The machine, having delivered its last ball, shut itself off with a smug click. Stanton turned away from the handball court and walked toward the physical therapist, who was holding out a robe for him.
"That was good, Bart," he said. "Real good."
"One miss," Stanton said as he shrugged into the robe.
"Yeah. Your timing was off a shade there, I guess. It's hard for me to tell till I look at the slow-motion photographs. Your arms and hands are just blurs to me when they're moving that fast. But you managed to chop another ten seconds off your previous record, anyway."
Stanton looked at him. "You reset the timer again," he said accusingly. But there was a grin on his face.
The P.T. man grinned back. "Yup. Come on, step into the mummy case." He waved toward the narrow niche in the wall of the court, a niche just big enough to hold a standing man. Stanton stepped in, and various instrument pickups came out of the walls and touched him at various points on his body. Hidden machines recorded his heartbeat, his blood pressure, his brain activity, his muscular tension, his breathing, and several other factors.
After a minute the P.T. man said, "Okay, Bart, that's it. Let's hit the steam box."
Stanton stepped out of the niche and accompanied the therapist to another room, where he took off the robe again and sat down on the small stool inside an ordinary steam box. The box closed, leaving his head free, and the box began to fill with steam.
"Did I ever tell you just what it is that I don't like about that machine?" Stanton asked as the therapist draped a heavy towel around his head.
"Nope. Didn't know you had any gripe. What is it?"