The Tanker looked at him, face grim and solitary, shut away from Charlie. "My best ain't enough, Charlie. I'll do more than my best." Charlie Jingle was about to say something else when the bell banged away. He scooped the stool out of the ring and watched the Tanker shuffle into center to meet the Champion. * * * * * Thirty rounds of fighting is tough work. Even for machines. Thirty rounds of fighting, at five minutes per round, is one hundred and fifty minutes, two and a half hours, of solid, shattering labor. A machine overheats the way a man does under constant stress. It's joints expand, its lubricant thins, things begin to stick, friction wears parts. While a fight-machine's body works against time, its opponent pounds it, jars it, jolts it. Wires loosen. Gears slip. Tubes shatter. The machine slows, becomes gawky. Its timing is a split second off. Its flexibility, its speed, are worn down. When its pattern-analysis system becomes damaged, it cannot decipher the feints, the systems and combinations of its opponents' strategy. An eye is shattered, and the Trainer replaces it, since he carries a spare pair. The same one is smashed again, and he cannot replace it, because the Commission only allows a single replacement during a fight. Its "skin" is split and the colored oil flows, the life-blood of the machine. The Trainer is allowed one vulcanizing skin repair job per bout. If it happens again, the fighter must go on, fighting against the time when the loss of oil will endanger his operating efficiency. Sometimes the machines strike each other with such deadly impact, they dent the inner frame-work of the body, putting strains on a section of wiring or electrical tubing. Then the damaged machine must fight defensively to protect its weakened section. The offender will work out elaborate punch-patterns to trick the defender into somehow thinking he understands the aim of each pattern of punches and where the final concentration will be. And suddenly, with uncanny craftiness, the offender switches its attack to an unexpected area. This is the function of the pattern-analysis system in each fighter. To map, plan, digest the opponent's habits of fighting, then compute them, set up a given system of punches itself which will clutter the opponent's memory banks, and then radically change the mode of attack and system of fighting. The process is mathematically complex. It is the process of the human brain operating at high speed. The first fifteen rounds of fighting are generally devoted toward "faking" patterns. Each fighter labors to out-fox the other. In a sense, the first fifteen rounds of fighting are preliminary. They give the fight fans an opportunity to warm up to what is coming. Then it begins. The lightning-fast pace shifts, becomes slower. The fighters seem to be gliding through water. Then one unleashes an attack, sets an impossibly fast pace. The game has started....