Dulaq hurried up the ramp. Odal was gone by the ime he reached the upper level-; He couldn’t have gotten far.
Slowly, but very surely, Dulaq’s hallucination crumbled into a nightmare. He’d spot Odal in the crowd, only to have him melt away. He’d find him again, but when he’d get closer, it would turn out to be another stranger. He felt the chill of the duelist’s ice-blue eyes on him again and again, but when he turned there was no one there except the impersonal crowd.
Odal’s face appeared again and again. Dulaq struggled through the throngs to find his opponent, only to have him vanish. The crowd seemed to be filled with tall blond men crisscrossing before Dulaq’s dismayed eyes.
The shadows Fengthened. The sun was setting. Dulaq could feel his heart pounding within him, and perspiration pouring from every square centimeter of his skin.
There he is! Yes, that is him. Definitely, positively him! Dulaq pushed through the homeward-bound crowds toward the figure of a tall blond man leaning casually against the safety railing of the city’s main thoroughfare. It was Odal, the damned smiling confident Odal.
Dulaq pulled the wand from his tunic and battled across the surging crowd to the spot where Odal stood motionless, hands in pockets, watching him dispassionately. Dulaq came within arm’s reach….
•TIME, GENTLEMEN. TIME IS UP. THE DUEL IS ENDED.”
The Acquataine Cluster was a rich jewel box of some three hundred stars, just outside the borders of the Terran Commonwealth. More than a thousand inhabited planets circled those stars. The capital planet— Acquatainia—held the Cluster’s largest city. In this city was the Cluster’s oldest university. And in the university stood the dueling machine.