question:  What saves Thig life in his fight with Torp?
context: Thig was shorter than the average Earthman—although on Ortha he was well above the average in height—but his body was thick and powerfully muscled. Here he patiently sat down to wait for an Earthman or an Earthwoman to pass. His task now was to bring a native, intact if possible, back to the carefully buried space cruiser where his two fellows and himself would drain the creature's mentality of all its knowledge. In this way they could learn whether a planet was suited for colonization by later swarms of Orthans. The mighty muscles of the Orthan sent him hurtling across the intervening space in two prodigious bounds, and his hands clamped across the mouth and neck of the stranger.... "There it is," announced Thig, dropping the limp body of the captured Earthman to the metal deck-plates. "Thig will be this creature!" announced Torp. "With a psychic relay we will transfer the Earthman's memories and meager store of knowledge to the brain of Thig! "For the good of the Horde," Thig intoned almost piously as he lifted Terry's body and headed for the laboratory. So it was that the bodies of the Earthman and the Orthan were strapped on two parallel tables of chill metal and the twin helmets, linked to one another by the intricacies of the psychic relay, put upon their heads. Twice, with subtle drugs they restored pseudo-life to his body and kept the electrical impulses throbbing from his tortured brain, but after the third suspension of life Thig removed his helmet. An hour later, his scars and altered cartilage already healed and painless, Thig again scraped sand over the entrance to the space ship and set out along the moonlit beach toward the nearest path running inland to his home. Men had no mates on Ortha, sex had been overthrown with all the other primitive impulses of barbarism; so he was incapable of understanding the emotions that swept through his acquired memory.
output:  Torp allowed his rage to blind him, so he did not realize he left Thig alive.
options:  Torp did not have the strength to kill him, despite hitting him for some time.  Thip's body had been left last to be disposed of.  Torp allowed his rage to blind him, so he did not realize he left Thig alive.  Torp wants to investigate his body for diseases before killing him.