He went under. The action was now concentrated at the far end of the pool. Hendley chose the moment's safety to dive in near his appointed goal. He wondered if the girl was as oblivious of him as she pretended, but within seconds the other players were plunging and wrestling all around him and there was no more time to think.
The rudimentary rules of the game soon became clear. There were five players on each side. Two were guards—Hendley's position—stationed near the goal to block an attack. The other three roamed the pool freely, battling for possession of the ball. That much was simple. What Hendley was unprepared for was the game's other basic rule: no holds were barred. To score or prevent a score, anything went.
His first lesson came when the ball squirted from a player's grip and bobbed loose within Hendley's reach. He got one hand on it. Something slammed into the back of his neck. A knee, missing his groin, sank into his stomach. Strong hands twisted his arm until it seemed ready to pop from its shoulder socket. He swallowed water.
Coming up gagging, he gulped frantically for air. His arm hung limp. As he grabbed the lip of the pool for support, he saw that the ball had moved halfway down the length of the pool. Across the way the brown-eyed, brown-skinned girl was laughing. More than that. She was clapping her hands. Applauding.
Grimly Hendley turned to meet another attack. This time he didn't try for the ball. He kept busy defending himself. One attacker got an arm around his throat, but Hendley had caught the flash of muscular arm from the corner of his eye. He was able to wrench free with no worse than a bruised neck.
Hendley surfaced, pleased with himself. The blond young man came up for air a few feet away. He glared at Hendley with hostile eyes. "You let 'em score!" he snarled. Then he was gone.
For a while Hendley was angry—with the blond man and with himself—but after a short time he no longer felt anything but a desire to get out of the water alive. Yet when the attackers threatened his goal, he threw himself at the nearest one with savage determination. His arms and legs grew heavy with weariness. His head ached. He wondered how long the game lasted, and he longed for the end with a deep yearning. He had forgotten all about the girl watching from the side of the pool.
Then another player was injured and carried from the pool. He was on the opposing team. It appeared that the attackers had used up their substitutions. The game went on, unevenly matched. Hendley's team went to work to exploit their advantage. They scored once. Moments later another of the opposing swimmers drifted senseless near the bottom of the pool. Five players to three. It would soon be over.
Hendley had grown numb to the meaning of what was happening. He was too tired to feel pity or outrage. The chief emotion he felt as the game resumed was an increased sense of security. The odds were improving.
That safe feeling lulled him into carelessness. When the other team, in spite of being outmanned, seized the ball and launched an attack, three of Hendley's teammates ganged up on the man with the ball. It bobbed free. Hendley made the mistake of playing the ball instead of protecting himself. Two men struck at him simultaneously, one at his head, the other from below. They dragged him down. One seemed to be trying to twist his leg off at the knee. The other, more direct, was also more effective. His first blow rocked Hendley's head. The second drove a tooth through his lower lip. The sun seemed to go down suddenly and the blue water turned dark. A band of pressure tightened around his neck. He clawed at it. It was an arm. It wouldn't come loose. His struggles became weaker. He wondered why his teammates didn't come to his aid. Then the man who'd been working on his knee changed tactics, raising the level of his attack—about eighteen inches. Hendley felt a rocketing pain. He followed its crimson burst. When he reached the center of it, it turned to water and he was drowning....