Like a trapped beast, the half-breed turned this way and that. Beads of sweat stood out on his heaving chest. He wiped his sweat-slippery hands on his leather tunic, then dried them in the sand, before he gripped his alloy bludgeon again. Then with the long eerie cry of the wild desert tribes he sprang into the air to meet the hurtling drive of the kriston that had singled him out.
The blinding speed of its wings distorted his perspective. The alloy bar, caught in their blurring motion, spun from his stunned hands. He cursed as he fell beneath its flight.
Dimly, he heard the joyous roaring of the throngs who watched him fall. As he rolled aside he heard Mahra's frightened scream. He felt the spearing slash of the kriston's poisonous barbed fang. His arms whipped out, hands closed on the horned tip. He was on his feet heaving outward. He felt tendons rip and a sudden freedom as the tongue tore from the kriston's throat. Its death cry sounded like escaping steam.
He was running toward the outcast Terran girl who was dodging the worrying darting movements of another kriston. He swung the grotesque whip-like tongue of the one he had slain as he ran.
He stopped. The creature attacking Mahra suddenly became a lifeless charred hulk. The other kristons were plunging into the sand, smoking, burning. His eyes swung up. The force-wall was gone. The heat ray on the roof landing above the catacombs had destroyed the kristons before their work was done. The heat ray was only used for emergencies. What had moved the Anghorians to save them?
Miraculously, the three still lived. Moljar, Mahra, and the Martian outlaw Gasdon who had blinded the squid by punching out its eyes. Having no scent faculties it was flapping tentacles helplessly in its phosphorescent bog.
An aimless hum of fear and hysteria exploded outward from the throng. They were fleeing from the stands, trampling, yelling frantically, some burning their way through the choked exits of the Colosseum. They were jammed in its elevators, blocking its corridors and archways.
Gasdon came running toward Moljar and the girl. His towering body, dripping mucous from the squid battle, was as large as Moljar's, but lacked its agility and integration of movement. His ugly face was twisted in fanatical purpose.
"Now we fight!" he shouted, "for her! I've wanted to meet Moljar, the half-breed freak, before witnesses who will testify to your defeat."