_Giant Against Giant_
Although Princess Sira had promised to keep out of the way, she could
not resist the powerful attraction of the executive hall, in which, on
this day, the fate of two planets was to be decided. As the crowds of
people began to drift toward the hall, she joined them, still dressed
in her laboring man's shapeless garments, the broad sun-helmet hiding
her face effectively. Her long, black hair was concealed under the
clothing. Having nearly been drawn into a brawl the day before, she
now carried a stained but still very serviceable short sword that she
had purloined from a merclite-drunken reveler in a gutter.
Thousands were already on the terraces surrounding the government
buildings. They were milling about, for it was still too soon after
the night's chill to sit down or lie on the rubbery red sward. Taxis
were bringing swarms over the canal from North Tarog, and water
vehicles were crossing over in almost unbroken lines.
Already the merclite vendors were busy, making their surreptitious way
from group to group, selling the highly intoxicating and legally
proscribed gum that would lift the users from the sordid, miserable
plane of their daily existence to exalted, reckless heights.
War vessels now began to course overhead, their solid, heavily plated
hulls glinting dully in the sun. Their levitator helices moaned
dismally, and as their long, slanting shadows slid over the assembled
thousands, it seemed that they cast a prophetic pall; that there was a
hush of foreboding.
But the psychological expert high in a nearby tower immediately noted
the slump in the psycho-radiation meter whose trumpet-shaped antenna
pointed downward. At the turn of the dial the air was filled with
throbbing martial music, and the expert noted with contemptuous
satisfaction that the needle now stood even higher than before.
Sira, caught like all the rest of the people in that stirring flood of
music, felt her own pulse leap. But she thought:
"This is the day! Wasil, could I only be with you!"
She thought sadly of Joro, whose shrewd observations and counsel she
missed more than she had ever thought possible.
"Poor, dear Joro! You would be a better king than any man you could
ever find! I wish I could have done as you wished me to."
* * * * *
There was a stir near the main entrance of the hall. A large private
yacht was slowly descending. She was bedecked with the green and gold
bunting of the terrestrial government, the green and orange of Mars.
Her hull glittered goldenly.
"Back!" shouted the captain of a Martian guard detail, the soldiers
running with pennant-decked ropes looping after them. The crowd surged
against the barrier, but more guards were sent out as reinforcements,
until they had cleared a space for the ship and a lane to the hall
entrance.
"Mars greets the distinguished guests from our sister planet!" boomed
the giant loudspeaker in the tower. Immediately afterward came the
strains of the song--"Terrestria--Fair Green Terrestria"--in a rushing
torrent of sound. But the frank and fluent melody was strangely
distorted, with unpleasant minor turns and harsh whisperings of
menace, and the tower psychologist noted a further rise of the needle.
There was a diversion of interest now. The mob of first arrivals, as
well as the ever-freshening stream of newcomers, was moving toward the
teletabloids and the more conservative stereo-screens. On this
occasion they were both carrying the same message, however. Sira heard
the propaganda division's latest fabrication about her alleged
kidnaping by terrestrial agents. She needed no radiation meter to tell
her of the intense wave of hatred for the Earth that swept over the
densely packed area. And this was followed by another emotion--a wave
of cupidity--set up by the offer of 100,000 I. P. dollars reward for
her return. She saw about her faces greedy, faces wistful, even
compassionate faces. But outnumbering them by far were faces set in
truculent mold.
* * * * *
Sira moved restlessly from place to place, feeling more deeply
depressed with every moment. She felt as if she had been left entirely
out of life, friendless, alone. Among all these thousands she had no
friend. It seemed to her that never before had there been such a
paucity of monarchists. Sharp-featured, with a wire-drawn manner of
efficiency and resolution about them, they had constituted almost
another race among this practically enslaved people, maintaining for
themselves a tolerable position despite the opposition of the
oligarchy. Now, however, they seemed to have vanished. All that
morning Sira had not seen one. She would not have disclosed her
identity, but it would have been comforting to see one of those
friends of old.
She was stopped by a jam. Looking between the bodies of two large and
sweaty men, she realized that someone was standing on a surveyor's
marking block, delivering a speech.
"The great Pantheus has so decreed it," the speaker was shouting in a
cracked voice that at times dribbled into a whine. "We must shake off
forever this menace from the green planet--this planet dominated by
wicked women.
"Oh, my friends, last night they came to me in dreams, these pale
women of the green star. They tempted me and they mocked me. They laid
their cold hands on my throbbing brow, and their cold hands burned me!
"Oh great Pantheus! How I have suffered! The creatress who in her
malice created this wicked world beyond the gulf--"
The Martians were entertained by the quavering denunciation. Some
grinned broadly at one another; others placed their thumbs in their
ears and wiggled their fingers. But the old man continued. Finally,
two of the foremost spectators, sensing the tiny body crowded between
them, stepped aside.
"Don't miss this, my little man. Listen, and maybe you will laugh
yourself a little bigger." He gave Sira a gentle shove, so that she
almost stumbled over the block on which the speaker was standing.
* * * * *
And that old man suddenly stopped talking, so that his toothless mouth
sucked in, then stood agape. The rheumy eyes rolled, and a wisp of
dirty gray hair strayed across his gnarled face. He lifted a shaking
hand, pointed a knotty finger.
"There she is!" he croaked. "There she is! I claim--"
"There she is!" guffawed a tipsy merclite chewer. "The creatress, come
to punish you! Cut off his nose, O creatress, and stuff it into his
mouth!"
There were shouts of laughter, a surge to see better.
"No! No! I, Deacon Homms, claim the reward!" the old man screamed.
"She is the princess; I know her. She came out of the canal to tempt
me! She is the Princess Sira. Now shall I at last enter the Palace of
Joys! I claim the 100,000 dollars!"
But he still had to catch Sira. The crowd, suddenly sensing that this
old fanatic might be telling the truth, rushed in savagely, each eager
to seize the prize, or at least to establish some claim to a share of
the award. Men and women went down, to be trampled mercilessly.
Inevitably they got in one another's way, and soon swords were rising
redly, falling again.
"Guards! Guards! A riot!" Some were fleeing the scene; others rushing
in, grateful for the opportunity to expend excess pugnacity. A fresh
platoon of soldiers tumbled out of a kiosk leading to an underground
barracks like ants out of a disturbed nest. They deployed, holding
their neuro-pistols before them, focalizers set for maximum
dispersion, therefore non-fatal--merely of paralyzing intensity. Some
of the rioters now turned to run, but others persisted, willing to be
rendered unconscious, just so it would be near the valuable princess.
A few moments later the captain of the guard surveyed the mass of
paralysed bodies and the sword-slashed corpses, all intermingled.
"What's this all about?" he demanded of a scarred, evil-looking fellow
who was the first to rise to his elbow.
"The Princess Sira! I claim the reward. In there! She stood right
there!"
"Get out, you galoon!" the captain growled, knocking the fellow
unconscious with the heavy barrel of his neuro. "Sort 'em out there.
Moggins, Schkamitch. On the double. You will share, according to
rank."
But eagerly as they searched, they did not find Sira. Creeping between
the legs of the maddened reward seekers, she had fought clear, had
gained the shelter of a tall, red conical tree whose closely laced
branches pressed her to the ground, clinging to the greasy trunk.
* * * * *
She realized that her sanctuary was none too secure. There would
surely be a methodical search after the first excitement, and she
would be discovered. She had lost her sun-helmet, but nevertheless she
must risk making a break. A large proportion of the people were
wearing such helmets. Perhaps she could snatch one.
But before such an opportunity came, she saw a chance to dash to a
nearby clump of shrubbery. On the other side was a long hedge, leading
to an alley back of a group of warehouses. If she could gain this
alley, she felt sure she would be safe for the time being.
All over the park, which was thirty or forty acres in extent, there
were minor riots, as some unfortunate was mistaken for the princess
and blindly struggled for.
Sira lost no time. She scuttered along the hedge like a frightened
kangrat. But as she crossed a small open space, a stentorian voice
shouted:
"There she is! That's her! The princess!"
Out of the corner of her eye she saw him, running toward her
lumberingly, his great arms outspread. Tuman had been wrong in saying
that on all of Mars there was no man as big as Tolto. This one was,
and he looked more formidable. Instead of Tolto's normally
good-natured face, this one looked like an enraged terrestrial
gorilla, although at the moment it was really expressing joy and
eagerness.
Several other men joined the chase, and then scores. They were fleeter
of foot than the ape-man, but as they passed him in the narrow alley
he smashed them to the pavement with casual blows of his terrifying
hands. Thereafter he was undisputedly in the lead; the others content
to follow in his rear, although many were armed, and the giant was
not.
* * * * *
This was an advantage to Sira. The whole mob was slowed by the
lumbering pace of the ape-man, and she was able to keep in the lead
without difficulty. Several times some of her pursuers ran ahead by
other routes, intent on snatching her into some doorway. But each time
she slashed at them with her sword, springing past.
She had not run very far when her fear of another danger was realized.
There was a high, keen whistle overhead, and a scouting police car
flashed near. Under the neuro-pistols both hounds and hare would be
paralyzed, and she would be easily taken. Sira longed for one of these
handy weapons herself, but they were too expensive: she had been
unable to secure one.
Now the police car was coming back. The sliding forward door was
drawn back, and a man was leaning out, neuro alert. Judging the
distance expertly, he pulled the trigger, and a hundred men fell
unconscious.
"Got 'em!" he snapped over his shoulder. "The princess as well. Down
quick!"
Sira, spared because of the officer's unwillingness to take a chance
on injuring her, leaped through a gap in a wall and sprinted through a
garden smothered with thick, leathery-leaved weeds, some of them
higher than her head. She almost laughed with relief, but as she
flitted around the corner of a house toward the street she saw the
gorilla faced giant again in pursuit, and beyond the garden wall the
police ship was just settling to the ground.
It just seemed to be raining giants that day. Sira ran out of a narrow
gate at the front of the house into the street, to be stopped by a
tremendous human framework as solid and unyielding as a mountain. She
stepped back, drew her sword--
"Softly! Softly!" a rumbling bass implored. "Doesn't the Princess Sira
recognize her servant, Tolto?"
"Tolto!" All at once the tautness went out of her, and Sira leaned
against the wall, divided between laughing and crying.
"Tolto and his good friends were looking for you," the big man rumbled
anxiously. "The teletabloids said there was a riot coming--"
* * * * *
He got no further. The gorilla-faced pursuer catapulted himself
sideways through the portal, being too wide to go through in the
regular way. He emitted a raucous shout of triumph:
"I got her! It's her, all right! I claim--"
As he reached out his enormous sun-blackened arm there was a thud
that seemed to shake the ground. Instantly enraged, the man's little
red-rimmed eyes jerked quietly to the dealer of that shocking blow.
Then the conical little head sank between the bulging shoulders, the
long, thick arms bowed outward, and the ape-man launched himself at
Tolto.
That was a battle! On the one side devotion, simple-minded loyalty and
a fighting heart in a body of such mechanical perfection as Mars had
never seen before or since. On the other side a primal beast, just as
huge, rage-driven, atavistic, savage.
Fists as large as an average man's head, or larger, crashed against
unprotected face and body. Gigantic muscles rippled and crackled.
Blows echoed from wall to house and seemed to thud against the hearts
of the spectators.
It was as if time and memory had come to a standstill. The present was
not, nor present ambitions and duties. The soldiers came plunging out
into the street, swords in their hands, but they stopped to watch.
Sime, Murray and Tuman, used to instant and automatic battle, watched.
A struggle so titanic, by tacit, by unconsidered consent, must be left
to decide its own course.
* * * * *
Tolto seemed to be slowly gaining an advantage. During his novitiate
as a palace guard the other men had instructed him in the science of
their pastime-fighting. Although he scorned to guard against the blows
of his savage antagonist, he placed his own punches more shrewdly,
more effectively. The ape-faced one, through a red film, sensed that
he was being beaten, and that this fight would end in death.
Suddenly he changed his tactics. Rushing in, he threw his arms around
Tolto's great torso. He opened his jaws, and his long yellow fangs
bit into the flesh of Tolto's shoulder.
Tolto, taken slightly by surprise, met this new menace promptly.
Placing his powerful forearm against the battered, hairy face, he
attempted to bend the head back. But it was so small, in proportion,
and so slippery with blood, that he was unable to dislodge it.
So Tolto matched brute strength against brute strength. His arms
encircled his enemy's body, and the tremendous muscles of his
shoulders and body began to arch.
So they stood poised for a few seconds, as if on the brink of
eternity.
"Go-o-o-wie!" exclaimed one of the soldiers, awed.
Slowly, like the agonizingly slow plastic creep of metal under great
pressure, the gorilla-faced giant was yielding. His dark skin became
mottled. His breath came gaspingly. His rope-knotted arms slipped a
little.
But it was not in him to surrender, which might still have saved his
life. With a vicious twisting motion of his head he tried to drag his
fangs through the thick muscles of Tolto's shoulder. The wound began
to bleed more freely, choking the savage at each labored breath.
Now Tolto began to walk forward. Always his antagonist had to yield a
little, unwillingly, grudgingly, just enough to keep the paralyzing
pressure on his spine from becoming unbearable. And slowly,
inexorably, Tolto followed. His arms tightened. His leg slipped
suddenly between the ape-faced man's supports. Tolto grunted. The
sound seemed to labor upward from his innermost being, his body's
protest as he called upon it for its last reserve of strength.
Like an echo, there was a dull crack, a brief, agonized moan from the
ape-faced one; and the savage, unknown giant slumped to the pavement,
dead with a broken back. Tolto staggered to the wall, breathing
deeply.
"Man, what a fight! What a _fight_!" The young Martian captain passed
a shaking hand over his face. The battle had stirred him more deeply
than he wanted to admit. But in a few seconds he came out of his
mental maze.
"Attention! All right, men, you're under arrest. As for the girl--"
"As for the girl," came a clear feminine voice, as Sira stepped out
from the shelter of a buttress some dozen feet away, "--the girl took
advantage of your preoccupation to relieve you of your neuros. As you
see I have two of them in my hand. The rest of them are over by that
wall. No! Don't try to rush! You are welcome to your swords, but they
are useless here."