The little scientist therefore placed his hands on the scaly back and half vaulted, half scrambled over. He recovered on the other side and started off again. The touch aroused Sasha, whose head, for the first time since the shooting had started, began to rise from the ground like the business end of some ponderous piece of excavating machinery.
Cornzan, pounding after Sorokin, took off in a soaring leap over the reptile's body. Either he miscalculated or he, too, had trouble with the unevenness of the ground, for he failed to clear Sasha. Instead he came down on the snake. His leading foot slipped off the scales, and Cornzan landed outside the circle with a whirl of arms and legs and a grand slam. In striking the snake he had accidentally driven the point of his sword into Sasha to a depth of several inches. The weapon stuck upright in the snake's back, swaying with the reptile's motion.
Franklin Hahn took off right behind Cornzan but, with more skill or better luck, cleared the snake, missed the sword, and came down on top of Cornzan. When Hahn collected himself, he found himself straddling the prone if noble savage like a masseur about to knead a customer.
Feeling the warrior's thews gathering under him to throw him off, and then presumably to tear him limb from limb, Hahn planted a roundhouse swing on the side of Cornzan's jaw. The blow hurt Hahn's knuckles but dazed Cornzan. Hahn then pulled out the dagger he wore in his sash, gripped it by its dull blade, and whacked Cornzan over the head with the massive jewelled hilt. Three taps sent the adventurer to dreamland.
Hahn's attention was drawn by a sound like a jet of steam under high pressure. He looked up to see Sasha's head, poised on ten feet of neck, swaying towards him.
The anaconda was usually harmless, not from conscious docility but from sheer stupid inertia. Besides, he had been drugged. However, to be scrambled and fallen over by two men had roused him from his torpor, and to have his hide pierced by a property sword was too much. Sasha was angry.
A yard of greeny-yellow forked tongue issued from Sasha's mouth groove, wavered about, and slid back, drawing the ambient air past the olfactory nerve endings on his palate. His four-foot jaws opened to emit another Mesozoic hiss.
Hahn threw himself back from the recumbent Cornzan and half rose. For a fraction of a second he wondered whether to run like hell or to try to grab the unconscious actor and pull him out of danger.
Mortimer Knight shouted: "If he eats our star it'll ruin the show!"
The program manager bounded forward, hands clutching, just as Hahn made up his mind to save Dallas too: a creditable action, since Dallas was his rival for the love of Cassia MacDermott.
Knight got a wrist and Hahn an ankle. Each started to pull, but in opposite directions. Even under favorable conditions, Remington Dallas' 228 pounds would have made their endeavor precarious. As it was, they got nowhere.
For two seconds they heaved at the actor, grunting. Then Sasha struck. As Knight was the nearest and noisiest, the snake snapped at him, turning his head sidewise, and caught the executive from behind around the hips — one jaw on each hip.
Knight let go of Dallas and was dragged backwards, screaming and thrashing. Sasha made a gulping motion, gaining a tooth or two in the process of swallowing Knight arse-first.
If the snake had thrown a coil around Knight, the Ego would have been snuffed out instantly. But, either Sasha deemed this prey too small to be worth crushing, or he was too lazy to heave his monstrous barrel into the necessary loops. At eleven tons he was, as Sorokin had said, too heavy to be very active.
Sasha began working his loosely-hinged lower jaw forward, first one side and then the other. As the teeth of a non-venomous snake are slender pegs pointing back towards the throat, Knight's struggles only drove the teeth more deeply into his tissues.
When Knight released his hold on Dallas, Hahn dragged the actor back a couple of steps before realizing that Knight was in more imminent danger. A din of shouts and cries arose from those witnessing the action. Jaffe shouted orders at Lynd, who shouted orders at his two assistant directors, who shouted at each other to rush in and do something. The floor men contented themselves with shouting advice to the straggling Knight.
Hahn saw Cornzan's sword still sticking up from Sasha's back. He stepped forward, wrenched the sword out, moved to where Knight writhed in Sasha's jaws, and took a wild two-handed swipe.
His target was in an awkward position, as the weight of Knight's body was too great for the snake to raise from the floor. The blow missed Sasha's head and grazed Knight's, half severing his right ear. Knight shrieked more loudly than ever.
Franklin Hahn struck again, more carefully. The blow landed on the top of Sasha's head between the eyes. The dull blade crunched through scales and bone. Sasha hissed through his full jaws and started to back up, bending his neck into a zigzag and dragging Knight along the ground. His instincts and the structure of his teeth prevented him from releasing Knight.
Hahn followed, striking. The snake's bone structure was not very resistant; the trouble was to find, in that monstrous head, the little ganglion that served Sasha for a brain. Crunch! Crunch! Sasha's body writhed and bumped. A lash of his tail knocked over seven lights and two cameras and broke a cameraman's leg; a flip in the other direction sent the Temple of Yak flying. The audience scattered like a flock of sparrows.
Hahn hewed at the scaly head until the writhing subsided and the great jaws went slack. The snake lay still save for an occasional reflex-jerk. Sasha was dead.
The bell announcing the end of the shooting clanged. Franklin Hahn looked up to see Cassia MacDermott, whose manner showed that she had, as told to in the indoctrination, come out of her consiline trance when she heard the bell. She said:
"My goodness, Frank, what haveyou been doing? And what's the matter with Mr. Knight? And — oh, poorRemington!"
Mortimer Knight and the injured cameraman lay in the dispensary. When the physicians had completed their task, Knight's harsh yell arose: "I wanna see that guy Hahn!"
"Here I am, Ego," said Hahn. "When do they say you'll be up and around?"
"Couple weeks. Nothing but a few punctures; no poison." Knight glared up from his pillow, his right ear hidden by a mass of bandage. "And by God, by that time you'll be out of here! You're fired!"
"Me? But I thought I just saved your life!"
"Hell, you bungled everything! You've ruined the Cornzan series! You didn't hold Dallas in play until Sorokin could shoot him. You damn near cut my ear off. You killed Sasha, and we'll have to pay the Sorokin Laboratories for the snake."
"Good lord, Ego, you're raving! If I hadn't killed the snake you'd be playing a rubber of bridge with those three sheep by now —"
"And anyway you're too goddam fresh and insubordinate! Get out! Off the lot! Draw your pay and go!" screamed Knight.
"Here!" said a physician to Hahn. "I don't know who you are, but I can't have you exciting my patient that way."
"Me?" said Hahn with bitter irony. But he went.
Reflecting that, if his job were in danger, he had better not be seen loafing, Hahn returned to his office and worked on scripts. He had Cornzan and Lululu trapped in the lost city of Gwor by the Mukluks (a race of Anthonian ghouls whose heads stayed home and sent their bodies forth to seek prey by remote telepathic control) when Mrs. Mazzatenta, Lynd's secretary, came in with some pieces of paper. Hahn found a check for his next month's pay and a dismissal notice.
Franklin Hahn stared at the notice until belief soaked into his consciousness. Then he went to protest to Jaffe, who smiled sadly and said: