e grenade lobbing a touchy business. And
his bow was back in one of the dozens of foxholes he had spotted in both
the inner and outer rings of trees.

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....

"I'd give half that quarter million," Neilson groaned, across the
darkness, "for a cigarette."

"You mean," corrected Gram Treb, "half your ten thousand."

"It's the winner's grant or nothing, Treb. I promised Jane I'd hand it
to her. Then we'll marry."

"But not if you a