"Then, I am delighted to be able to oblige you. It doesn't do to be denied so fondly a wished-for occurrence."

Their swords flashed in a brief salute, and engaged with a scrape of steel on steel.

Tom was no expert on the niceties of fencing, but he could see that this fight bore little resemblance to the brief glimpses of Olympic fencing he had seen on television. The speed was the same, but there was a deadly intensity about the two men as they fought for their lives. Their eyes were locked on each other, and the shifting of their stockinged feet on the floor of the ship made a soft whispering counterpoint to Tach's gasping breaths.

His companions were staring at him, Trips with the look of a desperate basset hound, Asta the tip of her tongue just moistening her lips. Tom slowly turned his head, and stared at the black ball where it rested on the shelf only feet away. He reached out, struggling so hard that sweat popped out along his forehead and upper lip, and he found a great, yawning emptiness. The device didn't even quiver.

Trips moaned, and Tom looked back just in time to see the foible of Zabb's blade glance across Tach's upper arm. A trail of red followed its path. Tach withdrew with more haste than grace, and barely parried a vicious thrust from his cousin. Trips, his watery blue eyes wild behind the thick lenses of his glasses, flung himself forward, and landed on Zabb's shoulders. With a snarl the Takisian reached back, and flipped the hippie neatly across the room. Trips lay stunned on the luminous deck, gasping like a fish. Several of Zabb's guards dragged him back, and dumped him on the floor between the other humans.

"I can't, I just can't," Tom whispered frenziedly.

"You fucking wimp, " Asta enunciated clearly, and turned her back on him, returning her attention to the duel which had begun again.

Tach blinked hard, trying to clear the stinging sweat from his eyes. Each breath burned, and tiny tongues of flame seemed to be licking at the muscles of his sword arm. Watch, watch, he urged himself.

Blade, coming up so fast it was just a blur.

He parried with a sharp beat, the force of the blow vibrating down his already-overtaxed muscles.

A riposte… but not with the blade. With his mind. A section of shield flowed, wavered. He thrust, hit, and Zabb staggered under the mental attack. He charged back. Corps a corps. Zabb's breath hot on his face. The blades hopelessly tangled between them. Tach strained, trying to throw Zabb back, but he was overmatched. The mind, a gray, implacable wall. No, not quite!

Tach jerked his body to one side, avoiding a vicious knee to the groin, leaped back, and kicked Zabb's back leg out from under him. Envelopment, but his cousin was too fast for him. Zabb parried, and followed with a swift riposte, and a mind blast. It slid of Tach's shields.

His vision seemed to be blurring around the edges. No stamina. Wind almost gone. Turtle!

He tried a wild, desperate thrust in tierce. Zabb tapped it aside almost contemptuously. He was a demon. That smile, still in place, and only a few beads of sweat mingled in the curly sideburns. His lashes dropped, hooding his eyes, and he pressed the attack. Nausea lay thick on his tongue as Tach realized that Zabb had only been toying with him before.

"Would you like to call it quits, beloved cousin?" whispered his tormentor. "Of course you would. But it's not to be. As promised, I am going to kill you."

No breath to answer the taunt, he just shook his bead, more to clear the sweat than to deny the statement. He lanced out with a desperate mental blow which was turned by Zabb's shields, and then, like a miracle, he saw an opening. He lunged, blade scraping along Zabb's. Zabb took his foible in a flashing parry, and passed on, his point searching for the heart. Time thrust! Lure to the unwary. Death!

He was sure he was seeing it: the brief flaring of the nostrils, the sardonic half-grin. Steve Bruder, with the same mannerisms as he crushed Tom's hand. Fuck you! he flung at

Zabb as the power washed through him, tingling in his extremities. He reached out, and…

The blade coming swift and true, then miraculously pulled off line. Not much room, but enough! Tachyon brought up his sword, parrying on the forte.

A plentitude of targets offered themselves. The heart, the belly, a shoulder cut? Tach caught his lower lip between his teeth, and for one wild, glorious moment considered driving the point deep, deep into that hated body. He lunged, and their eyes met for one eternal, frozen moment. The blade turned in his hand, the hilt taking Zabb neatly in the chin with a sound like an ax hitting wood. Zabb's sword clattered to the floor, and he pitched forward on his face. There was a gasp like a rising'wind from the assembled watchers. For a moment Tach stared at his sword, then flung it aside, and knelt beside his cousin. Gently he rolled him over, and cradled the larger man in his arms.

"You see, I couldn't do it," he whispered, and he wondered why there were tears pricking at his eyelids. "I know you'd rather I killed you, but I couldn't. And despite our training, death is not preferable to dishonor."

Tom stood, his hands clenched at his sides, and reveled in the waves of excitement and joy that were washing through his body. He had done it. True, he had used enough concentration to shift a bulldozer, and the end result had been only a minute deflection. But it had been enough! Tach would live indeed, had won-because of Tom's action. With a little swagger he faced the alien device. It flashed through the air, landing with a satisfying smack in Tom's hands.

"Come on, Tachy, time to go," he sang out, his round cheeks flushed with excitement.

Tach laid Zabb gently down, and leaped to his friends. Not a single relative made a move.

Tom handed over the device with an awkward little bow. Tach returned the salute. "Well done, Turtle. I knew you could do it."

He looked to Benaf'saj, made an elegant leg, winked, and ordered them home.

It was like being in the center of a vortex of nothingness. Icy cold and utter darkness, and for Tachyon the feeling that his mind was being torn into tiny, tattered streamers by the stress of holding all four travelers within the envelope of the singularity shifter.

By the ancestors, he wailed. At least let us land on dry land.

Tachyon crumpled, the device rolling from his nerveless fingers. Trips was squatting in a gutter holding his head in his hands, and muttering over and over, "Oh wow!" Tom retched a few times as his abused stomach tried to decide just where in space and time it was currently residing. There was a growing commotion, people yelling, windows being flung open, horns blaring as cars rolled to a stop, their occupants gawking at the tableau on the sidewalk. Tom dug the heels of his hands into his eyes, looked down at Tach, and quickly dropped to his knees beside the Takisian. Blood was pumping sluggishly from the long gash on his arm, and was running from his nose, and he was alarmingly white. The alien seemed to be scarcely breathing, and Tom pressed his ear to his friend's chest. The heartbeat fluttered erratically.

"Is he gonna be all right, man?" mumbled Trips.

"I don't know." Tom threw back his head, and stared up at a ring of black faces. "Somebody get a doctor."

"Shit, man, they just popped in from nooowhere."

"Teleportin' honkies. You think they be aces, or what?"

"Doctor, git a doctor," bawled a burly man.' Asta backed slowly away from the circle of spectators, her eyes searching quickly for the black ball. A couple of kids were inspecting the device, and she stepped to them.

"I'll give you five dollars each for that."

"Five dollars! Shit! It just be a bowlin' ball with no'holes in it. What good that gonna do you?"

"Oh, you'd be surprised," she said softly, and fished her billfold out of her dance bag. The exchange was quickly made, and she tucked away the alien device.