Jonathan chose the centaurs. He wheeled around, dashed back the way he had come. Someone tackled him. He rolled on the rocky floor of the canyon. He struggled to his feet. He saw six more girls race around the bend in the canyon. With shouts of joy they flung themselves on him. Jonathan was game, but the nine husky amazons pinned him down by sheer weight. They bound him hand and foot. Then four of them picked him up bodily, started up the canyon chanting: "_He was a rocket riding daddy from Mars._" He recognized it as a popular song of three years ago. Jonathan had never been so humiliated in his life. He was known in the spaceways from Mercury to Jupiter as a man to leave alone. His nose had been broken three times. A thin white scar crawled down the bronze of his left cheek, relic of a barroom brawl on Venus. He was big, rangy, tough. And these girls had trounced him. Girls! He almost wept from mortification. He said, "Put me down. I'll walk." "You won't try to get away?" said Ann. "No," he replied with as much dignity as he could summon while being held aloft by four barbarous young women. "Let him down," said Ann. "We can catch him, anyway, if he makes a break." Jonathan Fawkes' humiliation was complete. He meekly trudged between two husky females, who ogled him shamelessly. He was amazed at the ease with which they had carried him. He was six feet three and no light weight. He thought enviously of the centaurs, free to gallop across the plains. He wished he was a centaur. The trail left the canyon, struggled up the precipitate walls. Jonathan picked his way gingerly, hugged the rock. "Don't be afraid," advised one of his captors. "Just don't look down." "I'm not afraid," said Jonathan hotly. To prove it he trod the narrow ledge with scorn. His foot struck a pebble. Both feet went out from under him. He slithered halfway over the edge. For one sickening moment he thought he was gone, then Ann grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, hauled him back to safety. He lay gasping on his stomach. They tied a rope around his waist then, and led him the rest of the way to the top like a baby on a leash. He was too crestfallen to resent it. The trail came out on a high ridge. They paused on a bluff overlooking the prairie. "Look!" cried Ann pointing over the edge. A half dozen beasts were trotting beneath on the plain. At first, Jonathan mistook them for horses. Then he saw that from the withers up they resembled men. Waists, shoulders, arms and heads were identical to his own, but their bodies were the bodies of horses. "Centaurs!" Jonathan Fawkes said, not believing his eyes. * * * * * The girls set up a shout and threw stones down at the centaurs, who reared, pawed the air, and galloped to a safe distance, from which they hurled back insults in a strange tongue. Their voices sounded faintly like the neighing of horses.