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"By Mars!" Griswold's hand shot to his hip and there was a sudden rough cry from, the circle of watching men.
"Fair fight! Fair fight!"
The code of the Martian deserts was a hard one, but it drew the line at advantages considered unfair. That was understood and enforced. Only by such mutual precautions could any man be protected from an eventual force-knife in the back or blast-gun in the belly.
Griswold looked at the hard faces about him. He said, "We'll have it out back in the dome. On your jobs, men."
David said, "I'll see you in the dome if you wish. Meanwhile, step aside."
He walked forward unhurriedly, and Griswold stepped back. "You stupid greenhorn. We can't have a fist-fight with nosepieces on. Do you have anything but bone inside your skull?"
"Take your nosepiece off, then," said David, "and I'll take mine off. Stop me in fair fight, if you can."
"Fair fight!" came the approving shout from the crowd, and Bigman yelled, "Put up or back down, Griswold." He leaped forward, ripping Griswold's blaster from his hip.
David put his hand to his nosepiece. "Ready?"
Bigman called, "I'll count three."
The men yelled confusedly. They were waiting now, in keen anticipation. Griswold glanced wildly about him.
Bigman was counting, "One____________________ "
And at the count of "Three" David quietly removed his nosepiece, and tossed it, with the attached cylinders, to one side. He stood there, unprotecteds holding his breath against the unbreathable atmosphere of Mars.
7. Bigman Makes a Discovery
David moved as quickly as he dared, gauging his steps against the light gravity. He lunged clumsily (it was almost as though water were holding him up) and caught Griswold about the shoulder. He twisted sideways, avoiding the farmboy's knee. One hand reached to Griswold's chin, caught the nosepiece and yanked it up and off.
Griswold grabbed for it with the begi
Nearly a minute had passed since David had drawn Ms last breath. His lungs felt the strain. Griswold, eyes bloodshot, crouched and sidled toward David. His legs were springy, his motions graceful. He was used to low gravity and could handle himself. David realized grimly that he himself probably could not. One quick, injudicious move and he might find himself sprawling.
Each second took its strain. David kept out of reach and watched the twisting grimace on Griswold's face tauten and grow tortured. He would have to outwait the farmboy. He himself had an athlete's lungs. Griswold ate too much and drank too much to be in proper shape. The fissure caught Ms eye. It was some four feet behind him now, a sheer cliff, dropping perpendicularly. It was toward it that Griswold was maneuvering him.
He halted his retreat. In ten seconds Griswold would have to charge. He would have to.
And Griswold did.
David let himself drop to one side, and caught the other with his shoulder. He whirled under the impact and allowed the force of the whirl to add itself to his own thrusting fist which caught Griswold's jawbone at its socket.
Griswold staggered blindly. He let out his breath in a huge puff and filled his lungs with a mixture of argon, neon, and carbon dioxide. Slowly, dreadfully she crumpled. With a last effort he tried to raise himself, half succeeded, started falling again, tottered forward in an attempt to maintain his balance____________________
There was a confused yelling in David's ears. On trembling legs, deaf and blind to everything but Ms nosepiece on the ground, he walked back to the car. Forcing his tortured, oxygen-craving body to work slowly and with dignity, he buckled on his cylinders with care and adjusted his nosepiece. Then, finally, he took a shuddering drag of oxygen that poured into his lungs like the rush of cold water into a desiccated stomach.
It was a full minute before he could do anything but breathe, Ms huge chest rising and falling in large, rapid sweeps. He opened his eyes.
"Where's Griswold?"
They were around him, all of them; Bigman in the very fore.
Bigman looked surprised. "Didn't you see?"
"I knocked him down." David looked about sharply. Griswold was nowhere.
Bigman made a down-sweeping motion with his hand. "Into the fissure."
"What?" David frowned beneath the nosepiece. "This is a bad joke."
"No, no." "Over the edge like a diver." "By Space, it was his own fault." "Clear case of self-defense for you, Earthie." They were all talking at once.
David said, "Wait, what happened? Did / throw Mm over?"
"No, Earthie," Bigman clamored. "It wasn't your doing. You hit him and the bug went down. Then he tried to get up. He started going down again, and when he tried to keep his balance, he sort of hopped forward, too blind to see what lay ahead of him. We tried to get him, but there wasn't enough time, and over he went. If he hadn't been so busy maneuvering you to the edge of the fissure so he could throw you over, it wouldn't have happened."
David looked at the men. They looked at him.
Finally one of the farmboys thrust out a hard hand. "Good show, farmboy."
It was calmly said, but it meant acceptance, and it broke the log jam.
Bigman yelled a triumph, jumped six feet into the air, and sank slowly down, with legs twiddling under him in a maneuver no ballet dancer, however expert, could have duplicated under Earth gravity. The others were crowding close now. Men who had addressed David only as "Earthie" or "You," or not at all, were clapping him on the back and telling him he was a man Mars could be proud of.
Bigman shouted, "Men, let's continue the checkup. Do we need Griswold to show us how?"
They howled back, "No!"
"Then how about it?" He vaulted into his car.
"Come on, farmboy," they yelled at David, who jumped into what had been Griswold's car fifteen minutes before and set it in motion.
Once again the call of "Sand awa-a-a-ay!" shrilled and ululated through the Martian wisps.
The news spread by sand-car radio, leaping across the empty spaces between the glass-enclosed stretches of farm lands. While David maneuvered his vehicle up and down the corridors between the glass walls, word of Griswold's end made its way across all the expanse of the farm.
The eight remaining farmboys of what had been Griswold's sub-section gathered together once again in the dying ruddy light of Mars's sinking sun and retraced the early-morning drive back to the farm dome. When David returned, he found himself already notorious.
There was no formal evening meal that day. It had been eaten out in the desert before the return, so in less than half an hour of the completion of the checkup, men had gathered before the Main House, waiting.
There was no doubt that by now He
It was not that they had any great hate for He
All in all, it was more excitement than the Makian farm had seen in three Martian years, and a Martian year is just one month short of being two Earth-years long.