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Updated: May 24, 2025
Tolto could not swing his club, but he hurled it, like a battering ram, into the middle of twenty or twenty-five of the garrison who were still below him on the steps, trying to get closer. The heavy timber cleared a lane and the two stumbled down over crushed bodies. Sime was now the only one to use his pistol, for he had no friends there to kill accidentally.
The uniform doesn't fit and I bet the man he took it from is no longer alive. Do you know the giant with him?" "Under that dirt and blood, I'd say he's Tolto, Princess Sira's special pet. No other man of Mars could be that big! Seven or eight years ago she was just a kid, you know she picked him up in some rural province. Kids just naturally do run to pets, don't they?
Keeping well within the shelter of the convex wall, he crept toward the bend. "Dig your fingers into a joint and hold on," he instructed Tolto, locating a crack for himself. Then he tossed the fragment gently over the barricade of bodies. There was the click of its fall, and a moment later things seemed to turn around.
"Tolto, you climb on top of that rock. Watch me. If you see anybody after me, let 'em have it. I'm going to see if I can scare up a desert hog somewhere." Neither had stirred from his place, however, before they were suddenly stricken to the ground. They felt the familiar sensation of cold and suffocation the paralysis caused by a diffused beam from a neuro-pistol.
They were almost clear when Tolto received his first serious wound, a stab in the abdomen that let out a sticky stream of blood. There was an interval of silence, broken only by the groans of the wounded. The air was thick with the odor of raw blood and pungent with ozone.
But it was so small, in proportion, and so slippery with blood, that he was unable to dislodge it. So Tolto matched brute strength against brute strength. His arms encircled his enemy's body, and the tremendous muscles of his shoulders and body began to arch. So they stood poised for a few seconds, as if on the brink of eternity. "Go-o-o-wie!" exclaimed one of the soldiers, awed.
And the princess was no exception. But he looks like nobody's pet now. I'd rather have him peg me with his neuro, though, than to take me in his hands!" They watched as Sime and Tolto slowly walked about in widening circles, and when they were sufficiently far away Murray and Tuman closed in. They had no expectation of finding the ship unlocked, and wasted no time trying to get it.
Sime Hemingway tried to tell him but his swollen tongue would not behave. Instead, he waved in the general direction of the Sun. Tolto understood. "From Earth? Good guy, prob'ly. Want this dingus?" Sime was able to take the neuro-pistol. He knew what was expected of him, and strove to collect his faculties so he could obey orders.
Then the conical little head sank between the bulging shoulders, the long, thick arms bowed outward, and the ape-man launched himself at Tolto. That was a battle! On the one side devotion, simple-minded loyalty and a fighting heart in a body of such mechanical perfection as Mars had never seen before or since. On the other side a primal beast, just as huge, rage-driven, atavistic, savage.
But he grinned with hope when his head struck one of the handles. His strong teeth closed down on it. That would have been something to see! The box was of thin, strong metal, but it was heavy. With no other purchase but his teeth, Tolto dragged it to him, on top of him. Now his hands could help a little.
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