“Faugh!” George grunted. He dropped Douglas as Kennon pushed the door back and came out into the passageway. “Maybe you make better fight,” George said as he lowered his head into the muscular mass of his broad shoulders.
Kennon eyed him appraisingly, swinging the irons in his right hand.
This time the Lani didn’t charge. He moved slowly, half crouched, long arms held slightly forward. Kennon backed away, watching the humanoid’s eyes for that telltale flicker of the pupils that gives warning of attack. The expression on George’s face never changed. It was satisfied—smug almost—reflecting the feelings of a brute conditioned to kill and given an opportunity to do so. The Lani radiated confidence.
Kennon shivered involuntarily. He wasn’t frightened, but he had never met an opponent like this. A chill raced up the back of his legs and spread over his stomach and chest. His mouth was dry and his muscles quivered with tense anticipation. But his concentration never wavered. His hard blue eyes never left George’s, searching with microscopic intentness for the faintest sign of the Lani’s intentions.
George charged—hands reaching for Kennon’s throat, face twisted in a snarl of rage and hate. But even as he charged Kennon moved. He ducked beneath the Lani’s outstretched hands and drove his left fist deep into George’s belly just below the breastbone.
Air whistled out of the Lani’s gaping mouth as he bent double from the power of the blow. Kennon clipped him on the chin with a driving knee, snapping George’s head back and smashed the bearded face with the shackles. Blood spurted and George screamed with rage. One of the Lani’s big hands wrapped around the shackles and tugged. Kennon let go and drove another left to George’s ribs.
The Lani threw the irons at Kennon, but his aim was poor. One of the handcuff rings scraped across Kennon’s cheek, but did nothing more than break the skin. Half paralyzed by the blows to his solar plexus, George’s co-ordination was badly impaired. But he kept trying. Kennon wrapped lean fingers about one of George’s outstretched hands, bent, pivoted, and slammed the Lani with bone-crushing force against the bars of a nearby cell. But George didn’t go down. “He’s more brute than man,” Kennon thought. “No man could take a beating like that!” He moved aside from George’s stumbling rush, feeling a twinge of pity for the battered humanoid. It was no contest. Strong as he was, George didn’t know the rudiments of hand-to-hand fighting. His reactions were those of an animal, to close, clutch, bite, and tear. Even if he were completely well, the results would have been the same. It would merely have taken longer. Kennon drove a vicious judo chop to the junction of the Lani’s neck and shoulder. Brute strength was no match for the highly evolved mayhem that every spaceman learns as a necessary part of his trade. George had never been on planet leave in a spaceport town. He knew nothing about the dives, the crimps, the hostile port police. His idea of fighting was that of a beast, but Kennon was a civilized man to whom fighting was an art perfected by millennia of warfare. And Kennon knew his trade.
Even so it took longer than Kennon expected because George was big, George was strong, and George had courage and pride that kept him coming as long as the blazing will behind his blazing eyes could drive his battered body. But the end was inevitable.
Kennon looked at his bloody arm where George’s teeth had reached their mark. It was hardly more than a scratch, but it had been close. George had his lesson and Kennon felt oddly degraded. He sighed, dragged George back into the cell, and locked the door.
Then he turned to Douglas. The howls of hate from the caged Lani died to a sullen silence as Kennon gently examined the limp body.