"Hold tight and use your ray when the guard appears," she said and then screamed at the top of her lungs. I was nearly paralyzed myself with the sound but the guard who opened the gate was more so and I beamed him nicely.
Bosco seemed to sink lower and then his monstrously powerful legs smashed down and we made the most colossal bound I have ever dreamed of. That super-flea must have covered at least three hundred yards with that first bound and he must have made two hundred at least with every subsequent bounce.
We held on for dear life and the air whished past us like mad. Behind us the city of kangaroos sprang to life as they saw their assorted prisoners escaping and very soon I saw over my shoulder that a line of gigantic steam-powered pogos were bounding along after us, each manned by several armed creatures.
The flea was fast but the pogos, powered by terrific steam-boilers, were equally so. And thus we raced across the clay creviced terrain, two humans on the back of a flea-colossus followed by a single-file line of puffing steel pogos, their plumes of smoke leaving a trail behind them.
I turned and tried to pick off the riders with my ray but it was hopeless, so violently was everything going up and down. I gave up and clung for dear life to the hard neck of our steed.
But it seemed to be impossible to shake off our followers. They remained fast on our trail and after a while I realized that Bosco was tiring out, his leaps were not so high or far.
"What shall we do?" called Nadia to me. "We can't shake them."
It was then that the idea occurred to me that saved us. We were already very close to where my spaceship had landed and I succeeded to conveying in signals what I had in mind to our quite intelligent flea.
On we went and when we came to the side of the swamp in which my ship had landed, Bosco gave a terrific leap which must have well set a record for all Midplanet and sailed fully five hundred yards across the swamp to land exhausted on the other side.