Part 2

"They caught me. You'll have to out-dance him honestly."

"But I can't go much farther--" He was covered with sweat and his chest was heaving.

I felt like the lowest kind of a dog for having let him down. Molock might be an utter damned fool, but when the chips were down, he was in there trying for all of us. He had built all his hopes on this trick with the needle gun.

Circling the dancing ground, he suddenly stopped, stood with his hands on his hips, chest heaving.

"You give up?" Shad Brisbee shouted. "You quit?"

"I do not--give up!" Molock wheezed.

"But you have stop dancing."

"I have danced your way--for two zonars. Turn about is fair play. Now you dance--my way."

"Your way?" Astonishment showed in all of Shad Brisbee's six eyes. "You humans don't dance, you don't know how."

"That's where you're wrong!" Molock answered. "We know how to dance in a new way--a way you stupid Venusians have never heard of."

I didn't know whether Shad Brisbee and the others were more excited over the insult or the thought of a new way to dance. Dancing was the blood of life to them.

"No way Venusians not know!" Shad Brisbee shouted. "We know _everything_ about dancing, all steps, all--"

"Hell, you don't know this way," Molock interrupted. "I doubt if you could do it even if I taught it to you."

He was stalling for time but as he was stalling he was getting his strength back. Personally, it was my opinion that all he knew about dancing he had learned in a dime-a-dance hall in some space port on Earth, but if he wanted to teach this to the Venusians, it was all right with me.

"Show him to me!" Shad Brisbee screamed. "I can do him."

"All right. Watch this." Weaving forward with his hands up, Molock slugged Shad Brisbee on the jaw.

The startled Venusian almost turned a somersault as he went over backward. A cry of rage arose, both from Shad and the onlookers.

"Kill the human--"

"Slaughter him--"

"Now you try to hit me!" Molock ignored the cries for his blood. He weaved away with his fists up.

"That's not dancing!" Shad Brisbee roared.

"It's _our_ kind of dancing, the human way to dance," Molock answered. "Yah, you big yellow-belly, you can't do it!"

I held my breath. The hopeless idiot--or maybe genius--was trying to turn a dancing contest into a boxing match. And he did. Screaming, Shad Brisbee charged, swung a tremendous hay-maker at Molock's jaw. Dodging, Molock slugged him behind the ear.

For the next fifteen minutes, to my awed and thunderously appreciative delight, I watched a Venusian get carved to pieces. Molock hit Shad Brisbee with everything up to and including his elbows and knees. He hit the Venusian in the gullet, the stomach, all over the head, and he knocked at least three eyes out of commission.

It took him exactly fifteen minutes to reduce a seven foot Venusian giant to the status of a whimpering child.

"I give ... I give ..." Shad Brisbee gasped. "You better dancer than me...."

"You will allow us to stay here unmolested, until we can get our ship repaired?" Molock demanded.

"Sure ... Sure ... I do that for you ... if you do one thing for me...."

"What's that?"

"Here, I whisper to you...." Leaning forward, Shad whispered something in Molock's ear. The human looked a little surprised and startled. "Okay," he said. "It's a deal." Then, as if some secret thought was pleasing him tremendously, he began to grin.

"I'll say it's a deal," he said.

"Boys, we go home now!" Shad Brisbee shouted.

With awed and appreciative looks at the greatest dancer they had ever seen, they went streaming away from Shad Brisbee's dancing ground.

An equally awed and appreciative Wilkerson met us in the lock. Rita was there too, but Rita wasn't awed. She climbed right up into Molock's arms. "Did you get the pics?" he asked her.

"I got them, darling."

"Then we've got the world by the tail, honey. We've got the world by the tail."

It took two weeks to get our ship repaired. During this time, Molock was a mighty busy man, both taking pictures of his own selection and spending hours each day with Shad Brisbee. In spite of the fact that he had been licked, Shad harbored no animosity. He and Molock struck up a beautiful friendship.

When we finally got the ship repaired and was about ready to take off, a ship arrived from headquarters, carrying a most important visitor, a Mr. George Cooper, head of publicity. Wearing beautiful clothes, his fingers manicured, delicately perfumed--for he was a sensitive man--he descended from the lock.

Molock and Shad Brisbee greeted him.

Cooper smiled urbanely at them.

"He wants to dance, Shad," Molock said. "Try out your new step on him, the one I've been teaching you."

With one single forearm jab, Shad Brisbee knocked Mr. Cooper clear back into the ship the publicity man had just left. Then Shad turned eagerly to Molock.

"Tell me ... do I dance him good...?"

"Shad," Molock said, beaming. "You dance him beautiful."

The smile on Molock's face was a heavenly thing.

* * * * *

Well, that's about it, except for the pics, the ones Rita took of the dance and other carefully selected horror shots of some of the less beautiful aspects of this Eden in the Sky.

I understand these pics are terrific box office on Earth. All we know is that they're kicking credits in to us so fast that we're all getting rich, Wilkerson, Molock, Mrs. Molock, and me.

Of course, we're not exactly trying to double-cross the publicity department of Trans-Space, Inc., but if you are thinking of coming to Venus, it might be wise to see our picture first. It will give you a little more rounded view of a place that is a little short of Heaven ... about a couple of billion miles short of it.

And, if you are thinking of coming to Venus, you had better take one other thing into consideration--the promise Molock made to Shad Brisbee before the Venusian would concede defeat in dancing. Shad made Molock promise to teach him this new and wonderful form of dancing that humans knew.

Molock spent two weeks doing exactly that, which accounts for the enthusiastic greeting Mr. Cooper got from one of the tame Venusians.

I understand this form of "dancing" is spreading like wild fire over the Veiled Planet.

If you are thinking of going to Venus, you had better take in consideration not only the fog flies, the forty foot boa constrictors, the blue tigers, but the fact that every blasted Venusian native now considers himself an expert at "human dancing" and spends most of his spare time looking for humans to practice with.

Unless you're fully prepared to "dance" with these Venusians, you had better think twice before deciding to settle on this Eden in the Sky.

THE END

End of Project Gutenberg's Publicity Stunt, by Robert Moore Williams