Up and down, jarring and violent, down and up. I was dizzy and ill and I didn't know how to stop it. It was progressing madly in the general direction of the city. I pushed buttons wildly when I wasn't holding on for dear life but I didn't seem to get the right combination.
The stick would hurtle wildly forward into the air many dozens of feet then come down to hit the earth with a shock, contract, and then recoil violently again and up with a sickening jolt into the air again.
I saw that it was a means for travel over terrain impassible because of its crevices and cracks to wheeled vehicles or beings on foot. I saw this as the unguided power-pogo came down directly into a narrow crack. The capped bottom slid between the sides, the engine box hit the sides of the narrow cleft hard, there was a terrific kick and the shaft hit out again futilely in the airy emptiness of the depth below it, and I went sailing out head over heels to land several yards away in the midst of a band of Midplanetarians.
The next thing I knew I was being pinned down by a number of grey fuzzy arms while a kangaroo looked down at me and questioned me in a squeaky language. At least it looked like a kangaroo for it had the giant legs and the long powerful tail of one, it had upstanding mousey ears, a pointed rodentlike face, and a mammalian body covered with short grey-brown hair. Around its waist was strapped a belt-like harness from which several pouches were slung. In one hand it held a weapon like a sort of combination of pistol and sling-shot.
Naturally I did not answer its questions. It, the chief kangaroo-man, shrugged its shoulders and motioned to its fellows who were holding me down. They allowed me to get to my feet when I was surprised to find that I was still all in one piece and that they had not touched my equipment including my para-ray.
A little distance away was standing a simply gigantic power-pogo, towering a couple of dozen feet high, with a large circular platform set around its middle. Facing that they started to walk towards there. Started, I say, for they walked in kangaroo leaps and I simply fell when they tried to make me do the same.
They picked me up bodily and bounded over and up to the platform. There they hold on to straps attached to the main cylinder and waited. I think I must have fainted because I have no recollection of the trip outside of a nightmare of terrible leaps and falls.
When I came to again it was in the city by the hills. Several of the creatures were standing around me trying to question me in their odd language and, of course, making no headway. I felt that this was not the time to inform them of my imperial accession, I was not sure that they were the most fitting inhabitants of this world to receive that honor. There might be other intelligent races inhabiting the same planet even as there are on Venus.
Accordingly I kept my mouth shut and stared them down. That was a feat of which I could be proud considering the odd nature of their eyes and faces.