For what seemed a long time, it crouched there, jaw hung open, whining. Then, without warning, the whining stopped, and it launched itself through the air at Jim’s throat.
Chapter 3
The feline creature flashed forward and upward into Jim’s face—and vanished.
Jim had not moved. For a moment he was alone in the long, rectangular room; and then suddenly there were three of the High-born males around him, one of them with the dragonlike insignia upon his shirt, or tunic, front. That one had brought Jim here. Of the other two, one was almost short by High-born standards—barely three inches taller than Jim. The third was the tallest of the three—a slim, rather graceful-looking man with the first expression resembling a smile Jim had ever seen on purely onyx-colored features; and this last of the three High-born wore a red insignia which looked somewhat like the horns and head of a stag.
“I told you they were brave, these Wolflings,” drawled this last member of the group. “Your trick didn’t work, Mekon.”
“Courage!” said the one addressed as Mekon angrily. “That was too good to be true. He didn’t even move a muscle! You’d think he’d been—” Mekon bit off the words abruptly, glancing hastily at the tall Slothiel, who stiffened.
“Go on. Go on, Mekon,” drawled the tall High-born, but there was an edge to his drawl now. “You were going to say something like… ‘warned’?”
“Of course Mekon didn’t mean to say anything like that.” It was Trahey, almost literally pushing himself between the other two men, whose eyes were now fixedly fastened on each other.
“I’d like to hear Mekon tell me that,” murmured Slothiel.
Mekon’s eyes dropped. “I—of course, I didn’t mean anything of the sort. I don’t remember what I was going to say,” he said.
“Then I take it,” said Slothiel, “that I’ve won. One Lifetime Point, to me?”
“One—” The admission clearly stuck in Mekon’s throat. His face had darkened with a rush of blood similar to the flush that Jim had noticed come too easily to the face of Ro. “One Lifetime Point to you.”
Slothiel laughed. “Don’t take it so hard, man,” he said. “You can have a chance to win it back anytime you’ve got a decent wager to propose.”
But Mekon’s temper had flared again. “All right,” he snapped, and swung to face Jim. “I’ve given up the point—but I’d still like to know why this Wolfling didn’t even twitch when the beast went for him. There’s something unnatural here.”
“Why don’t you ask him?” drawled Slothiel.
“I am asking him!” said Mekon, his eyes burning upon Jim. “Speak up, Wolfling. Why didn’t you show any sign of a reaction?”
“The Princess Afuan is taking me to the Throne World to show me off to the Emperor,” Jim answered quietly. “I could hardly be shown off if I were badly torn up or killed by an animal like that one. Therefore, whoever was responsible for the cat coming at me was certain to make sure that I wouldn’t be hurt by it.”
Slothiel threw back his head and laughed loudly. Mekon’s face, which had paled back to its normal color, now flushed again with a dark rush of angry blood.
“So!” snapped Mekon. “You think you can’t be touched, is that it, Wolfling? I’ll show you—”
He broke off, for Ro had suddenly appeared in the room beside them; and now she literally shoved herself between Jim and the angry High-born.
“What’re you doing to him?” she cried. “He’s supposed to be left with me! He’s not for the rest of you to play with—”
“Why, you little mud-skinned throwback!” snapped Mekon. His hand darted out to the small black stick running through the two loops of the ropelike material that acted as a belt to her white dress. “Give me that rod!”
As his hand closed upon it, she snatched at it herself; and for a moment there was a tug-of-war in which the rod had come loose from the belt and they both had hold of it.
“Let go, you little—” Mekon raised one hand, clenching his fingers into a fist as though to strike down at Ro; and, at that moment, Jim stepped suddenly up to him.
The High-born yelled suddenly—it was almost a bass scream—and let go of the rod, falling back and holding his right arm with his left hand. All down along his forearm a line dripped red, and Jim was putting the little knife back into its scabbard.
There was a sudden, utter, frozen silence in the room. Trahey, the heretofore self-possessed Slothiel, and even Ro were utterly still, staring at the blood running down Mekon’s forearm. If the walls of the ship had begun to crumble about them, they could not have looked more overwhelmed and stupefied.
“He—the Wolfling damaged me,” stuttered Mekon, staring wildly at his bleeding arm. “Did you see what he did?”
Slowly Mekon raised his eyes to his two companions.
“Did you see what he did?” Mekon screamed. “Get me a rod! Don’t just stand there! Get me a rod!”
Trahey made a slow move as if to step toward Ro, but Slothiel, with suddenly narrowed eyes, caught Trahey’s arm.
“No, no,” murmured Slothiel. “Our little game isn’t a game anymore. If he wants rods, let him get them himself.”
Trahey stood still. Ro abruptly disappeared.
“Blind you, Trahey!” shouted Mekon. “I’ll collect from you for this! Get me a rod, I say!”
Trahey slowly shook his head, though his lips were almost bloodless.
“A rod—no. No, Mekon,” he said. “Slothiel’s right. You’ll have to do that for yourself.”
“Then I will!” screamed Mekon—and disappeared.
“I still say you’re a brave man, Wolfling,” said Slothiel to Jim. “Let me give you a piece of advice. If Mekon offers you a rod, don’t take it.”
Trahey made an odd little sound, like a man who has started to speak and then suddenly thought better of it. Slothiel turned his eyes upon the other High-born.
“You were going to say something, Trahey?” he asked. “Perhaps you were going to object to my advising the Wolfling?”
Trahey shook his head. But the glance he threw at Jim was baleful.
Mekon suddenly reappeared, his arm still bleeding, but the hand at the end of it clutching two short black rods like the one Ro had worn in the loops of her belt. He held one of these in his good hand, and stepping forward, thrust it at Jim.
“Take this, Wolfling!” he snapped.
Jim shook his head and drew the small knife from his kilt.
“No thanks,” he said. “I think I’ll stick to this.”
Mekon’s face lit up savagely.
“Suit yourself!” he said, and threw the rod he had offered across the room. “It makes no difference to me—”
“But it does to me!” cut in a new voice. It was a woman’s voice, behind Jim. Jim turned quickly and backed off a step so as to keep everyone in the room in front of him. Ro had reappeared, he saw; and with her was a tall female High-born whom Jim believed he recognized as Afuan. Behind both women towered a slim High-born male, possibly even an inch or two taller than Slothiel.
“Well?” went on Afuan, if it was indeed she. “Has something happened to alter the tables of precedence, so that you think you can take it on yourself to rod one of my pets, Mekon?”
Mekon had frozen. Even the expression on his face, caught halfway between rage and astonishment, seemed fixed there by a sort of paralysis.
Behind the two women the unusually tall male High-born smiled slowly. It was a smile something like the lazy smile of Slothiel, but there was more of a feeling of power—and perhaps more of cruelty—in it.
“I’m afraid you’ve offended Her Majesty, Mekon,” he said. “That could cost you more than a few Lifetime Points. Men have been banished to the Colony Worlds for less.”