"You won't try to get away?" said Ann.
"No," he replied with as much dignity as he could summon while being
held aloft by four barbarous young women.
"Let him down," said Ann. "We can catch him, anyway, if he makes a
break."
Jonathan Fawkes' humiliation was complete. He meekly trudged between
two husky females, who ogled him shamelessly. He was amazed at the ease
with which they had carried him. He was six feet three and no light
weight. He thought enviously of the centaurs, free to gallop across the
plains. He wished he was a centaur.
The trail left the canyon, struggled up the precipitate walls. Jonathan
picked his way gingerly, hugged the rock. "Don't be afraid," advised
one of his captors. "Just don't look down."
"I'm not afraid," said Jonathan hotly. To prove it he trod the narrow
ledge with scorn. His foot struck a pebble. Both feet went out from
under him. He slithered halfway over the edge. For one sickening moment
he thought he was gone, then Ann grabbed him by the scruff of his neck,
hauled him back to safety. He lay gasping on his stomach. They tied a
rope around his waist then, and led him the rest of the way to the top
like a baby on a leash. He was too crestfallen to resent it.
The trail came out on a high ridge. They paused on a bluff overlooking
the prairie.
"Look!" cried Ann pointing over the edge.
A half dozen beasts were trotting beneath on the plain. At first,
Jonathan mistook them for horses. Then he saw that from the withers up
they resembled men. Waists, shoulders, arms and heads were identical to
his own, but their bodies were the bodies of horses.
"Centaurs!" Jonathan Fawkes said, not believing his eyes.
* * * * *
The girls set up a shout and threw stones down at the centaurs, who
reared, pawed the air, and galloped to a safe distance, from which they
hurled back insults in a strange tongue. Their voices sounded faintly
like the neighing of horses.
Amazons and centaurs, he thought again. He couldn't get the problem
of the girls' phenomenal strength out of his mind. Then it occurred
to him that the asteroid, most likely, was smaller even than Earth's
moon. He must weigh about a thirtieth of what he usually did, due to
the lessened gravity. It also occurred to him that they would be thirty
times as strong. He was staggered. He wished he had a smoke.
At length, the amazons and the centaurs tired of bandying insults
back and forth. The centaurs galloped off into the prairie, the girls
resumed their march. Jonathan scrambled up hills, skidded down slopes.
The brunette was beside him helping him over the rough spots.
"I'm Olga," she confided. "Has anybody ever told you what a handsome
fellow you are?" She pinched his cheek. Jonathan blushed.
They climbed a ridge, paused at the crest. Below them, he saw a deep
valley. A stream tumbled through the center of it. There were trees
along its banks, the first he had seen on the asteroid. At the head of
the valley, he made out the massive pile of a space liner.
They started down a winding path. The space liner disappeared behind
a promontory of the mountain. Jonathan steeled himself for the coming
ordeal. He would have sat down and refused to budge except that he knew
the girls would hoist him on their shoulders and bear him into the camp
like a bag of meal.
The trail debouched into the valley. Just ahead the space liner
reappeared. He imagined that it had crashed into the mountain, skidded
and rolled down its side until it lodged beside the stream. It reminded
him of a wounded dinosaur. Three girls were bathing in the stream. He
looked away hastily.
Someone hailed them from the space ship.
"We've caught a man," shrieked one of his captors.
A flock of girls streamed out of the wrecked space ship.
"A man!" screamed a husky blonde. She was wearing a grass skirt. She
had green eyes. "We're rescued!"
"No. No," Ann Clotilde hastened to explain. "He was wrecked like us."
"Oh," came a disappointed chorus.
"He's a man," said the green-eyed blonde. "That's the next best thing."
"Oh, Olga," said a strapping brunette. "Who'd ever thought a man could
look so good?"
"I did," said Olga. She chucked Jonathan under the chin. He shivered
like an unbroken colt when the bit first goes in its mouth. He felt
like a mouse hemmed in by a ring of cats.
A big rawboned brute of a girl strolled into the circle. She said,
"Dinner's ready." Her voice was loud, strident. It reminded him of
the voices of girls in the honky tonks on Venus. She looked at him
appraisingly as if he were a horse she was about to bid on. "Bring him
into the ship," she said. "The man must be starved."
He was propelled jubilantly into the palatial dining salon of the
wrecked liner. A long polished meturilium table occupied the center of
the floor. Automatic weight distributing chairs stood around it. His
feet sank into a green fiberon carpet. He had stepped back into the
Thirty-fourth Century from the fabulous barbarian past.
With a sigh of relief, he started to sit down. A lithe red-head sprang
forward and held his chair. They all waited politely for him to be
seated before they took their places. He felt silly. He felt like
a captive princess. All the confidence engendered by the familiar
settings of the space ship went out of him like wind. He, Jonathan
Fawkes, was a castaway on an asteroid inhabited by twenty-seven wild
women.
* * * * *
As the meal boisterously progressed, he regained sufficient courage
to glance timidly around. Directly across the table sat a striking,
grey-eyed girl whose brown hair was coiled severely about her head. She
looked to him like a stenographer. He watched horrified as she seized
a whole roast fowl, tore it apart with her fingers, gnawed a leg. She
caught him staring at her and rolled her eyes at him. He returned his
gaze to his plate.