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we both know full well that you're planning to murder Massan tomorrow." His voice burning with anger,
Leoh went on, "You've turned my invention into a murder weapon. But you've turned me into an enemy.
I'll find out how you're doing it, and I won't rest until you and your kind are put away where you belong
... on a planet for the criminally insane!"
Hector reached for the door and opened it. He and Leoh went out, leaving Odal alone in the room. In a
few minutes, the dark-suited man returned.
"I have just spoken with the Leader on the tri-di and obtained permission to make a slight adjustment in
our plans."
"An adjustment, Minister Kor?"
"After your duel tomorrow, your next opponent will be Dr. Leoh," said Kor. "He is the next man to die."
The mists swirled deep and impenetrable around Fernd Massan. He stared blindly through the useless
view plate in his helmet, then reached up slowly and carefully placed the infrared detector before his
eyes.
Inever realized a hallucination could seem so
real,Massan thought.
Since the challenge by Odal, the actual world had seemed quite unreal. For a week, he had gone
through the motions of life, but felt as though he were standing aside, a spectator mind watching its own
body from a distance. The gathering of his friends and associates last night, the night before the duel-that
silent, funereal group of peo-ple-it had all seemed completely unreal to him.
But now, in this manufactured dream, he seemed vi-brantly alive. Every sensation was solid, stimulating.
He could feel his pulse throbbing through him. Somewhere out in those mists, he knew, was Odal. And
the thought of coming to grips with the assassin filled him with a strange satisfaction.
Massan had spent many years serving his government on the rich but inhospitable high-gravity planets of
the Acquataine Cluster. This was the environment he had chosen: crushing gravity; killing pressures;
atmosphere of ammonia and hydrogen, laced with free radicals of sul-phur and other valuable but deadly
chemicals; oceans of liquid methane and ammonia; "solid ground" consisting of quickly crumbling, eroding
ice; howling, superpowerful winds that could pick up a mountain of ice and hurl it halfway around the
planet; darkness; danger; death.
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He was encased in a one-man protective outfit that was half armored suit, half vehicle. An internal liquid
suspen-sion system kept him tolerably comfortable at four times normal gravity, but still the suit was
cumbersome, and a man could move only very slowly in it, even with the aid of servomotors.
The weapon he had chosen was simplicity itself: a hand-held capsule of oxygen. But in a
hydrogen/ammonia atmosphere, oxygen could be a deadly explosive. Massan carried several of these
"bombs" hooked to his suit. So did Odal.But the trick, is to throw them
Massan thought to himself,
accurately under these conditions; the proper range, the proper trajectory. Not an easy thing to learn,
without years of experience.
The terms of the duel were simple: Massan and Odal were situated on a rough-topped iceberg that was
being swirled along on one of the methane/ammonia ocean's vicious currents. The ice was rapidly
crumbling. The duel was to end when the iceberg was completely broken up.
Massan edged along the ragged terrain. His suit's grip-pers and rollers automatically adjusted to the
roughness of the topography. He concentrated his attention on the infrared detector that hung before his
view plate.
A chunk of ice the size of a man's head sailed through the murky atmosphere in the steep glide peculiar
to heavy gravity and banged into the shoulder of Massan's suit. The force was enough to rock him slightly
off balance before the servos readjusted. Massan withdrew his arm from the sleeve and felt inside the
shoulder seam. Dented, but not penetrated. A leak would have been disastrous, fatal. Then he
remembered:Of course, I cannot be killed except by the direct action of my antagonist. That is one of the
rules of the game.
Still, he carefully fingered the shoulder seam to make certain it was not leaking. The dueling machine and
its rules seemed so very remote and unsubstantial, compared to this freezing, howling inferno.
He diligently set about combing the iceberg, determined to find Odal and kill him before their floating
island disintegrated. He thoroughly explored every projection, every crevice, every slope, working his
way slowly from one end of the berg toward the other. Back and forth, cross and recross, with the
infrared sensors scanning 360 degrees around him.
It was time-consuming. Even with the suit's servomotors and propulsion units, motion across the ice,
against the buffeting wind, was a cumbersome business. But Massan continued to work his way across
the iceberg, fighting down a gnawing, growing fear that Odal was not there at all. And then he caught just
the barest flicker of a shadow on his detector. Something, or someone, had darted be-hind a jutting rise
of ice, off by the edge of the berg..
Slowly and carefully, Massan made his way across to the base of the rise. He picked one of the oxygen
bombs from his belt and held it in his right-hand claw. Edging around the base of the ice cliff, he stood on
a narrow ledge between the cliff and the churning sea. He saw no one. He extended the detector's range
to maximum and worked the scanners up the sheer face of the cliff toward the top.
There he was! The shadowy outline of a man etched itself on his detector screen. And at the same time,
Mas-san heard a muffled roar, then a rumbling, crashing noise, growing quickly louder and more
menacing. He looked down the face of the ice cliff and saw a small avalanche of ice tumbling, sliding,
growling toward him.That devil set off a bomb at the top of the cliff!
Massan tried to back out of the way, but it was too late. The first chunk of ice bounced harmlessly off
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his helmet, but the others knocked him off balance so re-peatedly that the servos had no chance to
recover. He staggered blindly for a few moments, as more and more ice cascaded down on him, and
then toppled off the ledge into the boiling sea.
Relax!he ordered himself.Do not panic! The suit will float you. The servos will keep you right side up.
You cannot be killed accidentally; Odal must perform the himself.
coup de grce
There were emergency rockets on the back of the suit. If he could orient himself properly, a touch of the
control stud on his belt would set them off and he would be boosted back onto the iceberg. He turned
slightly inside the suit and tried to judge the iceberg's distance through the infrared detector. It was
difficult, since the suit was bobbing madly in the churning currents.
Finally he decided to fire the rockets and make final adjustments of distance and landing site while he
was in the air.
But he could not move his hand.
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