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gravity, the feel of his leg and arm muscles as they held ready to act at—
    The door zipped upward.
    A grizzly looked in.
    Seven feet tall it was. The Alien bear had four arms, a blocky head, two short legs and his lower right hand held a white tube. The bear pointed the tube at the backpack.
    A red beam shot to it, causing the pack to shake and tremble.
    Bill jumped, aiming for the critter’s black-furred back, just behind its head.
    Impact!
    He clenched his legs about the bear’s midbody, his feet passing between the upper and lower arm pair.
    The belt garrote went down over the bear’s head.
    He leaned back and pulled on the end of the belt, tightening the loop about the thick, muscle-corded neck of the creature. Then he leaned forward, wrapped the  belt around its neck a second time, a third time, pulled tight a bit of slack, and then he grabbed the neck with both arms and clamped hard, hoping he could add to the blockage of air and blood. As his nose hit the back of the Alien’s head, he realized it was wearing an oxy breather mask. The strap of which pressed against his lips. Opening his mouth he clamped onto the plastic band, twisted his neck and bit through the strap. The mask fell down just as the bear reacted to his landing on its upper back.
    “ Medark !” it roared in Alien talk.
    Inside the cell something hummed, then said “Get off!”
    “Fuck you!” he said into the short black fur that covered the Alien’s head. He squeezed its neck with his arms, tightening the closure of the bear’s airway and whatever blood vessels ran up the neck and into its brain. Bill couldn’t believe his luck that a creature so similar to humans had entered his cell. It could have been a talking crab. Or that damned mouthy cockroach!
    The bear’s lower arm pair dropped the white tube and a tiny red cube it had held in its bottom left hand. Then it gripped his legs and pulled on them, trying to unwrap his leg grip of its midbody.
    The upper arm pair reached back with four-fingered hands for him.
    One massive hand grabbed his hair and pulled.
    The other giant hand clamped on his left arm and pulled outward.
    Twenty seconds had elapsed since he’d jumped onto the Alien bear and put the garrote loop about its neck.
    “Argghhh,” it gasped in what sounded like some kind of translated English.
    At least it lacked the air for words.
    Bill felt the hair on the right side of his head begin to pull out from his scalp.
    “Have some pain!” he yelled as he bent his head so his mouth came up against the forearm part of the bear’s right arm. He bit down hard, cutting through flesh, tendons and hitting bone. Bill clenched tight his jaw muscles and bit harder.
    “Crunch!” sounded as part of the bear’s forearm broke under the clamping of his teeth.
    “Ahhhoooh!” it cried weakly.
    But it still had the strength to rip its forearm out of Bill’s mouth. With it went some of his hair.
    The left hand that had been pulling at his left arm let go and went to the bear’s neck, trying to push stumpy fingers under the leather belt so as to allow for air and blood to reach its innards. Bill bit into the thumb and three fingers of the hand.
    The Alien bear shuddered.
    It dropped to its knees.
    A backward glance told him the Alien crewman was still only partway into his cell, having stepped back through the opening when it had felt his weight on its back. An effort at escape.
    “Go to sleep, you  hairy bastard!” he grunted as his arms hugged tighter the bear’s thick neck and kept the belt loop cinched firmly about its wide neck.
    The bear felt forward onto its face.
    Ignoring the blood that dripped from the right side of his head, where hair had been torn out, Bill let go his leg grip, rose to a crouch, braced his boots against the Alien’s back, pulled on the belt end and kept pulling for another thirty seconds.
    “Twenty-nine, thirty!” he gasped.
    He looked behind him.
    The cell door was open, leading out into a red