"Keep slugging, Bus!" Kinnison panted. "Help is on the way. A local cop voice sounds like it could be a woman—will be here in thirty somethings. Don't know whether it's thirty minutes or thirty days, but we'll still be there."
"Maybe so and maybe not," grunted the Dutchman. "Something's coming besides help. Look up and see if you see what I think I do."
Kinnison did so. Through the air from the top of the cliff there was hurtling downward toward them a veritable dragon, a nightmare's horror of hideously reptilian head, of leathern wings, of viciously fanged jaws, of frightfully taloned feet, of multiple knotty arms, of long, sinuous, heavily– scaled serpent's body. In fleeting glimpses through the writhing tentacles of his opponents Kinnison perceived little by little the full picture of that unbelievable Monstrosity, and, accustomed as he was to the outlandish denizens of worlds scarcely known to man, his very senses reeled.
5: Worsel to the Rescue
As the quasi–reptilian organism descended the cliff– dwellers went mad. Their attack upon the two Patrolmen, already vicious, became insanely frantic. Abandoning the gigantic Dutchman entirely, every Catlat within reach threw himself upon Kinnison and so enwrapped the Lensman's head, arms, and torso that he could scarcely move a muscle. Then entwining captors and helpless man moved slowly toward the largest of the openings in the cliff's obsidian face.
Upon that slowly moving mass vanBuskirk hurled himself, deadly space–axe swinging. But, hew and smite as he would, he could neither free his chief from the grisly horde enveloping him nor impede measurably that horde's progress toward its goal. However, he could and did cut away the comparatively few cables confining Kinnison's legs.
"Clamp a leg–lock around my waist, Kim," he directed, the flashing thought in no whit interfering with his prodigious axe–play, "and as soon as I get a chance, before the real tussle comes, I'll couple us together with all the beltsnaps I can reach—wherever we're going we're going together! Wonder why they haven't ganged up on me, too, and what that lizard is doing? Been too busy to look, but thought he'd've been on my back before this."
"He won't be on your back. That's Worsel, 'the lad who answered my call. I told you his voice was funny? They can't talk or hear—use telepathy, like the Manarkans. He's cleaning them out in great shape. If you can hold me for three minutes he'll have the lot of them whipped."
"I can hold you for three minutes against all the vermin between here and Andromeda,' vanBuskirk declared. "There, I've got four snaps on you."
"Not too tight, Bus," Kinnison cautioned. "Leave enough slack so you can cut me loose if you have to. Remember that the spools are more important than any one of us. Once inside that cliff we'll be all washed up—even Worsel can't help us there—so drop me rather than go in yourself."
"Um," grunted the Dutchman, non–committally. "There, I've tossed my spool out onto the ground. Tell Worsel that if they get us he's to pick it up and carry on. We'll go ahead with yours, inside the cliff if necessary."
"I said cut me loose if you can't hold me!" Kinnison snapped, and I meant it. That's an official order. Remember it!"
"Official order be damned!" snorted vanBuskirk, still plying his ponderous mace. "Whey won't get you into that hole without breaking me in two, and that will be a job of breaking in anybody's language. Now shut your pan," he concluded grimly. "We're here, and I'm going to be too busy, even to think, very shortly."
He spoke truly. He had already selected his point of resistance, and as he reached it he thrust the head of his mace into the crack behind the open trap– door, jammed its shaft into the shoulder–socket of his armor, set blocky legs and Herculean arms against the cliffside, arched his mighty back, and held. And the surprised Catlats, now inside the gloomy fastness of their tunnel, thrust anchoring tentacles into crevices in the wall and pulled, harder, ever harder.
Under the terrific stress Kinnison's heavy armor creaked as its air–tight joints accommodated themselves to their new and unusual positions. That armor, or spacetempered alloy, of course would not give way—but what of its anchor?
Well it was for Kimball Kinnison that day, and well for our present civilization, that the Brittania's quartermaster had selected Peter vanBuskirk for the Lensman's mate, for death, inevitable and horrible, resided within that cliff, and no human frame of Earthly growth, however armored, could have borne for even a fraction of a second the violence of the Catlats' pull.
But Peter vanBuskirk, although of Earthly–Dutch ancestry, had been born and reared upon the planet Valeria, and that massive planet's gravity—over two and one half times Earth's—had given him a physique and a strength almost inconceivable to us life–long dwellers upon small, green Terra. His head, as has been said, towered seventyeight inches above the ground, but at that he appeared squatty because of his enormous spread of shoulder and his startling girth. His bones were elephantine—they had to be, to furnish adequate support and leverage for the incredible masses of muscle overlaying and surrounding them. But even vanBuskirk's Valerian strength was now being taxed to the uttermost.
The anchoring chains hummed and snarled as the clamps bit into the rings. Muscles writhed and knotted, tendons stretched and threatened to snap, sweat rolled down his mighty back. His jaws locked in agony and his eyes started from their sockets with the effort, but still vanBuskirk held.
"Cut me loose!" commanded Kinnison at last. "Even you can't take much more of that. No use letting them break your back…Cut, I tell you…I said CUT, you big, dumb, Valerian ape!"
But if vanBuskirk heard or felt the savagely–voiced commands of his chief he gave no heed. Straining to the very ultimate fiber of his being, exerting every iota of loyal mind and every atom of Brobdingnagian frame, grimly, tenaciously, stubbornly the gigantic Dutchman held.
Held while Worsel of Velantia, that grotesquely hideous, that fantastically reptilian ally, plowed toward the two Patrolmen through the horde of Catlats, a veritable tornado of rending fang and shearing talon, of beating wing and crushing snout of mailed hand and trenchant tail.
Held while that demon incarnate drove closer and closer, hurling entire Catlats and numberless dismembered fragments of Catlats to the four winds as he came.
Held until Worsel's snake–like body, a supple and sentient cable of living steel, tipped with its double–edged, razor–keen, scimitar–like sting, slipped into the tunnel beside Kinnison and wrought grisly havoc among the Catlats close–packed there!
As the terrific tension upon him was suddenly released vanBuskirk's own efforts hurled him away from the cliff. He fell to the ground, his overstrained muscles twitching uncontrollably, and on top of him fell the fettered Lensman. Kinnison, his hands now free, unfastened the clamps linking his armor to that of vanBuskirk and whirled to confront the foe—but the fighting was over. The Catlats had had enough of Worsel of Velantia, and, screaming and shrieking in baffled rage, the last of them were disappearing into their caves.
VanBuskirk got shakily to his feet. "Thanks for the help, Worsel, we were just about to run out of time…' he began, only to be silenced by an insistent thought from the grotesquely monstrous stranger.
"Stop that radiating! Do not think at all if you cannot screen your minds!" came urgent mental commands. "These Catlats are a very minor pest of this planet Delgon. There are others worse by far. Fortunately, your thoughts are upon a frequency never used here—if I had not been so very close to you I would not have heard you at all—but should the Overlords have a listener upon that band your unshielded thinking may already have done irreparable harm. Follow me. I will slow my speed to yours, but hurry all possible!"