“I wasn’t certain if you’d get a chance to.”
“I won’t say goodbye,” she said, “because I expect you to return to Shinar before the year is out.”
“That might not be possible,” Vorgens said quietly. “At any rate, you’ll soon have other things to occupy your mind, without worrying about me. Merdon will be out f the hospital soon. By the end of the year, you might even be married.”
“I don’t think so,” she said.
“We hardly know each other.”
“We’ll have a lot to talk about.”
He grinned at her. “Yes, I suppose so. All right, I’ll be back, then. One way or another.”
They walked together toward the men at the ship. Within a few minutes Vorgens, Clanthas, and the others had boarded. Altai and Sittas stepped back and watched as the ship reverberated with power, took off majestically, and disappeared into the distant sly.
PART II
The Dueling Machine
To Myron R. Lewis — Scholar, swordsman, friend and inventor of the dueling machine
The Perfect Warrior
Dulaq rode the slide to the upper pedestrian level, stepped off, and walked over to the railing. The city stretched out all around him—broad avenues thronged with busy people, pedestrian walks, vehicle thoroughfares, air cars gliding between the gleaming, towering buildings.
And somewhere in this vast city was the man he must kill. The man who would kill him, perhaps-
It all seemed so real! The noise of the streets, the odors of the perfumed trees lining the walks, even the warmth of the reddish sun on his back as he scanned the scene before him.
It is an illusion, Dulaq reminded himself. A clever, man-made hallucination. A figment of my own imagination amplified by a machine.