He got the fourth and fifth legs this time. Relegar's body sagged considerably, but the spider, his entire body turning red with rage, spun around and charged again. This time the great mouth was open, the fangs ready, and the mandibles were extended. Grant left himself open until he could feel the spider's fetid breath in his face, then he flung out his shield.
The sharp fangs struck it. Relegar turned into a tornado of fury for perhaps a second, trying to shake the skin from his teeth. But it was too late. The skin came loose, but the radiation had paralyzed the spider. He sank feebly to the ground with the shield under him. His eyes glared with unutterable malignant hate, but that was all. His muscles were impotent.
Grant stood a few feet away, getting his breath, feeling the trip-hammer in his temple slow down to normal. Then he aimed. The sixth, seventh, and eighth legs burned off. He put the pistol in its holster.
"I'm not going to try to kill you," he said. "I suppose that's impossible anyway, short of cutting you up into small pieces, and I don't relish that idea. But I'll leave you the snake-skin. It will have passed the peak of its radioactivity by tomorrow and you can start back for The Pass. But you won't go back very fast. You've got legs on only one side. It's going to be slow navigating, especially on water. In fact, I think maybe you'll have to wait until you grow some new legs."
He patted his pockets filled with half a million dollars' worth of echindul stones. "Long before that I'll be in Aphrodite depositing my stones at the First Interplanetary Bank."
He watched Relegar's eyes turn dead, cold black, then he screwed on his helmet, adjusted the oxygen, and stepped off into the brown water. He felt rather good, wading through the mud at the bottom of the swamp. He was somewhat astonished that it had fallen to him, a nobody, to be the means of breaking up Relegar's hold on The Pass. But it was a very satisfactory feeling. He thought about Beth and New Jersey and strawberries with fresh cream. He sighed happily. His luck had changed.