PRINCESS OF CHAOS

By BRYCE WALTON

The howling, slavering mob in the blood-spattered arena hated the half-breed Moljar—prayed gibberingly for his death. But Moljar looked coldly up at the Princess and licked dry lips. He would not die—while she lived!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1947. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Moljar planted his columnar legs wide apart beside the dying saurian and blinked blood and sweat from his eyes. Only slightly strained after three hours of the Red Moon Games, his seven foot height of Terran-Martian muscles gleamed damply in the blazing arc lights of the Colosseum. His lungs sucked hungrily at the dense Venusian air as he waited for whatever would next be sent against him, the champion of them all.

Through sweat-blurred vision he watched the climbing tiers of eager spectators, a high curvature outlined against the crimson mist. Red Moon Games! Bi-monthly slaughter, ordered by the Princess Alhone when the unnatural filtering of the reflected sun's rays spread a carmine glow through the fog.

The grey sands of the arena were daubed with sprawled forms of monsters and men alike. Out of the shambles, Moljar's black barbarian eyes shone as they swung up to fix on the Princess Alhone where she sat with a retinue in her private observation box. Her grey-furred, semi-human body glimmered softly beneath the blue-glowing effulgence that always bathed her in its royal cold light.

Her heavily jeweled paw raised, dropped. The signal.

A roar of sadistic anticipation swelled, echoing from the misty range of hills, beyond Venus Port, out across the Sea of Mort that washed its marble walls.

Moljar shifted toward the gates. His hands flexed about the alloy bar. At Princess Alhone's gesture, the gates across the arena lifted. The monstrous beast, somewhat resembling a Mesozoic saber-tooth tiger of Terra, charged out straight for Moljar in a blinding burst of speed and power.

The half-breed swung the pitiful weapon which had jokingly been granted him, a five-foot length of compressed alloy. It cracked against the giant cat's skull. Moljar leaped aside as the beast plunked on its face, rolled in a flurry of sand and blood. Tendrils of gore oozed from its shattered skull as it lumbered erect and charged again, erratically now, circling and leaping down toward the arena's far end, blinded and roaring in pain.

A sigh of ecstasy rose up in a long drone from the spectators—a polyglot of Solarians who had paid eighty credits for this night of vicarious blood-lust. Wealthy interplanetary aristocrats and cartel magnates, Mercurian and Martian speculators, Terran monopolists, adventurers and adventuresses from many worlds, muckers from the asteroid mines. All imagining themselves to be Moljar tonight. All hating him because he was a half-breed.

Of the half-thousand prisoners who had been marched into the amphitheatre—a few Terran mutants, many half-breeds, and space pirates who couldn't pay enough hush-hush credits—only three remained standing. The Terran girl mutant, Mahra, who had helped him slay the saurian and who had rare courage. Himself. And Gasdon, the Martian pirate, who, barehanded, was still battling the giant squid in the arena's synthetic quagmire. His yellow body was a panting, straining bulk beyond the tendrils of sulphur dioxide that bubbled up through the bog.

Moljar felt the Terran girl's hot breath on his neck as he waited for the pain-maddened cat to scent him down. His glittering eyes turned and met hers. Her silver mutant's hair glowed beneath the merciless glare of the flood lights. Her full, yet agile body wriggled in its brief trappings in nervous preparation for the cat's rapid return from the end of the arena. But when she spoke to Moljar her lips curled with obvious distaste.

"You fight well, for a half-breed," she said.

His teeth shone white in what might have been either a laugh or a snarl. "Go to your Martian outlaw. Gasdon's pure of blood. If he'll have you—mutant!"

She laughed sharply like shimmering glass. "I'm Mahra. I stand alone."

"You'll die alone," said Moljar, "if you stand by me."

She tossed her head. The cat was bearing down, shrieking in blind hate. "You think you've won, barbarian. Wait 'til the kristons are turned loose on us."

"I wait," said Moljar simply. "I've waited a long time, and I can wait forever. And someday I'll kill her. Alhone's pelt I'll have and give to my people to whom I pledged it."

His blood-spattered arm swept aside as the giant cat ploughed past in its sightless, pounding charge. He swung his bar again. It crunched through tissue and bone and brain, and the cat dropped suddenly like a stone. Its sleek gold and black body shivered and twitched as it died.

He planted a sandaled foot on the carcass and raised his face toward the Princess Alhone's royal booth. Reluctantly, a smattering of applause rose. Princess Alhone's silkily furred body was standing now. Motionless.

Moljar's voice rang out clear through the mist. "Moljar waits for worthy opposition. He is bored."

"Dirty half-breed dog!" howled a voice. Thousands joined in a thunder of obscene and filthy epithets.

Moljar laughed loudly. He saw Alhone's slim alien form tense as the saber tooth's had before a charge. And he began walking toward her across the blood-stained sands.

He paused as she raised a jeweled paw again. Moljar's eyes narrowed as the almost invisible vibrational force-wall rose up before the spectators and the rim of the vast arena.

"Kristons!" screamed Mahra behind him. "The wall protects the audience."

He heard the high whirring whine of the huge tri-winged, armor-plated insects as they were released into the arena. They dove and circled, maddened by the miasmic death vapor overhanging the stadium.

Like a trapped beast, the half-breed turned this way and that. Beads of sweat stood out on his heaving chest. He wiped his sweat-slippery hands on his leather tunic, then dried them in the sand, before he gripped his alloy bludgeon again. Then with the long eerie cry of the wild desert tribes he sprang into the air to meet the hurtling drive of the kriston that had singled him out.

The blinding speed of its wings distorted his perspective. The alloy bar, caught in their blurring motion, spun from his stunned hands. He cursed as he fell beneath its flight.