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"Nick!" Erika gasped, staring at the figure in the doorway. "Don't stand like
that! You frighten me!"
Everyone in the room looked up abruptly at her cry, and so were just in time
to see a horrifying change take place hi Martin's shape. It was an illusion,
of course, but an alarming one. His knees slowly bent until he was
half-crouching, his shoulders slumped as though bowed by the weight of
enormous back and shoulder muscles, and his arms swung forward until their
knuckles hung perilously near the floor.
Nicholas Martin had at last achieved a personality whose ecological norm would
put him on a level with
Raoul St. Cyr.
"Nick!" Erika quavered.
Slowly Martin's jaw protruded till his lower teeth were hideously visible.
Gradually his eyelids dropped until he was peering up out of tiny, wicked
sockets. Then, slowly, a perfectly shocking grin broadened Mr.
Martin's mouth.
"Erika," he said throatily. "Mine!"
And with that, he shambled forward, seized the horrified girl in his arms, and
bit her on the ear.
"Oh, Nick," Erika murmured, closing her eyes. "Why didn't you ever no, no, no!
Nick! Stop it! The contract release. We've got to Nick, what are you doing?"
She snatched at Martin's departing form, but too late.
For all his ungainly and unpleasant gait, Martin covered ground fast. Almost
instantly he was clambering over Watt's desk as the most direct route to that
startled tycoon. DeeDee looked on, a little surprised, St.
Cyr lunged forward.
"In Mixo-Lydia " he began. "Ha! So!" He picked up Martin and threw him across
the room.
"Oh, you beast," Erika cried, and flung herself upon the director, beating at
his brawny chest. On second thought, she used her shoes on his shins with more
effect. St. Cyr, no gentleman, turned her around, pinioned her arms behind
her, and glanced up at Watt's alarmed cry.
"Martin! What are you doing?"
There was reason for his inquiry. Apparently unhurt by St. Cyr's toss, Martin
had hit the floor, rofied over and over like- a ball, knocked down a
floor-lamp with a crash, and uncurled, with an unpleasant expression on his
face. He rose crouching, bandy-legged, his arms swinging low, a snarl curling
his lips.
"You take my mate?" the pithecanthropic Mr. Martin inquired throatily, rapidly
losing all touch with the twentieth century. It was a rhetorical question. He
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picked up the lamp-standard he did'not have to bend to do it tore off the
silk shade as he would have peeled foliage from a tree-limb, and balanced the
weapon in his hand. Then he moved forward, carrying the lamp-standard like a
spear.
"I," said Martin, "kill."
He then endeavored, with the most admirable single-heartedness, to carry out
his expressed intention. The first thrust of the blunt, improvised spear
rammed into St. Cyr's solar plexus and drove him back against the wall with a
booming thud. This seemed to be what Martin wanted. Keeping one end of his
spear pressed into the director's belly, he crouched lower, dug his toes into
the rug, and did his very best to drill a hole in St. Cyr.
"Stop it!" cried Watt, flinging himself into the conflict. Ancient reflexes
took over. Martin's arm shot out.
Watt shot off in the opposite direction.
The lamp broke.
Martin looked pensively at the pieces, tentatively began to bite one, changed
his mind, and looked at St.
Cyr instead. The gasping director, mouthing threats, curses and objections,
drew himself up, and shook a huge fist at Martin.
"I," he announced, "shall kill you with my bare hands. Then I go over to MGM
with DeeDee. In Mixo-
Lydia "
Martin lifted his own fists toward his face. He regarded them. He unclenched
them slowly, while a terrible grin spread across his face. And then, with
every tooth showing, and with the hungry gleam of a mad tiger in his tiny
little eyes, he lifted his gaze to St. Cyr's throat.
Mammoth-Slayer was not the son of the Great Hairy One for nothing.
Martin sprang.
So did St. Cyr in another direction, screaming with sudden terror. For, after
all, he was only a medievalist. The feudal man is far more civilized than the
so-called man of Mammoth-Slayer's primordially direct era, and as a man
recoils from
civilized horror from an attacker who was, literally, afraid of nothing.
He sprang through the window and, shrieking, vanished into the night.
Martin was taken by surprise. When Mammoth-Slayer leaped at an enemy, the
enemy leaped at him too, and so Martin's head slammed against the wall with
disconcerting force. Dimly he heard diminishing, terrified cries. Laboriously
he crawled to his feet and sat back against the wall, snarling, quite
ready....
"Nick!" Erika's voice called. "Nick, it's me! Stop it!
Stop it!
DeeDee "
"Ugh?" Martin said thickly, shaking his head. "Kill." He growled softly,
blinking through red-rimmed little eyes at the scene around him. It swam back
slowly into focus. Erika was struggling with DeeDee near the window.
"You let me go," DeeDee cried. "Where Raoul goes, I
go."
"DeeDee!" pleaded a new voice. Martin glanced aside to see Tolliver Watt
crumpled in a corner, a crushed lamp-shade half obscuring his face.
With a violent effort Martin straightened up. Walking upright seemed
unnatural, somehow, but it helped submerge Mammoth-Slayer's worst instincts,
Besides, with St. Cyr gone, stresses were slowly subsiding, so that
Mammoth-Slayer's dominant trait was receding from the active foreground.
Martin tested his tongue cautiously, relieved to find he was still capable of
human speech.
"Uh," he said. "Arrgh ... ah. Watt."
Watt blinked at him anxiously through the lamp-shade.
"Urgh . . . Ur release," Martin said, with a violent effort. "Contract
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release. Gimme."
Watt had courage. He crawled to his feet, removing the lamp-shade.
"Contract release!" he snapped. "You madman! Don't you realize what you've
done? DeeDee's walking out on me. DeeDee, don't go. We will bring Raoul back "
"Raoul told me to quit if he quit," DeeDee said stubbornly.
"You don't have to do what St. Cyr tells you," Erika said, hanging onto the
struggling star.
"Don't I?" DeeDee asked, astonished. "Yes, I do. I always have."
"DeeDee," Watt said frantically, "I'll give you the finest contract on earth a
ten-year contract look, here it is." He tore out a well-creased document. "All
you have to do is sign, and you can have anything you want. Wouldn't you like
that?"
"Oh, yes," DeeDee said. "But Raoul wouldn't like it." She broke free from
Erika.
"Martin!" Watt told the playwright frantically, "Get St. Cyr back. Apologize
to him. I don't care how, but get him back! If you don't, I I'll never give
you your release."
Martin was observed to slump slightly perhaps with hopelessness. Then, again,
perhaps not.
"I'm sorry," DeeDee said. "I liked working for you, Tolliver. But I have to do
what Raoul says, of course."
And she moved toward the window.
Martin had slumped further down, till his knuckles quite brushed the rug. His
angry little eyes, glowing with baffled rage, were fixed on DeeDee. Slowly his
lips peeled back, exposing every tooth in his head.
"You," he said, in an ominous growl.
DeeDee paused, but only briefly.
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