Well it was for Kimball Kinnison that day, and well for our present civilization, that the Brittania's quartermaster selected Peter VanBuskirk for the Lensman's mate; for death, inevitable and horrible, resided within that cliff, and no human frame of Earthly upbringing, however armored, could have borne, for even a fraction of a second, the violence of the Catlats' pull.
But Peter VanBuskirk, although of Earthly Dutch ancestry, had been born and reared upon the planet Valeria, and that massive planet's gravity—over two and one half times Earth's—had given him a physique and a strength almost inconceivable to us life-long dwellers upon small, green Terra. His head, as has been said, towered seventy-eight inches above the ground; but at that he appeared squatty because of his enormous spread of shoulder and his startling girth. His bones were elephantine—they had to be, to furnish adequate support and leverage for the incredible masses of muscle overlaying and surrounding them. But even VanBuskirk's Valerian strength was now being taxed to the uttermost.
The anchoring chains hummed and snarled as the clamps bit into the rings. Muscles writhed and knotted; tendons stretched and threatened to snap; sweat rolled down his mighty back. His jaws locked in agony and his eyes started from their sockets with the effort; but still VanBuskirk held.
"Cut me loose!" commanded Kinnison at last. "Even you can't take much more of that. No use letting them break your back. Cut, I tell you. I said cut, you big, dumb, Valerian ape!"
But if VanBuskirk heard or felt the savagely voiced commands of his chief, he gave no heed. Straining to the very ultimate fiber of his being, exerting every iota of loyal mind and every atom of Brobdingnagian frame, grimly, tenaciously, stubbornly the gigantic Dutchman held.
Held while Worsel of Velantia, that grotesquely hideous, that fantastically reptilian ally, plowed toward the two patrolmen through the horde of Catlats; a veritable tornado of rending fang and shearing talon, of beating wing and crushing snout, of mailed hand and trenchant tail.
Held while that demon incarnate drove closer and closer, hurling entire Catlats and numberless dismembered fragments of Catlats to the four winds as he came.
Held while the raging tumult, whose center was Worsel, swept over his rigid body like an ocean wave breaking over an immovable rock.
Held until Worsel's snakelike body, a supple and sentient cable of living steel, tipped with its double-edged, razor-keen, scimitarlike sting, slipped into the tunnel beside Kinnison and wrought grisly havoc among the Catlats close-packed there!
As the terrific tension upon him was suddenly released VanBuskirk's own efforts hurled him away from the cliff. He fell to the ground, his overstrained muscles twitching uncontrollably, and on top of him fell the fettered Lensman. Kinnison, his hands now free, unfastened the clamps linking his armor to that of VanBuskirk and whirled to confront the foe. But the fighting was over. The Catlats had had enough of Worsel of Velantia; and, shrieking in baffled rage, the last of them were disappearing into their caves. He turned back to VanBuskirk, who was getting shakily to his feet.