I couldn't.

I looked down. I was neatly bound in thin, tough, plastic tangle-cord,
swathed from chin to boot-bottoms, my arms imprisoned, my feet caught.
And tangle-cord is about as easy to get out of as a spider's web is for
a trapped fly.

It wasn't Martians that had done it. There weren't any Martians, hadn't
been for a million years. It was some Earthman who had bound us.

I rolled my eyes toward Val, and saw that she was similarly trussed in
the sticky stuff. The tangle-cord was still fresh, giving off a faint,
repugnant odor like that of drying fish. It had been spun on us only a
short time ago, I realized.

"Ron--"

"Don't try to move, baby. This stuff can break your neck if you twist it
wrong." She continued for a moment to struggle futilely, and I had to
snap, "Lie still, Val!"

"A very wise statement," said a brittle, harsh voice from above me. I
looked up and saw a helmeted figure above us. He wasn't wearing the
customary skin-tight pliable oxysuits we had. He wore an outmoded, bulky
spacesuit and a fishbowl helmet, all but the face area opaque. The
oxygen cannisters weren't attached to his back as expected, though. They
were strapped to the back of the wheelchair in which he sat.

Through the fishbowl I could see hard little eyes, a yellowed,
parchment-like face, a grim-set jaw. I didn't recognize him, and this
struck me odd. I thought I knew everyone on sparsely-settled Mars.
Somehow I'd missed him.

What shocked me most was that he had no legs. The spacesuit ended neatly
at the thighs.

He was holding in his left hand the tanglegun with which he had
entrapped us, and a very efficient-looking blaster was in his right.

"I didn't want to disturb your sleep," he said coldly. "So I've been
waiting here for you to wake up."

I could just see it. He might have been sitting there for hours,
complacently waiting to see how we'd wake up. That was when I realized
he must be totally insane. I could feel my stomach-muscles tighten, my
throat constrict painfully.

Then anger ripped through me, washing away the terror. "What's going
on?" I demanded, staring at the half of a man who confronted us from the
wheelchair. "Who are you?"

"You'll find out soon enough," he said. "Suppose now you come with me."
He reached for the tanglegun, flipped the little switch on its side to
MELT, and shot a stream of watery fluid over our legs, keeping the
blaster trained on us all the while. Our legs were free.

"