I stood, my back to the judge's stand, and waited. To the left was the sports box, and I could make out Suzi, even at that distance. Her face was expressionless.
A great helicopter suddenly and deftly detached itself from the Centaurian ship and gracefully swooped down. It was beautifully handled, settling to the opposite side of the arena as gently as a butterfly.
A large door in its side opened, the Centaurian emerged, and a gasp from the stands went up; a gasp louder than the cheer that had originally greeted me.
Of all Solar System intelligent life forms, Jupiter's Slaber is by far the largest, and, for that reason, that and its natural armor shell, Jupiter had been winning the Interplanetary Meets two out of three times for centuries.
But this hulking brute made the Slaber seem a babe in arms. It resembled somewhat a six legged turtle, roughly twice the size of a Terran elephant. It had two lobster-like claws and four other limbs.
Evidently, it had decided to end the battle as quickly as possible, because without either salute or warning it headed for me, the dust churning up behind it as it came. Its legs were short but fantastically fast. They seemed a blur of speed and before I had got over the surprise of its appearance it was half way across the arena toward me.
A shout, almost a moan, of warning went up from the stands, and suddenly those citizens of the Solar System were no longer ashamed of the weapons I carried, no longer contemptuous of my honor.
I grasped my atomic grenade from its hook on my belt, dropped the projectile thrower to the ground to give my arm free play, and threw.
Half the total acreage of the arena went up in a gust of dirt, dust, gravel and colored smoke. Seconds later I had been thrown prostrate by the blast. Probably half the amphitheatre's occupants had been similarly treated, and how many blast casualties might have been among them, I couldn't know.