The howling, slavering mob in the blood-spattered arena
hated the half-breed Moljar--prayed gibberingly for his
death. But Moljar looked coldly up at the Princess and
licked dry lips. He would not die--while she lived!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Spring 1947.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Moljar planted his columnar legs wide apart beside the dying saurian
and blinked blood and sweat from his eyes. Only slightly strained
after three hours of the Red Moon Games, his seven foot height of
Terran-Martian muscles gleamed damply in the blazing arc lights of the
Colosseum. His lungs sucked hungrily at the dense Venusian air as he
waited for whatever would next be sent against him, the champion of
them all.
Through sweat-blurred vision he watched the climbing tiers of eager
spectators, a high curvature outlined against the crimson mist. Red
Moon Games! Bi-monthly slaughter, ordered by the Princess Alhone when
the unnatural filtering of the reflected sun's rays spread a carmine
glow through the fog.
The grey sands of the arena were daubed with sprawled forms of monsters
and men alike. Out of the shambles, Moljar's black barbarian eyes shone
as they swung up to fix on the Princess Alhone where she sat with a
retinue in her private observation box. Her grey-furred, semi-human
body glimmered softly beneath the blue-glowing effulgence that always
bathed her in its royal cold light.
Her heavily jeweled paw raised, dropped. The signal.
A roar of sadistic anticipation swelled, echoing from the misty range
of hills, beyond Venus Port, out across the Sea of Mort that washed its
marble walls.
Moljar shifted toward the gates. His hands flexed about the alloy bar.
At Princess Alhone's gesture, the gates across the arena lifted. The
monstrous beast, somewhat resembling a Mesozoic saber-tooth tiger of
Terra, charged out straight for Moljar in a blinding burst of speed and
power.
The half-breed swung the pitiful weapon which had jokingly been granted
him, a five-foot length of compressed alloy. It cracked against the
giant cat's skull. Moljar leaped aside as the beast plunked on its
face, rolled in a flurry of sand and blood. Tendrils of gore oozed from
its shattered skull as it lumbered erect and charged again, erratically
now, circling and leaping down toward the arena's far end, blinded and
roaring in pain.
* * * * *
A sigh of ecstasy rose up in a long drone from the spectators--a
polyglot of Solarians who had paid eighty credits for this night of
vicarious blood-lust. Wealthy interplanetary aristocrats and cartel
magnates, Mercurian and Martian speculators, Terran monopolists,
adventurers and adventuresses from many worlds, muckers from the
asteroid mines. All imagining themselves to be Moljar tonight. All
hating him because he was a half-breed.
Of the half-thousand prisoners who had been marched into the
amphitheatre--a few Terran mutants, many half-breeds, and space pirates
who couldn't pay enough hush-hush credits--only three remained
standing. The Terran girl mutant, Mahra, who had helped him slay the
saurian and who had rare courage. Himself. And Gasdon, the Martian
pirate, who, barehanded, was still battling the giant squid in the
arena's synthetic quagmire. His yellow body was a panting, straining
bulk beyond the tendrils of sulphur dioxide that bubbled up through the
bog.
Moljar felt the Terran girl's hot breath on his neck as he waited for
the pain-maddened cat to scent him down. His glittering eyes turned and
met hers. Her silver mutant's hair glowed beneath the merciless glare
of the flood lights. Her full, yet agile body wriggled in its brief
trappings in nervous preparation for the cat's rapid return from the
end of the arena. But when she spoke to Moljar her lips curled with
obvious distaste.
"You fight well, for a half-breed," she said.
His teeth shone white in what might have been either a laugh or a
snarl. "Go to your Martian outlaw. Gasdon's pure of blood. If he'll
have you--mutant!"