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.
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 people—it had all seemed completely unreal to him.
But now, in this manufactured dream, he seemed vibrantly 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 sulphur 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.
He was encased in a one-man protective outfit that was half armored suit, half vehicle. An internal liquid suspension 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.
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 grippers 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:
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 behind 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, Massan 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.
Massan tried to back out of the way, but it was too late. The first chunk of ice bounced harmlessly off his helmet, but the others knocked him off balance so repeatedly 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.
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.
He tried, but his entire right arm was locked fast. He could not budge it a millimeter. And the same for the left. Something, or someone, was clamping his arms tight. He could not even pull them out of their sleeves.
Massan thrashed about, trying to shake off whatever it was. No use.
Then his detector screen was slowly lifted from the view plate. He felt something vibrating on his helmet. The oxygen tubes! They were being disconnected.
He screamed and tried to fight free. No use. With a hiss, the oxygen tubes pulled free of helmet. Massan could feel the blood pounding through his veins as he fought desperately to free himself.
Now he was being pushed down into the sea. He screamed again and tried to wrench his body away. The frothing sea filled his view plate. He was under. He was being held under. And now… now the view plate itself was being loosened.
“It’s only a dream!” Massan shouted to himself. “Only a dream! A dream! A.…”
11
Dr. Leoh stared at the dinner table without really seeing it. Coming to the restaurant had been Hector’s idea. Three hours earlier Massan had been removed from the dueling machine—dead.
Leoh sat stolidly, hands in lap, his mind racing in many different directions at once. Hector was off at the phone, getting the latest information from the meditechs. Odal had expressed his regrets perfunctorily, and then left for the Kerak embassy, under a heavy escort of his own plainclothes guards. The government of the Acquataine Cluster was quite literally falling apart, with no man willing to assume the responsibility of leadership… and thereby expose himself. One hour after the duel, Kanus’ troops had landed on all the major planets of Szarno; the annexation was complete.
