Worth waiting five hundred
years for."
With sudden dismay I realized I was naked. I reddened and grabbed for a
cloth that had been draped over the somno-casket, and wrapped it around
myself. I felt a little bewildered by things; I hadn't expected to be
greeted by a pair of half-naked amazons when I woke.
The brunette nudged the other and said, "Let's get out of here with him
now, Phil. We won't fight over him."
"Good idea," the redhead responded. "If we keep on fighting over who
gets him, Her Majesty'll find out he's awake and take him away from
both of us. Let's go!"
They approached me and grabbed me firmly, one on each side. "Come on,
muscles," the one named Phil said. "Let's travel."
"Just a second," I said. "Who are you? Where are you taking me?" I
didn't feel like trusting myself to these two till I had my bearings.
"Don't worry about that, honey," Sam said. "We'll take good care of
you." She winked broadly and said, "Won't we, Phil?"
They started to propel me out the door of the chamber. I was still a
little too woozy to put up much of an argument, and they were both
substantial specimens who knew how to swing their weight around. Weak
as I was, I had no choice but to let them push me into the corridor.
"Where to?" Sam asked.
"To the Lower Quarters," Phil said. "There's a copter there, and
we--oh, oh! Here comes trouble!"
I glanced over my shoulder and saw a truly gigantic woman coming down
the corridor towards us. She looked about seven feet tall, a real
monster. She was wearing the usual trunks, plus some sort of jeweled
diadem dangling between at her bosom.
"Hold up there!" she bellowed. "Where are you three going? Where's the
guard on the Sleep Chamber?"
Phil and Sam didn't stop to make conversation. They tightened their
grips on my arm and started to run. I dragged helplessly for a couple
of steps, then got straightened away and began to run with them.
"Stop! Come back!" the big woman yelled--and she came roaring after
us. The floor seemed to shake as she thundered along the corridor.
We fled. I allowed myself to be dragged along by my two amazon captors,
with the third pounding away behind us. The corridor seemed to be
endless.
And suddenly it stopped being endless. There was a horde of women
coming up toward us from the other direction.
"The old cow's called the guards," Sam muttered. "We're caught, now!"
We were. The tide of female guards swept over us like a herd of cattle,
and abruptly I found myself in the midst of a vast heaving mass of
struggling women. At first I thought they were after Sam and Phil, who
had tried to steal me and failed--but the truth dawned only after I had
eluded the steel-like clutches of one powerful mademoiselle and fallen
right into another's arms.
As she hugged me triumphantly to her surging bosom, I understood. They
were after me.
Me.
Two dozen women, chasing after me. And I was still not really fully
conscious from my long stay under suspended animation.
_Maybe I'm dreaming!_ I thought.
No. No dream. I was at least wide-awake enough to tell that. The women
were battling furiously; I was being shunted back and forth from one
to another. I was starting to feel like a plaything. So I struck back.
I landed a fist in a tough, unyielding female stomach, then splatted a
hand into a pair of lovely lips. I was fighting for my life now; they
were threatening to smother me. Two of them got me down, while a third
grabbed one arm and tried to drag me away.
Suddenly I heard a loud voice yell, "_Stop!_" And an instant later,
everything stopped. Completely. None of us could move a muscle. I was
locked in the embrace of a wild-looking but rather lovely blonde, whose
face was frozen in an expression of glee.
Only my eyes could move. I rolled them around and saw a woman in regal
panoply stalking majestically toward us. She held a small metal weapon
in her hand.
"You've all behaved _disgracefully_!" she said ringingly. She clicked
the weapon at us a second time and the stasis broke. The horde of women
picked themselves up and stood staring sheepishly at the floor. The
Queen--for her rank seemed obvious--swept imperiously toward me.
"Are you the Sleeper?" she demanded.
"I believe so, your majesty."
"Excellent. Come to my chamber at once. The rest of you remand
yourselves to the guardhouse, for punishment. Follow me, male!"
* * * * *
As I followed her up the long corridor, I was struck by the humor of
the situation. I had volunteered for the Somno-casket project after the
bustup of my engagement; feeling that there was no place for me in the
world of the twentieth century and that I wasn't much interested in
continuing to live in it. I grabbed at a straw and let myself be tucked
away in suspended animation, as a guinea-pig. The scientists of five
hundred years from now would revive me, and I would be a living man
from the distant past.
So I had awakened. But in the intervening five centuries, while I
slumbered under my time-lock, my casket had been shifted from Professor
Ostrov's laboratory to this--this madhouse of furious amazons, and I
was now apparently playing Adam to a few dozen Eves.
And now the queen bee herself had grabbed me off. Two guards prodded
me from behind, and the Queen strutted ahead of me toward her private
chambers. What waited for me there, I didn't know.
I wasn't to find out, either. Because as we came to a bend in the
corridor, two men stepped out of nowhere. Men--real males.
I was so astonished to see another unshaven face again that I froze and
glared at them goggle-eyed. One of the men turned to me and said, "Help
us! We're here to rescue you!"
That sounded good to me. So I took the club one of them handed me,
and while they grabbed the two guards I clonked them--gently, but
efficiently. The Queen finally caught on to what was happening, and
turned.