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But now he was staring into Armand's small eyes and he was aware that the other was bobbing up and down, a few inches either way. Armand's hand fingered his chest control.
Lucky was instantly alert. The other was alternating the gravitational direction, moving the controls this way and that. Was he expecting to confuse Lucky?
Lucky was sharply aware that for all his experience with space he was inexperienced in the type of weight- lessness brought about by Agrav, for this was a weightlessness that wasn't absolute, as in space, but one that could be changed at will.
And suddenly Armand dropped as though he had stepped through a trap door-except that he dropped upward!
As Armand's large legs moved up past Lucky's head, they parted and came together as if to catch Lucky's head in a vise.
Automatically Lucky's head snapped back, but as it did so, his legs moved forward, his body swinging about its center of gravity, and for a moment, he was off balance and flailing helplessly. A roar of laughter arose from the watching men.
Lucky knew what was wrong. He should have dodged by gravity. If Armand moved up, Lucky should have adjusted controls to move up with him or to race down past him. And now it would take the pull of gravity to straighten him out. At gravity zero, he would tumble indefinitely.
But before bis fingers could touch his controls, Armand was past the top of his rise and was gathering speed downward. As he dropped past Lucky once more, his elbow caught Lucky a sharp jab in the hip. He dropped farther and his thick fingers clutched at Lucky's ankles, carrying him down, down. Armand pulled strongly downward and reached up to seize Lucky's shoulders. His harsh breath stirred Lucky's hair. He said, "You need a lot of training, mister."
Lucky brought up his own arms head-high and broke the other's hold sharply.
Lucky dialed gravity up and helped Ms upward movement by bringing his foot sharply down on the other's shoulder, accelerating Ms own pace and slowing the other's. To his own senses it now seemed that he was falling head downward and there was a tenseness about that sensation that seemed to be slowing his reactions. Or was it his Agrav controls which were somewhat sluggish? He tested them and lacked the experience to be certain, yet felt that they were.
Armand was on him now, bellowing, thrusting against him, attempting to use his own greater mass of body to maneuver Lucky hard against the wall.
Lucky wriggled his hand toward the controls in order to reverse the direction of gravity. He readied his knees for an upward thrust to coincide and lurch Armand out of position.
But it was A
A
Armand whispered hotly in Lucky's ear, "Had enough, mister? Just tell Red you'll leave. I don't want to hurt you bad."
Lucky shook his head. Strange, he thought, that Ar-mand's gravitational field had beaten his own to the shift. He had felt Armand's hand move to the controls and he was certain his own controls had moved first.
Twisting suddenly, Lucky placed his elbow sharply in the pit of Armand's stomach. Armand grunted, and in that split second Lucky got his legs between himself and the other's and straightened them. The two men flew apart and Lucky was free.
He shot away an instant before Armand returned, and then for the next few minutes Lucky concentrated only on staying away. He was learning the use of the controls and they were sluggish. It was only by skillful use of the footholds along the walls and lightning-like head-to-foot reversals that he managed to avoid Armand.
And then while he was drifting feather-fashion, allowing Armand to shoot past him, he turned his Agrav controls and found no response at all. There was no change in the gravitational field direction; no sudden sensation of accelerating one way or the other.
Instead, Armand was on him again, grunting, and Lucky found himself crashing with stu
5. Needle-Guns and Neighbors
Bigman felt fully confident of Lucky's ability to handle any overgrown mass of beef, and though he felt a sharp anger at the unsympathetic crowd, he felt no fear.
Summers had approached the lip of the corridor and so had another, a gangling, dark-complexioned fellow who barked out events as they occurred in a raucous voice, as though it were a flight-polo game on the subetherics.
There were cheers when Armand first slammed Lucky against the corridor wall. Bigman discounted those with contempt. Of course that shouting fool would try to make it look good for his own side. Wait till Lucky got the feel of the Agrav technique; he would cut that Armand guy into ribbons. Bigman was sure of it.
But then when the dark fellow yelled, "Armand has him now in a head lock. He's maneuvering for a second fall; feet against the wall; retract and extend and there's the crash, a beauty!" Bigman felt the begi
He edged close to the corridor himself. No one paid any attention to him. It was one advantage of his small size. People who didn't know him tended to discount him as a possible danger, to ignore him.
Bigman looked down and saw Lucky pushing away from the wall, Armand drifting nearby, waiting.
"Lucky!" he yelled shrilly. "Stay away!"
His cry was lost in the hubbub, but the dark man's voice as it was lowered in a conversational aside to Red Summers was not. Bigman caught it.
The dark man said, "Give the snoop some power, Red. There won't be any excitement."
And Summers growled in response, "I don't want excitement. I want Armand to finish the job."
Bigman didn't get the significance of the short exchange for a moment, but only for a moment. And then his eyes darted sharply in the direction of Red Summers, whose hands, held closely against his chest, were manipulating some small object Bigman could not identify.
"Sands of Mars!" Bigman cried breathlessly. He sprang back. "You! Summers! You foul-fighting cobber!"
This was another one of those tunes when Bigman was glad he carried a needle-gun even in the face of Lucky's disapproval. Lucky considered it an unreliable weapon, as it was too hard to focus accurately, but Bigman would sooner doubt the fact that he was as tall as any six-footer as doubt his own skill.
When Summers didn't turn at Bigman's shout, Bigman clenched his fist about the weapon (of which only half-inch of snout, narrowing to a needlepoint, showed between the second and third fingers of his right hand) and squeezed just tightly enough to activate it.
Simultaneously there was a flash of light six inches in front of Summers' nose, and a slight pop. It was not very impressive. Only air molecules were being ionized. Summers jumped, however, and panic, transmitted by the V-frog, rose sharply.
"Everybody," called Bigman. "Freeze! Freeze! You split-head, underlipped miseries." Another needle-gun discharge popped the air, this time over Summers' head where all could see it plainly.
Few people might have handled needle-guns, which were expensive and hard to get licenses for, but everybody knew what a needle-gun discharge looked like, if only from subetheric programs, and everyone knew the damage it could do.
It was as though fifty men had stopped breathing. Bigman was bathed in the cold drizzle of human fear from fifty frightened men. He backed against the wall. He said, "Now listen, all of you. How many of you know that this cobber Summers is gimmicking my friend's Agrav controls? This fight is fixed!"