anything. Catch me.'
He saw that she wanted him to chase her, and knew that he should not oblige; but the pain in his head and body cut short his caution and substituted naked fury. He ran after her.
She skipped fleetly beside the wail, looking back at him and giggling. She was so small and light that agility was natural to her; her body could not have weighed more than a hundred pounds including the shapeless garment. As he gained on her, she dodged to the side and swung around a vertical bar, making him stumble cumbersamely. -
'Lucky you aren't in the circle!' she trilled. 'You can't even keep your feet!'
By the time he got on her trail once more, she was in among the poles, weaving around them with a facility obviously stemming from long experience.
Sos followed, grasping the uprights and swinging his body past them with increasing dexterity. Now that he was exerting himself he felt better, as though he were throwing off the lethargy of the freezing mountains. Again he gained and again she surprised him.
She leaped into the air and caught the bottom rung of a ladder suspended from the high ceiling. She flipped athletically and hooked it with her feet, then ascended as though she had no weight at all. In moments she was far out of reach.
Sos took hold of the lowest rung, just within his range, and discovered that it was made of flexible plastic, as were the two vertical columns. He jerked experimentally.
A ripple ran up the ropes, jarring the girl. Ropes? He smiled and shook harder, forcing her to cling tightly in order not to be shaken off. Then, certain he had her trapped, he gradually hauled down until his entire weight was suspended.
It would hold him. He hoisted himself to the rung, unused to this type of exercise but able to adapt. He could handle a rope.
She peeked down, alarmed, but he climbed steadily, watching her. In a few seconds he knew he would be able to grab her foot and haul her down with him.
She threaded her legs through the top of the ladder and leaned out upside down, twisting her body and touching it with her freed hands. The coverall came away from her shoulders and to her hips-up or down, depending upon perspective-then she caught one arm in the ladder and stripped herself the rest of the way. She wore a slight, snug two-piece suit underneath that decorated little more than her bosom and buttocks. Sos revised his estimate of her age sharply upward; she was as well rounded a woman as he had seen.
She contemplated him with that elfin expression, spread out the coveralls, and dropped them neatly upon his raised face. -
He cursed and pawed it away, almost losing his grip on the ladder. She was shaking it now, perhaps in belief she could dislodge him while he was blinded, and he felt her strike his clutching hand.
By the time he had secured his position and cast off the clinging, faintly scented cloth, she was standing on the floor below him, giggling merrily. She had gone right by him!
'Don't you want your bracelet, clumsy?' she teased.
Sos handed himself down and dropped to the floor, but she was gone again. This time she mounted the boxlike structure, wriggling over and under the bars as though she were a flying snake. He ran to the base, but she was amidst it all and he could not get at her from any direction without climbing into it himself. He knew by this time that he could never catch her that way; she was a gymnast whose size and weight made her entirely at home here.
'All right,' he said, disgruntled but no longer angry. He took the time to admire her lithe and healthy body.
Who would have suspected such rondure in so brief a package? 'Keep it,'
A moment and several gyrations and she stood beside him. 'Give up!'
He snapped his fingers over her upper arm, using the trick of his rope throw to make the motion too quick to elide. 'No.' -
She did not even wince at the cruel pressure. She sliced her free hand sidewise into his stomach, just below the rib cage and angling up, fingers flat and stiff.
He was astonished at the force of the blow, coming as it did with so little warning, and he was momentarily paralyzed. Still, he maintained his grip and tightened it until her firm young
