"Well, you don't seem any worst for wear, although I'd like to keep you overnight just to make sure," the doctor told me, her smile assuring me that there was nothing seriously wrong with me. Raspa nodding, An'na there at her side with Aurora. The First Princess of the Lorr was now a friend, not the horrid monster she had first appeared to me. I wondered if all I had passed through had been merely an illusion or reality? I had no broken bones, nor for that matter even any bruises, which had puzzled the doctor quite a bit considering the distance that we had fallen! Raspa too was in perfect health, which was surprising considering how far she had come across the surface of Mars so swiftly, the doctor having told me that I was lucky as few Lorr could have traveled so far so fast without dying in the attempt! Raspa having actually covered a distance of a hundred and seventeen miles from the site of our saucer's destruction to where she had found a small human settlement where she might obtain assistance in a period of little over eighteen hours! True, the lighter gravity of Mars had helped, but I suspected that the real TRUTH was not something that the doctor would have believed!
"Raspa," I said, reaching out to her a few minutes later, the others having left. Taking her antennae in my hands, such being a sign of trust among the Lorr. "Did we see last night what we thought?" I had asked her that when I had been brought aboard the saucer to be brought back to this underground Lorr "city". At the time she had been rather non-believing about the matter, merely saying that Lorr venom does strange things to people as does lack of oxygen to a Lorr's brain, the atmosphere of Mars being uncomfortably low in oxygen even to the Lorr. I felt her antennae gently caress my face, then suddenly we were once again MIND-LINKED! Once again I saw through her eyes, saw myself as I appeared to her, the colors all different and strange, saw how she saw, heard what she heard, sensed the small room we were in not with vision, but now by her own fantastic radar-sense!
Once again I saw what she had seen, the figure of myself and next to me the form of a Lorr Queen, and she saw what I saw, the form of a woman so beautiful it took your breath away! I sensed her thoughts, and she mine. We were now one! Two individuals, alien to each other, but yet one! I sensed also her concern that others of her race might consider her unfit to continue as their First Princess, that her own sanity might be considered doubtful!
"I suggest," Raspa said to me, breaking the mind-link, "That we each have `much' to think about." And with this she left me, then going out the door which closed with a soft hum behind her.
I awoke from sleep to the sound of the door humming closed behind someone, and saw there in the dim light a Lorr, a strange Lorr! Saw its antennae suddenly lay back, such being a sign of anger and hatred among the Lorr, THE CREATURE THEN LEAPING UPON ME!!! "DIE!" I heard in my little earphone, its great mandibles now seeking the softness, the vulnerability of my tender throat!
"HELP!" I screamed, fighting to keep those terrible mandibles from my throat there in the darkness, the weight of the six legged giant ant holding me down as I struggled futilely against this nightmarish horror. A Lorr is stronger than any man, being able to lift somewhat over a quarter of a ton for a short period. They can drag off things weighing half a ton or more. Their muscle structure is different than ours. They have strange abilities, physical capabilities that us mere humans do not possess.
I rolled out of the bed, caught in the sheets, the blankets, its forelimbs tearing, ripping at my flesh, my blood running from my wounds, my only thought in my agony to keep those terrible mandibles from my throat, the awful stings already visibly extended! This must be, I knew, the one who had sought our deaths! The one who had sabotaged our disc and caused the containment failure that resulted in the explosion of our craft from its anti-matter fuel. Now she had returned, determined to slay! To kill! To inject into me a lethal dose of her venom! Venom enough to paralyze and kill me in only a few minutes! The fight a nightmare that will remain burned in my memory for all time!
Agony coursed through my naked body as her hind and middle legs tore at me, the claws ripping through the bed covers half covering me. I felt the flesh rip there in my thigh as I drew up my knees and tried to throw the giant ant off me. My body arching up beneath it as I tried a judo toss to no avail, the Lorr clinging to me with its six legs in an unbreakable hold. I am of the Warrioresses, but this was no human foe, but an alien monster whose ancestors had been bred beneath a different sun than ours. Bred by evolution to hunt and kill creatures like me. It was only later on in their evolution that they began using the humanoid creatures of their world to serve their needs instead of merely hunting them for food. The Lorr, like Man, is a predatory creature with a bloody past. It was bred to hunt, and to fight. Like Man it became ruler of its own world, master of the beasts.
Then suddenly my hand slipped and I felt its sting enter my neck, felt the poison of its venom flow into my bloodstream as its venom glands emptied themselves, the venom from the other sting spraying harmlessly against my face and neck as I held it clear! A few droplets of it stinging my eye as it sprayed out!
"HEY! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!" I heard the nurse on duty scream, the Lorr suddenly leaping free of me, and with one motion, its mandibles spreading wide, seizing her! Her scream cut short as it ripped out her throat with a clawed forelimb, the blood spurting out over its great black head as it killed her! I watched it then turn, look back at me for a moment in seeming triumph as it stood over the body of the innocent woman it had just killed, and then it was gone! The venom coursing through my body as I fought against the poison now running cold in my veins! The paralysis from the venom already starting as I crawled towards the door, leaving a trail of blood behind me from my torn flesh, everything seeming to swim before me as I started to lose consciousness. The sound of yells, of tossing bodies there outside in the hallway. Confused sounds like that of a fight! Then something like a shot registering in my consciousness just before I passed out there a foot or so away from the bloody torn dead body of the nurse who had been unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time! Her lovely blue eyes now glazing in death still wide in horror from the sudden attack by the Lorr as her golden hair laid matted and bloody in the pool of blood that still oozed slowly from her torn throat and stained her lovely form fitting white uniform! I was unconscious by the time that Raspa and An'na found me lying there in a puddle of blood beside the nurse. The puncture wound on my neck proof of what had happened to me, as was the Lorr venom still wet there on the side of my neck where it had been sprayed harmlessly by her other sting!
"You were lucky, very lucky," An'na said to me, sitting at my bedside, Raspa standing at her side, her antennae gently swaying back and forth, one now splinted from having been broken in the fight with my attacker. I recalled the nurse, how swiftly she had been killed and shuddered at the thought. I now understood why it was said that no man could ever stand against a Lorr. Against a creature that is as strong as a lion or tiger of Earth. While they do not have the "endurance" of such creatures, the Lorr do possess amazing strength, being able to draw upon powers that can be developed in humans only under very unusual circumstances. On Earth they move slowly, our gravity uncomfortable to them, but don't deceive yourself that they can't move quickly if they really want to, even under our gravity! True, their endurance is short, but they can kill you in a few seconds, and that's all the time it took Sisa, the insane Lorr who attacked me, to kill the night duty nurse right there before me!
"I `sensed' danger," Raspa said, speaking with her antennae close to me so that others would not overhear. I remembered how her ESP powers had saved our lives before. An'na had shot the insane Sisa with a blaster pistol, a Lorr weapon that fires explosive bullets when the creature had attacked Raspa, its bloody head and behavior leaving no doubts as to what it had just done!
"She was the one who Raspa disciplined for leaving you and your daughter to drown," An'na explained. Sisa had been the Lorr Princess in command of the battle-disc that had recovered my airplane. Her fury at being disciplined had lead to the events that I have narrated here in this story. She had sought my death, and that of Raspa's. She came close to success too, only immediate medical attention having saved my life from the dose of venom she had injected into my neck. And that only because she had been able to only inject from one of her stings, not both. Raspa telling me that had she stung me with both her stings that I would have died in only a minute or so from so much of the venom!
"I think we should allow our patient to rest," the doctor interrupted, stepping into the room, glancing nervously at Raspa, who as First Princess of the Lorr, possessed almost infinite power over both the humans and the Lorr here on Mars. The armed guard, a Lorr Warrioress with her laser armament outside the door backed up by a Mars woman armed with a automatic blaster rifle speaking of the recent events that had made news all over Mars!
"That is my own `professional opinion' too," I agreed. Fortunately they had gotten to me in time, neutralizing the venom, although I had been warned that it would be some time before my injuries were fully healed, Sisa having almost torn me apart in the fight. The terrible ripping claws of that insane Lorr Princess having proved more injurious than any of the blades of those I had fought back on Earth! I would be glad to go "back home". To a world where I only had to face edged and pointed weapons!
"Aurora!" I smiled, giving her a grim smile, thankful to be alive after everything that had happened to me here on Mars. The attractively figured blonde giving me a warm smile in return as she sat on the edge of my bed, her green eyes glowing down into mine. She was, I thought to myself, a woman "burdened" by guilt. She is a very attractively featured woman, quite beautiful. More so in my own "opinion" than was Queen Tulis, although that is of course just my own view of the matter. She reminds me much of Darlanis, although her eye color and facial features are different. It is my "belief" now that she is actually Darlanis' own mother, although just "how" this all occurred I do not yet know. This last in any case explaining why Tulis acted the way she did!
"You are a close `friend' of Darlanis, aren't you?" Aurora said to me, giving me a smile as I then nodded and smiled back. Her lovely eyes now looked down into mine. I knew she was an important person here on Mars, being Raspa's own "favorite" human. She is also a very famous "singer" here, her songs of "love" being extremely popular among the women of Mars, who admired her. I have listened to her sing, and wept as she did so. She is the finest singer I have ever heard either on Earth or Mars, I know!
"And you want me to keep from her that her daughter lives here on Mars," I smiled, suspecting that was the reason for this conversation we were now having. I supposed Darlanis might appeal to Raspa for the return of her daughter, although An'na was now "old" enough to make such "decisions" for herself, I thought.
"I loved her father," Aurora spoke softly, her words almost like a sudden blow to me as she sat there on the edge of the bed! "He was kind, gentle, and I `gave' myself to him without reservation." She had been the Lorr's "ambassador" to Dularn, if such a term really applies here, the Earth being a "conquered" planet.*
* The Lorr maintain "embassies" in the major capitols much like the nations of the Earth once did back in the Twentieth Century.
"And An'na is her daughter," I ventured, wondering if it was true. Aurora nodded, confirming my suspicions. Aurora going on to say that she considered Darlanis an "unfit" mother, Darlanis at the time An'na was eight years old being completely involved in building up the Empire of California and having "little time" for An'na, or "Anna" as Darlanis and Thar Marden had named her. An'na having been found by a patrolling Lorr disc floating in the ocean clinging to a life ring from "Sarnian Queen", Darlanis' own flagship which sank on some uncharted rocks off Trelandar during a storm. Darlanis having told me of the horror she felt seeing her daughter being carried off by the waves, never to be found!
"Darlanis is just a `barbarian'," Aurora said to me.
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