badly.”
Ponte sat up groggily, his head rolling. It took him three tries to stand up again. He staggered forward.
“On your right is an inclined plane of the sort Galileo used, only much larger. You’ll have to hurry to get past the ball.…”
At a touch of Leoh’s finger on the control box, an immense metal ball began rolling down the gangway-sized plane. Ponte heard its rumbling, turned to stare at it goggle-eyed, and barely managed to jump out of its way. The ball rolled across the floor, ponderously smashing everything in its way until it crashed against the far wall.
“Perhaps you’d better sit down for a few moments and gather your wits,” Leoh suggested.
Ponte was puffing hard. “You… you’re a devil… a smiling devil.”
He reached down for a small sphere at his feet. As he raised his hand to throw it, Leoh touched the control box again and the turntable platform began to rotate slowly. Ponte’s awkward toss missed him by a meter.
“I can adjust the turntable’s speed,” Leoh explained as Ponte threw several more spheres. All missed.
The Acquatainian, his once-bland face furiously red now, rushed toward the spinning platform and jumped onto it, on the side opposite Leoh. He still had two small spheres in his hand.
“Be careful,” Leoh warned as Ponte swayed and nearly fell off. “Centrifugal force can be tricky.…”
The two men stood unmoving for a moment: Leoh alertly watching, Ponte glaring. The room appeared to be swinging around them.
Ponte threw one of the spheres as hard as he could. It seemed to curve away from Leoh.
“The Coriolis force,” said Leoh, in a slightly lecturing tone, “is a natural phenomenon on rotating systems. It’s what makes the winds curve across a planet’s rotating surface.”
The second sphere whistled by, no closer than the first.
“I should also warn you that this platform is made of alternate sections of magnetic and nonmagnetic materials.” Leoh gestured toward the mosaic-colored floor. “Your shoes have metal in them. If you remain on the magnetized sections, the red ones, you should be able to move about without too much difficulty.”
He touched the control box again and the turntable speeded up considerably. The room seemed to whirl wildly around them now. Leoh hunched down and leaned inward.
“Of course,” he went on, “at the speed we’re going now, if you should step onto a nonmagnetized section. …”
Ponte started doggedly across the turntable, heading for Leoh, his eyes on the colored flooring. Leoh stepped carefully away from him, keeping as much distance between them as possible. Ponte was moving faster now, trying to keep one eye on Leoh and one on his feet. He stopped abruptly, started to move directly toward Leoh, cutting in toward the center of the turntable.
“Be careful!”
Ponte’s feet slipped out from under him. He fell painfully on his back, skidded across the turntable out to the edge, and shot across the floor to slam feet first into a big metal block.
“My leg…” He groaned. “My leg is broken…”
Leoh stopped the turntable and stepped off. He walked over to the Acquatainian, whose face was twisted with pain.
“I could kill you fairly easily now,” he said softly. “But I really have no desire to. You’ve had enough, I think.”
The room began to fade out. Leoh found himself sitting in the dueling machine’s booth, blinking at the now dead screen in front of him.
The door popped open and Hector’s grinning face appeared. “You beat him!”
“Yes,” Leoh said, suddenly tired. “But I didn’t kill him. He can try again with his own choice of weapons, if he chooses to.”
Ponte was white-faced and trembling as they walked toward him. His followers were huddled around him, asking questions. The chief meditech was saying:
“You may continue, if you wish, or postpone the second half of the duel until tomorrow.”
Looking up at Leoh, Ponte shook his head. “No… no. I was defeated. I can’t… fight again.”
The chief meditech nodded. “The duel is concluded, then. Professor Leoh has won.”
Leoh extended his hand to the Acquatainian. Ponte’s grasp was soft and sweaty.
“I hope we can be friends now,” Leoh said.
Looking thoroughly miserable, Ponte mumbled, “Yes, of course. Thank you.”
6
Long after everyone else had left the dueling machine chamber, Leoh, Spencer, and Hector remained behind, pacing slowly across the tiled floor, speaking in low voices that echoed gloomily in the vast room.
“I must go now, Albert,” Spencer said. “My ship was scheduled to leave half an hour ago. My adjutant, outside, is probably eating tranquilizers by now. He’s a good man, but extremely nervous.”
“And there’s nothing you can do to convince Martine?” Leoh asked.
“Apparently not. But if you’re going to remain on the scene here, perhaps you can try.”
Leoh nodded. “I can speak to the scientists here at the university. Their voices should carry some weight with the government.”
Spencer looked skeptical. “What else will you be tinkering with? I know you won’t be content without some sort of research problem to puzzle over.”
“I’m trying to find a way of improving on the star ships. We’ve got to make interstellar travel easier.…”
“The star ships are highly efficient already.”
“I know. I mean a fundamental improvement. Perhaps a completely different way to travel through space… as different as the star ships are from the ancient rockets.”
Spencer held up a beefy hand. “Enough! In another minute you’ll start spouting metadimensional physics at me. Politics is hard enough for me to understand.”
Leoh chuckled.
Turning to Hector, Sir Harold said, “Lieutenant, keep a close eye on him as long as he’s in Acquatainia. Professor Leoh is a valuable man—and my friend. Understood?”
“Yessir.”
Odal stood rigidly at attention before Kor. The Intelligence Minister was leaning back in his padded desk chair, his hands playing over an ornate dagger that he used as a pointer.
“You don’t enjoy your duties here?” Kor was smiling coldly.
“I am an army officer,” Odal said carefully. “I find that interrogation work is… unpleasant.”
Kor tapped the dagger against his fingernails. “But you are one of the few men who can use the dueling machine for interrogation. And you are by far the best man we have for the purpose. The others are amateurs compared to you. You have talent!”
“It is difficult for me to interrogate fellow army officers.”
“I suppose so,” Kor admitted. “But you have done quite well. We now know exactly who in the army we can trust, and who is plotting against the Leader.”
“Then my work here is finished.”
“The plotting involves more than the army, Major. It goes far wider and deeper. The enemies of the Leader infest every part of our government. Marshal Lugal is involved, I’m sure.…”
“But there’s no evidence.…”
“I’m convinced he’s involved,” Kor snapped. “And Romis, too!”
“Don’t look so sour, Major,” said Kor, his smile broader and somehow more chilling. “You have served your Leader—and me—very well in these weeks. Now then .… how would you like to return to Acquatainia?”
Odal felt a shock of surprise and strange elation.
