“I need no second chance,” Planter replied, breezily, and dived in.
He still wore the scanty costume of a slave, and it allowed him to strike out easily for the edge of the pool. Behind him the Skygors were discussing him, but in their own guttural tongue which he could not understand. As he swam, he studied the city beneath the water.
He meant to come back and assail that city some time, and there must be worthwhile secrets to note. For instance, he was now aware that this pool was artificial—he made out the sluices and gates of a large dam. To one side was a spacious submarine chamber that must be the clockwork-jammed cellar where his erstwhile companions, the slaves, worked.
But something else was under water, something that moved darkly, but had arms and legs, though it was as vast as an elephant. It was approaching him swiftly, knowingly.
Now he knew why he had been told, with such a voice of doom, to jump into the water.
Planter’s blood was still up because of that brisk battle with Disbro. He was young, strong, in gilt-edge condition. His new impulse was to keep on fighting, against the thing which had the size, the intention, and apparently the appetite, to engulf him.
The huge swimmer was a Skygor, of tremendous size. Logic in the back of Planter’s head bade him not to be amazed; on this damp, fecund world, monsters of such sort were not too unthinkable. As it broke surface, he heard a hubbub like many steam sirens. The smaller Skygors, on housetops and bridges, were all chanting some sort of ear-bursting litany, waving their flippers in unison. Plainly they worshiped this giant of their race. He, Planter, was a gift—a sacrifice.
He swam speedily, but his pursuer was speedier still. With ponderous overhand strokes it overhauled him. An arm as long as his body, with a flipper-hand like a tremendous scoop shovel, extended to clutch at him. A mouth like an open trunk gaped, large enough to gulp him bodily.
Only one thing to do. He did it—dived at once, turning under water and darting below and in an opposite direction from the great swimmer. By pure, happy chance, his kicking feet struck the soft cushion of its mighty belly, and he heard the thrumming gasp of the wind he knocked out of it. Coming up beyond, he swam desperately toward a nearby building. If he could climb up, away, from this huge, hungry being.
“No, not here!” That was a Skygor, poking its ugly smirking face from a window-hole. He tried to seize the sill to draw himself out of the water, and it lifted a dagger to slash at his knuckles.
But then it gasped, wriggled. The paw opened, the knife fell. Planter managed to catch it as it struck the water. A moment later he saw what had happened—big human hands were fastened on the slimy throat from behind. The Skygor, struggling, was pulled back out of sight. In its place showed the flat, simple features of Max.
“Huhh!” gurgled Max. “You in trouble, Mr. Planter?”
He put out a hand to help. At the same moment a monstrous flipper struck at Planter, driving him deep under water.
He filled his lungs with air at the last moment, spun and tried to kick away. His enemy had its hooked claws in his clothing and was drawing him toward the dark cavern of its mouth. Planter struck with the knife he had snatched, and buried the blade in the slimy-green lower lip of the creature. It let go, and a cloud of blood—red as the blood of Earth’s creatures—suddenly obscured the water, so that Planter could attempt another escape.
He reached the top once again. The giant held itself half out of the water, big and grotesque as some barbaric sculpture, one webbed hand held against its wounded mouth. As Planter came into view, its big, bitter eyes caught sight of him. Dropping its hand, it howled at him. All the Skygors at their watch-points echoed that howl and began to repeat their uncouth litany once again. The monster pursued as before.
But from his watch-window, Max threw his burly pugilist’s body.
Coarsely built Max might have been. Stupid he undoubtedly was. Cowardly and clumsy he was not. As he flung himself into space, he shifted so that his feet were down. He drove them hard between the shoulders of the huge Skygor demon, and the impact of his flying weight drove it under water.
“Get out of here!” yelled Max at Planter. “Get out!”
He had time for no more, for he, too, submerged. Planter clasped his knife in his teeth, and turned in the water. He could not desert that plucky rescuer.
Righting itself, the big Skygor grimaced under the troubled, gory surface. It was having trouble—more trouble than ever before in its freakish, idle, overstuffed life as deity and champion of the community. Two alien dwarfs, of a species it had looked on hitherto as only enticing meat, were viciously attacking and wounding it. Hunger was overlaid by a stern lust for vengeance.
It spied one of the enemy very close, swimming away. Max was not as much at home in the water as Planter, and he could not dodge its grasping talons. Treading water, the thing hoisted him clear, as a child might lift a kitten. Its other paw struck him, with openwebbed palm, hard as a mule’s kick.
Max went limp. Once again that awful mouth opened to its full extent.
“No, you don’t!” cried Planter, battling his way close. For a second time he drove with the knife, sheathing it to the hilt in a slate-colored chest, close to one armpit.
A fountain of blood sprang forth, drenching his face and weapon hand. He dragged strongly downward, felt his weapon point grating on bone, then coming free. That was a terrible wound, but not a disabling one. In a frenzy of pain and rage, the Skygor giant threw Max far away into the water,
