an easy thing to learn, without years of experience._

The terms of the duel were simple: Massan and Odal were situated on a
rough-topped iceberg that was being swirled along one of the
methane/ammonia ocean's vicious currents. The ice was rapidly
crumbling; the duel would 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 viewplate.

A chunk of ice the size of a man's head sailed through the murky
atmosphere in a 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 the inside of the shoulder seam. _Dented,
but not penetrated._ A leak would have been disastrous, possibly
fatal. Then he remembered: _Of course--I cannot be killed except by
direct action of my antagonist. That is one of the rules of the game._

Still, he carefully fingered the dented shoulder 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 re-cross, with the infrared sensors scanning three hundreds
sixty-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
the ice, off by the edge of the iceberg.

* * * * *

Slowly and carefully, Massan made his way toward the base of the rise.
He picked one of the oxy-bombs from his belt and held it in his
right-hand claw.

Massan edged around the base of the ice cliff, and stood on a narrow
ledge between the cliff and the churning sea. He saw no one. H