If I Were You by L. Ron Hubbard

other beasts knew that they must roar and swap pedestals and glare at their trainer, to make a fighting act.
    Up came the chair to Tommy’s chest. Forward came the tiger, spitting curses, raking out with lustful claws.
    And the routine would have held together, for now Tommy was perceiving that this was routine with them all, done so often that neither beasts nor man had to think what came next. They were automatons in a cage, and if he let his body follow through, he would be all right.
    But Tommy himself did not know that the roll-over tiger’s ferocity was supposed to reach such a hideous pass. For a moment, once more he was fully Little Tom Little. He knew how far behind him he could go—but in his anxiety, he estimated the distance for Little Tom Little, not six-foot-three Jerry Gordon—and took three steps, when he should have taken one.
    Just at the point where he was sure he could get through, when he had lost respect for these brutes and the act, his heel caught in an abandoned hoop!
    Backwards he went, falling heavily, for it was further down than he had thought. He strove to brace himself up the instant he struck. He wanted to slash with the whip and fire the gun, and then take an instant’s rest in the entranceway.
    But this act was no fake, nor was it wholly routine. For these were jungle cats, from Malaysia and Africa, and to see their trainer down—
    The roll-over tiger sprang. Tommy fired the gun into her open mouth. She screamed and sprang back. But the others had not felt her pain. The others saw only their trainer now—and how many years they had waited for that! How many years had they sat on these pedestals glaring hungrily at this man, biding their time, doing his bidding, waiting for the time when they could smother him with their weight, rake him with their claws, feel his warm flesh between their mighty jaws!
    And down they came!
    Immediate death was not scheduled by fate in that instant, for a great lion jostled a tiger as they both leaped in the van . Blood enemies, personal enemies, they whirled and met with a thud which shook the bars like straws.
    Tommy, in an agony of fear, pitched himself backwards, still striving to gain his feet. He faced about to shout imploringly at the menagerie men. Already spikes were being snatched up and fagots thrust into the cage. But it was slow, slow work, and death was only split instants away.
    The warring brutes had touched off the bomb. Released from the constraint of whip and flame, others smashed into each other with all the strength of pent-up hate. Still others remembered the fallen trainer and strove to get at him through the press. The two brutes who had started it, intent upon each other, shifted their warring ground toward Tommy. In a moment they were fighting on top of him, paying him no heed, but blanketing him and trampling him and clawing him just the same.
    The tent had gone crazy. Five thousand voices had emitted a single sound, and now again there was silence. The menagerie men poked unavailingly through the bars. Three fought together all at once trying to open the door and drag the trainer out.
    “You fools!” screamed a shrill voice. “You fools, get away from that door!”
    Tommy, through the haze of battle, saw a sight which came into his consciousness more acutely than even the shock of immediate death.
    Somehow Jerry Gordon—the real Jerry Gordon, in the image of Little Tom Little—had fought away from his captors. And now, seeing his beasts tear themselves to bits, seeing his own desired body threatened in war upon the sawdust, about to be slaughtered, he too had forgotten his momentary identity. He belonged in that cage, and he was fighting his way to it.
    “Use your gun!” screamed the real Gordon.
    And in that instant the thing was again effected. Tommy could not have helped it had he tried. He had been called, the words were hot in his brain, and a moment later all the strain was done. For there he stood, safe outside the