In the fantasy stories of adventure in space that he enjoyed reading, the hero could always whip up a weird paralysis ray, a deadly, invisible robot bullet, or an intelligent gaseous ally from the void would appear. And out of scrap glass, metal and his shoestrings he could contrive a solar-powered shell that stopped any missile, deadlier than a marshmallow, cold.
In actual life he was finding it difficult enough to contrive a primitive sort of bow, a knife-lashed spear, and snares for the increasingly wary rabbits. Lack of sleep and lack of food supplies were sapping his lanky body of the whiplash swiftness and wiry strength it once possessed. Nor was the week-old wound any aid to his dulled wits....
The helmet advanced; he could almost see the twig-stuffed gray shirt's pockets, and he let his nostrils expand as he sucked in a steadying breath. Now, a yard behind the fake Andilian, he could see the moving shoulders and skull of Harl Neilson—or so his bloodshot eyes told him.
He squeezed the trigger. There was a subdued yip, and then a derisive jeer. Missed again—or had he?
"Sour rocketing, Grampaw," Neilson laughed. "Try again. And then I'm coming after you."
Only Neilson wouldn't. Unless he'd miscalculated the number of grenades, he wouldn't come charging at Treb. And he couldn't be sure of the number of cartridges Treb possessed. He was just talking to keep his nerve up.
Especially if he was wounded now. That sudden yip....
It was night again, an artificial night as artificial as the central ten-acre pool of water, the ring of flowering green trees and grasses, and the final outer ring of forest trees. It was here that the two thousand UN employees and soldiers on Earth Satellite One normally took their recreation periods.
Only the supervised war-duels, that since 1969 had been the only blood-letting permitted between nations, could long keep a Terran from visiting the green meadows and trees of this lowest of the three levels....