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167
The Status Civilization
·
Robert Sheckley
103
The
captain
of
the
guards
said,
"All
right,
let's
go."
"Luck,"
Joe
called
out.
And
then
the
line
of
prisoners
had
passed
through
the
iron
door
into
the
glaring
light
of
the
Arena.
Barrent
lived
through
the
hand-to-hand
duels
in
which
a
quarter
of
the
prisoners
were
killed.
After
that,
men
armed
with
swords
were
matched
against
the
deadlier
Omegan
fauna.
The
beasts
they
fought
included
the
hintolyte
and
the
hintosced--big-jawed,
heavily
armored
monsters
whose
natural
habitat
was
the
desert
region
far
to
the
south
of
Tetrahyde.
Fifteen
men
later,
these
beasts
were
dead.
Barrent
was
matched
with
a
Saunus,
a
flying
black
reptile
from
the
western
mountains.
For
a
while
he
was
hard-pressed
by
this
ugly,
poison-toothed
creature.
But
in
time
he
figured
out
a
solution.
He
stopped
trying
to
jab
the
Saunus's
leathery
hide
and
concentrated
on
severing
its
broad
fan
of
tailfeathers.
When
he
had
succeeded,
the
Saunus's
flying
balance
was
thrown
badly
off.
The
reptile
crashed
into
the
high
wall
that
separated
the
combatants
from
the
spectators,
and
it
was
relatively
easy
to
administer
the
final
stroke
through
the
Saunus's
single
huge
eye.
The
vast
and
enthusiastic
crowd
in
the
stadium
gave
Barrent
a
lengthy
round
of
applause.
He
moved
back
to
the
reserve
pen
and
watched
other
men
struggle
against
the
trichomotreds,
incredibly
fast
little
creatures
the
size
of
rats,
with
the
dispositions
of
rabid
wolverines.
It
took
five
teams
of
prisoners.
After
a
brief
interlude
of
hand-to-hand
duelling,
the
Arena
was
cleared
again.
Now
the
hard-shelled
criatin
amphibians
lumbered
in.
Although
sluggish
in
disposition,
the
criatins
were
completely
protected
beneath
several
inches
of
shell.
Their
narrow
whiplash
tails,
which
also
served
them
as
antennae,
were
invariably
fatal
to
any
man
who
approached
them.
Barrent
had
to
fight
one
of
these
after
it
had
dispatched
four
of
his
fellow
prisoners.
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