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Slowly the small craft rose from the ground as Gahan leaped the inert bodies of
the rykors lying in his path. The first of the pursuers sprang from the tower just
as Gahan seized the trailing rope.
"Faster!" he shouted to the girl above, "or they will drag us down!" But the ship
seemed scarcely to move, though in reality she was rising as rapidly as might
have been expected of a one-man flier carrying a load of three. Gahan swung free
above the top of the wall, but the end of the rope still dragged the ground as the
kaldanes reached it. They were pouring in a steady stream from the tower into
the enclosure. The leader seized the rope.
"
Quick!" he cried. "Lay hold and we will drag them down."
It needed but the weight of a few to accomplish his design. The ship was stopped
in its flight and then, to the horror of the girl, she felt it being dragged steadily
downward. Gahan, too, realized the danger and the necessity for instant action.
Clinging to the rope with his left hand, he had wound a leg about it, leaving his
right hand free for his long-sword which he had not sheathed. A downward cut
clove the soft head of a kaldane, and another severed the taut rope beneath the
panthan's feet. The girl heard a sudden renewal of the shrill whistling of her foes,
and at the same time she realized that the craft was rising again. Slowly it drifted
upward, out of reach of the enemy, and a moment later she saw the figure of
Turan clamber over the side. For the first time in many weeks her heart was filled
with the joy of thanksgiving; but her first thought was of another.
"You are not wounded?" she asked.
"No, Tara of Helium," he replied. "They were scarce worth the effort of my blade,
and never were they a menace to me because of their swords."
"
They should have slain you easily," said Ghek. "So great and highly developed is
the power of reason among us that they should have known before you struck
just where, logically, you must seek to strike, and so they should have been able
to parry your every thrust and easily find an opening to your heart."
"But they did not, Ghek," Gahan reminded him. "Their theory of development is
wrong, for it does not tend toward a perfectly balanced whole. You have developed
the brain and neglected the body and you can never do with the hands of another
what you can do with your own hands. Mine are trained to the sword--every
muscle responds instantly and accurately, and almost mechanically, to the need
of the instant. I am scarcely objectively aware that I think when I fight, so quickly
does my point take advantage of every opening, or spring to my defense if I am
threatened that it is almost as though the cold steel had eyes and brains. You,
with your kaldane brain and your rykor body, never could hope to achieve in the
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