They went through the medical checks, the instructions on using the machine (which Leoh had written), and the agreement that the challenged party would have the first choice of weapons.
“My weapon will be the elementary laws of physics,” Leoh said. “No special instructions will be necessary.”
Ponte’s eyes widened slightly with puzzlement. His seconds glanced at each other. Even the dueling machine’s meditechs looked uncertain. After a heartbeat’s silence, the chief meditech shrugged.
“If there are no objections,” he said, “let us proceed.”
Leoh sat patiently in his booth while the meditechs attached the neurocontacts to his head and torso. Strange, he thought. I’ve operated dueling machines hundreds of times. But this is the first time the other man in the machine is reaUy angry at me. He wants to kille.
The meditechs left and shut the booth. Leoh was alone now, staring into the screen and its subtly shifting colors. He tried to close his eyes, found that he couldn’t, tried again and succeeded.
When he opened them he was standing in the middle f a large, gymnasium-like room. There were windows high up near the lofty ceiling. Instead of being filled with athletic apparatus, this room was crammed with rope pulleys, incBned ramps, metal spheres of all sizes from a few centimeters to twice the height of a man. Leoh was standing on a slightly raised, circular platform, holding a small control box in his hand.
Lal Ponte stood across the room, his back to a wall, frowning at the jungle of unfamiliar equipment,