So he was in the singlefighter with the jungle green around
him and the sky a moody gray above. All ship tell-tales were
registering nonsense, their functions jumbled by the interference
generated by a low-grade probability storm, that storm itself a
typical aftermath of a battle involving heavy use of the Weapons
Major of the Nexus.
        So Hatch had time to think, to plan and to act - for, equally
lost in the probability storm, Lupus Lon Oliver had no way to seek
out Hatch. But soon the probability storm would settle, the
instrumentation would function again, and Lupus would come hunting
for his rival.
        - Do it now.
        - Or do otherwise.
        Hatch did it. He killed his ship with commands both swift and
sure, then set the fighter down in the jungle with the aid of its
emergency crash-rockets.
        The ship descended through the jungle's triple canopy,
branches bending under its weight then whipping back upwards. A
shower of things fell from those whiplashing branches. Insects,
snakes, dead leaves, parasitic creepers, nests, arboreal snails.
Hatch glanced at his instrument panel. It was still registering
nonsense.
        He was almost down.
        He was -
        He was down.
        Spongy earth groaned, protested, buckled beneath the ship's
weight. Earth? No. Not earth, but a kind of swamp-slush. Hatch's
ship was mucking down in a swamp. Fortunately, it was being
supported by the root structure of the jungle trees, but those
far-spreading roots were not designed to take the weight of a
Nexus singlefighter.
        The ship settled, canted to one side at a crazy angle.
        Instrumentation?
        Nonsense still: but it was settling. The probability storm
was dying away. Best to act quickly, then.
        Hatch grabbed the singlefighter's remote control, then
abandoned ship. A clicketing-clicketing hum-roar of insects
assailed him as he opened the ship's door. He emerged to the heat-
soup air and tried to find footing on the interlocked root
structure of the jungle trees. He slipped, tottered, and almost
fell into the putrid swamp from which the trees arose. He caught
hold of a branch and looked down. The roots were patterned in
swirling brown and black, and were uncommonly shiny and slippery,
looking for all the world as if they had been lacquered.
        Hatch pointed the remote control at the ship and thumbed the
OBLITERATE button. Obedient to this command, the ship sheathed
itself in silence, compressed itself, crushed itself down to the
vanishing point, and was gone. Gone beyond recovery. Gone beyond
detection. The sudden envanishment of the singlefighter left a
temporary depression in the swamp-muck. Very temporary, for almost
immediately the glutinous murk-mud of the swamp bletched and
blurched, sleebing and sloobing into the depression, burying the
evidence in a slurching slooze of ooze, of black saliva, of fever-
pitch exudate.
        A thick and heavy latrine-and-vomit stench burped upwards
from the swamp as it sloozed into the space left by the quick-
crushed singlefighter. Hatch imagined the consequences of falling
into that filth, and shuddered.
        What now?
        Asodo Hatch was marooned in the hot and sweating fever-swamp
jungles of an alien planet, with nothing to ensure his own
survival excepting his own strength and wit, and the survival
skills which the Nexus had taught him.
        First question:-
        How dangerous was this jungle?
        Any entertainment program screened by the Eye of Delusions
would have pictured a jungle like this as a ravaging arena of huge
carnivores. If a Hero of the Permissive Dimensions were to be
dumped down in such a jungle, then within moments a multi-clawed
monster would surely manifest itself, drops of corrosive saliva
sizzling from its fangs as it came crashing through the trees. But
in point of fact, as Hatch knew well, eaters-of-flesh are
typically few and far between in any ecology, standing as they do
at or near the top of a pyramidal foodchain.
        Even so ....
        A tree would be safest.
        Hatch wiped the bubbling sweat from his forehead and looked
upwards into the heights of the nearest tree. An insect bit him on
the cheek. He slapped it to its death, and studied the heights
above. The trunk of the tree was sheathed in the same smooth and
shiny skin of brown and black which protected the roots. But the
tree branched at scarcely more than head-height, and thick
creepers trailed down its side. Hatch examined the nearest
creeper to make sure it was not a snake. He touched it with the
back of his hand. Then grasped it and shook it. A few fragments of
dead leaf descended, wisping and whispering. Hatch grabbed the
creeper with both hands, let it take his whole weight, then
bounced as violently as he could.
        A tree-snail fell. As it hit the roots, it broke with a sharp
!chick! which was clearly audible above the background noise of
clicketing insects. Hatch imagined that he might well be eating
such snails before very long. But there was no hurry. He could
comfortably go without any food whatsoever for the first two or
three days. But what about water? It was so hot in this fever-
swamp that his water requirements would be prodigious. And he
certainly could not drink from the stench-pit of a swamp which
spread itself through the green-veil distances as far as the eye
could see. Well. He could look for water inside the creepers
themselves. Or seek it above - seek it in the crotches of the
trees.
        But first - first he should climb.
        For his safety.
        Hatch yanked on the creeper again.
        The creeper held.
        Hatch began to climb, sweating as he did so. By the time he
reached a convenient crotch where he could settle down to wait,
the sweat was streaming off him, and his Startrooper's Standard
Gray was plastered to his skin.
        "Wah!" said Hatch, panting, amazed at the speed with which
the humidity sapped his strength.
        He was accustomed to dry heat, but had never liked humidity.
Still, it was not too bad once he settled down to wait and
dedicated himself to the task of sweating.
        Doubtlessly Lupus Lon Oliver was sweating also as he hunted
the nerveracking skies, waiting for Hatch's singlefighter to burst
out of hiding and attack him. Doubtless Lupus would hunt, would
circle uselessly, seeking an enemy ship masked against his hunting
instruments, and then -
        Why, within three days Lupus's ship would come to the end of
its fighting life, and would power down and land automatically,
its life support facilities losing all power a bare half-arc later
as the ship exhausted its last resources. Upon which Lupus would
have no choice but to get out and try to survive in the
wilderness.
        - Let him. Let him.
        Lupus would try. Doubtless. And he would die. The mortality
of the enemy: ever one of life's reliable satisfactions.
        Then Hatch, reassured by the regular rhythms of the jungle,
let his thoughts turned to the City of Sun and wondered if
Takabaga, his house on the edge of Cap Uba, had been burnt out in
riot. It was not much of a house, but it was his, and he did not
like to think of it in ruins, the bamboo charred, his bedding
reduced to feathery white ash, and every resident malatothapus
fled or dead.
        At least his wife was safe. For the moment. His wife, his
daughter, and the Lady Iro Murasaki. And any other refugees who
had entered the Combat College as Hatch's guests. By opting to
settle himself in the swampland jungles rather than fight with
Lupus in the skies above, Hatch had purchased them at least three
days of life. As his guests, they could not be expelled from the
Combat College until the competition for the instructorship had
reached an end, so they were safe till then. And a lot could
happen in three days.
        And then Hatch thought about his own body, still seated in
the initiation seat in the Combat College while his mind wandered
the world of the illusion tanks. The initiation seat would be
monitoring the condition of his physical flesh with the utmost
diligence. If maintenance became necessary, then the initiation
seat, obedient to its programming, would begin to interfere with
that flesh, to feed and catheterize it, to clean it and massage
it, to exercise the muscles and thus protect the flesh against
wasting. Hatch disliked the thought intensely. To be petted,
babied and investigated. He imagined his body helpless, mouth
ajar, a trace of saliva easing down its chin.
        - But that is there and this is here.
        So Hatch told himself, but he could not free himself from the
knowledge that the initiation seat was potentially dangerous. In
the last two or three generations, a number of students had been
killed by malfunctioning initiation seats which had bungled the
medical tasks of body maintenance. The equipment was simply too
old, too unreliable.
        And Hatch might be dependent on that machinery for quite some
time. For if Lupus Lon Oliver did not die quickly, then this trial
by combat might stretch on. And on. And on. How long could they
stay in the illusion tanks? There was a legal limit, wasn't there?
Yes. Hatch dredged up the relevant clause in the Regulations:
"Combat sequences in the illusion tanks will not be extended
beyond twenty-one days." Twenty-one days. A long time.
        - Still.
        - There's no helping it.
        And at least he had a reason for enduring those days. The
protection of his wife and daughter ... and his lover.
        - So.
        So Hatch began the diligent practice of conscious relaxation.
He tried to concentrate on all the things that were good. Here in
his tree above the swamp, he was free from all the worries of
Dalar ken Halvar. Here nobody could touch him. He was a world
away from the City of Sun, and, equally, a world away from the
Nexus. He was safe. Beyond all demands. Answerable only to the
Great God Mokaragash, and to none other.
        "Wah!" said Hatch, relaxing, reclining, feeling his steel
become flesh, his bowstrings become spiderweb.
        Abruptly, the million million clicketing insects of the
jungle simultaneously fell to silence. Hatch listened. Heard,
somewhere, a rhythmic squelching. A drop-drop-drop of water. Then
the insects began to speak again, all at the same moment. What
concerted their actions? Telepathy? Or did each incorporate in its
makeup some kind of clock? Valid questions, these, for Hatch knew
this jungle of illusions to be modeled on a real, literal bone-
and-water mud-and-blood pollen-and-wood ecosystem on some planet
which did or had existed sometime, somewhere.
        So the insects were not random aspects of a computerized
fantasia, but accurate models of living creatures which -
        Hatch thoughts were interrupted as the world wavered, melted
then abruptly brightened, his body suddenly seated, the hot and
moist replaced by the dry and cold -
        For he was back in the Combat College.
        Weirdly disorientated.
        Hatch had made the transition from illusion tank to reality
thousands of times before, but never under conditions quite so
unexpected.
        "Lupus!" said Hatch, blurting the word.
        Lupus Lon Oliver must have killed him, must have, thus
winning their encounter. Else how could Hatch possibly have been
plunged back into the world of the Combat College?
        "He demands," said Paraban Senk, speaking from the display
screen in Hatch's combat bay.
        "Demands?" said Hatch, bewildered. "Demands what?"
        "What do you think?" said Senk. "He demands adjudication."
        And Hatch felt a shuddering relief. So Lupus had not
outguessed him, outfought him, outmatched him. Instead, the young
Ebrell Islander was seeking to win this match by legal manoeuvre.
Well, it would be very interesting to see what he came up with.
Because as far as Hatch could see, his own position was
watertight.