g.

"Ready?" The second stepped back to the edge of the crowd and began
counting off half a minute by seconds.

The faces of the crowd faded from his consciousness. Bryce stood with
his hands empty at his sides as the seconds were counted. "Thirty,
twenty-nine, twenty-eight, twenty-seven," came the voice, counting
evenly and loudly. The world narrowed to a corridor of space with the
blocky figure of Beldman at one end and himself at the other. Funny,
Bryce thought, that he had never considered that bull-headed
impatience and strength as dangerous. He was a massive block of a man;
where Bryce was thick with muscle, J. H. Beldman was so wide in
shoulder and barrel and so thick in arm that he looked almost round.
Like Bryce he had worked up from the bottom, Bryce remembered,
starting as a truck driver and labor organizer, and then owning his
own line and giving UT a stiff battle before being bought out. Crude,
but that didn't mean that there wasn't a lightning brain behind that
round face.

"Twenty-six, twenty-five, twenty-four, twenty-three--"

He had underestimated the deadliness of the man. Beldman was obviously
subject to rages, and in the grip of one now, and if he had survived
all the duels and battles that his rages had brought long enough to
grow as old as he was then his age was an indication not of weakness,
but of the degree of his deadliness. The irritable thought came that
he might well be killed by this ox.

"Twenty-two, twenty-one, twenty, nineteen--"

He flexed his fingers restlessly, and felt in his mind the speed and
sureness of his draw and firing. That big blocky figure was just
another obstacle standing in his way, to be blasted aside. A loud
mouth to be shut.

"Ten, nine--" He concentrated on the counting, "--six, five, four--"
sureness growing like a coiled spring in every muscle. "--three--" He
crouched slightly. That blocky figure that was all the rest of the
world was no more than a target. A big target.

"Two--one--_fire_."

Something confusing happened. As the word came it seemed that a
gigantic blow hit him somewhere on his left shoulder, twisting him
around so he couldn't see his target. He spun back, willing himself to
shoot again quickly, but his legs buckled oddly as he turned. He
reeled, finding his balance with great effort.

Heavy slug, he thought, seeing as delayed memory the coiled spring
speed with which Beldman had moved. Bryce's left arm did not seem to
have any connec