Jonathan chose the centaurs. He wheeled around, dashed back the way
he had come. Someone tackled him. He rolled on the rocky floor of the
canyon. He struggled to his feet. He saw six more girls race around the
bend in the canyon. With shouts of joy they flung themselves on him.
Jonathan was game, but the nine husky amazons pinned him down by sheer
weight. They bound him hand and foot. Then four of them picked him up
bodily, started up the canyon chanting: "_He was a rocket riding daddy
from Mars._" He recognized it as a popular song of three years ago.
Jonathan had never been so humiliated in his life. He was known in the
spaceways from Mercury to Jupiter as a man to leave alone. His nose had
been broken three times. A thin white scar crawled down the bronze of
his left cheek, relic of a barroom brawl on Venus. He was big, rangy,
tough. And these girls had trounced him. Girls! He almost wept from
mortification.