Rick! Rick! Where are you? came the Venusian's mental voice.
But Mason was unable to answer. A barrage of mighty blows crashed in on him and he spun, clawing to keep his balance, and started to fold up. He heard Klon Darra saying, Here comes the telepath now. His head crashed against the wall and he blanked out.
The amused laughter of the Mordargans seemed to follow him into unconsciousness.
He awoke later—hours, days, weeks, years later, it seemed. He felt mummified.
His body ached; his eyes wouldn't focus properly and in his mouth was the acrid, retch-inducing taste of the gruuna.
But aside from the pain, aside from the physical miseries he felt, he sensed a stinging sense of personal failure. He was an agent of Solar System Intelligence, a member of the galaxy's proudest and toughest organization ... and he had failed to rescue his own partner.
By now the telepath had probably drained Klon Darra's mind of its secrets, had learned that there was another Intelligence agent loose on Mordarga, that Earth suspected the big planet of hostile intentions, that....
It was all over. The team of Klon Darra and Rick Mason had been considered the tops of Intelligence but that rating looked pretty hollow now. The Venusian had gotten himself trapped on landing and Mason had flubbed a chance to rescue him. He had wound up lying somewhere—where?—with a hangover and a headache.
He looked around. He was in an alley and by the smell of it it was the alley back of the bar. They had probably dumped him after the Mordargans had finished having their fun with him.