t to underestimate the foe. Joe had been correctly estimated
and found wanting. He realized that only by sinking to the sand could
he throw the fight. The duel ended upon one combatant or the other
falling to the sand.

And then he could see the other's expression. There was to be no
throwing in of the towel for Joe Mauser. At the first sign of such a
move, the other would dart in, cobra-quick, and deal the finishing
blow. The death blow. Rakoczi was fully capable of such speed. The man
was a phenomenon, metabolically speaking.

Joe, his heels almost to the chalk line of the arena boundary, dashing
suddenly forward again. His opponent, jeering, as before, darted
backward with such speed, even through the sand, as to be
unbelievable.

Joe Mauser grinned wolfishly. He tossed the Bowie knife suddenly into
the air. It turned in a spin to come down blade in his hand.

He stepped forward with his left foot, threw with full might. The
Bowie knife, balanced to turn once completely in thirty feet, blurred
through the air and buried itself in the Hungarian's abdomen, up to
the hilt.

The Sov officer grunted in agony, stared down at the protruding hilt
unbelievingly. His eyes come up in hate, glaring at Joe who stood
there across from him, hands now extended forward in the stance of a
karate fighter.

Joe could follow the other's agonized thoughts in his expression.
There were medics available and though the wound was a decisive one,
it need not be fatal, not in this day of surgery and antibiotics. No,
not fatal, the Sov Officer decided. He glared at Joe again, his teeth
grinding in his pain and shock. To move across the ring at the
American would be disastrous, stirring the heavy Bowie knife in his
intestines.

Rakoczi knew he had only split seconds, then he must sink to the sand
so that aid might come. But perhaps split seconds were sufficient. He
reversed his own knife in hand, preparatory to throwing.

Joe watched him. The other's face was a mask of pure agony, but he was
no quitter. He was going to make his own throw.

It came, blurringly fast, too fast to avoid. The heavy frontier knife
turned over half in the air and struck Joe along the side, glancing
off, ineffectively. Sandor Rakoczi fell to the sand and the medics
came on the run, both toward him and to Joe.

And then the fog began to roll in on Joe Mauser, and he noted, as
though distantly, that the medical assistance that General Armstrong
had provided f