There were only two possible basic combinations, but an infinite number of variations. Either you feinted with a dogleg shot to draw your foe’s parrying fire out of line, and then made a straight-line correction, or you feinted with a straight-line shot, then made a dogleg correction to outflank the parrying fire. You either sprayed the chaff in a torus, if you feared the dogleg shot, or you sprayed in a cone, if you feared the straight shot.

One absurd variation which Montrose himself had used once was to point the weapon overhead and shoot the bullet up and then down into the crown of your foe, where the armor was thinnest, hoping he would not shoot his chaff straight up to block the shots. It was a variation quite easy to counter, since a straight shot into the enemy’s armpit with an escort bullet would kill him, and the main shot would practically cut a man in half.

The weather got cooler as Montrose walked on. The leaves were now brightly colored, red and yellow and rich brown. The birds were twittering, preparing to migrate to the nearby lands of summertime, less than a mile away.

A wind was starting. That was odd. No, it was more than odd, it was very bad. Usually there was a constant, unnoticed, mild breeze caused by the turning of the carousel, but the wind only began when the carousel was braking or accelerating. Since the wind was in his face, the carousel was braking. Colored leaves began to leap and swirl in the air, and the gentle, eternally flowing brook was splashing and sloshing in a chaotic fashion, seeming to rush faster.

The path led him into a grape arbor. Vines clustered thickly overhead, and the wind was less, but there were still clouds of colored leaves thrashing and whirling and leaping in his eyesight, blocking his view.

Then he saw the feet of his foe emerging downward from the curved roof of the grape arbor, half-hidden in the leafy cloud. Montrose stopped walking, turned sideways, raised his massive sidearm, a cubit long and six pounds in weight. To shoot now would place his shots in the ground, because of the downward curve imparted by Coriolis forces. If the carousel were changing its rate of spin, however, the degree of correction Montrose would have to calculate would be changing second by second.

“Like fighting a duel in a damn fun house,” growled Montrose to himself. But he released his chaff, hiding himself in a cloud of darkness. Del Azarchel was an indirect man, so Montrose emitted the chaff in a smoke ring. The high wind was causing it to disperse faster than normal: Montrose knew with a sudden light-headed feeling of fear that he had fired his chaff too soon, leaving him with a weak defense. Against a foe with the skill and cool eye of Del Azarchel, that advantage, small as it was, might spell the death of Montrose.

No, that light-headed feeling was not fear. It was lightness. Del Azarchel had done something to the ship, using the duel as cover, using the hour when the ship’s brain would accept no orders, no messages. And if Montrose turned off his countermeasures now to radio a message to Twinklewink, Del Azarchel would put all nine bullets through him.

Because his shot would pull low, Montrose had to wait until Del Azarchel’s helmet was visible. He had to … no, wait. He had to wait for nothing. Montrose raised his weapon a degree or two, pointing at the latticework of grapevines. He pulled the trigger.

The concussion of noise was like a hammer blow. The whole top of the grape arbor was blown upward by the escort bullets, who reacted to the obstacle as if they were enemy counterbullets. There was a gush of fire as the dry wood of the lattices ignited, but a gush of sudden wind lifted up the whole arbor roof screaming and snapping from its thin supports and flung it toppling. The wreckage of wood passed over the head of Montrose and landed behind him. In his earphone, he heard the crackling rush of fire spreading through dry leaves. While directly in front of him, he saw an impossible sight.

For a moment, he could not understand what he was seeing. It was Del Azarchel in his armor, his helmet and his head shattered, blood gushing from every joint. Every bullet of the load had struck the man, killing him instantly. Del Azarchel’s chaff cloud was directly overhead as well and was already tattered and torn by the stormy winds.

It was true. Enough of the front of the head was intact that Montrose could see it was clearly Del Azarchel, not some trick, not some homunculus in his armor. He was dead.

Montrose had won. After long, long last, he had won!

7. Victory

“What the plague?” shouted Montrose aloud.

Nothing he was seeing made sense. Montrose could not focus his eyes, and he was blinking away the sweat droplets he suddenly realized had been stinging his eye sockets for a while now, half blinding him.

Dimly, he could see where Del Azarchel stood, swaying, dead in his armor, blood running, leaking, squirting horribly from six or seven vast wounds in his neck, chest, abdomen, and groin. Both hands were raised, but not in surrender. Del Azarchel held his off hand open, displaying the white fingers and the black palm, the signal that the duelist was ready to fire. But his gun hand was also raised high, pointing at nothing.

Del Azarchel had died standing with his gun hand high overhead, trying for the absurd up-and-down crown shot. Montrose had guessed correctly that Del Azarchel had attempted the indirect shot. But then why had not any of the bullets fallen down around Montrose?

Montrose dropped his gun and struggled to unbolt the heavy helmet. The figure of Del Azarchel swayed as the wind overcame the heaviness of his armor. Del Azarchel tilted, waved his off hand in a cheery salute, and fell with the sound of a Franklin stove being pushed down the cellar stairs. The wind threw dead leaves across his form, half hiding the gore.

With a scream of frustration, Montrose yanked the ungainly helmet free. The echo of the bullet shots was still ringing from the far side of the ship, a mile away. He wiped his eyes. Now he could look upward.

The contrail of the bullet fire from Del Azarchel’s gun ran straight up from his overhead chaff cloud toward the dead center of the ship. The tree that circled the black opal sphere was on fire. In weightlessness, with no gravity to pull them into their characteristic teardrop shape, the flames were blue oblate masses that clung and crawled along the wood like blind worms of pure heat.

The black ceramic sphere itself, somehow, impossibly, was neither punctured nor scratched, but the antennae outside the ship were no longer held in place by their invisible struts, but were slowly, majestically, toppling end over end in an ever-widening spiral.

And the black sphere was no longer in the center of the ship. The black sphere, moving ever faster in what seemed like a spiral, now crashed through the lights and heating elements of the miniature sun, sending broken shards of lamps whirling across the weightless air on meteoric spiral dances of their own, spreading outward, coming toward the strip of garden that formed the carousel of the ship.

“Twinklewink! What is happening?”

The little fairy was by his side, as were an entire swarm. “The vessel has suffered nonrecoverable damage. Please enter hibernation and await rescue. There is no other available course of action.” That was the voice of Twinklewink, but it was slow and halting.

But a little figurine in black said, “I wished I could have waited to see the look on your face as you died, but, alas, fate has not been kind to me.” This was the voice of Del Azarchel.

8. And Defeat

Twinklewink continued to speak: “All main energy supplies have been expended, as have all the fuel cells containing Bondi-Forward negative-mass tritium. The central sphere of the ship was not harmed. The magnetic shrouds struck by Del Azarchel are severed. However, the shrouds on the far side of the sphere from his point of impact were entirely unharmed. I have been able to lock down the remainder. We have lost connection with three-fourths of the sail.”