Lundgard's eyes challenged her. "Do you want to die?" he asked. Her head lifted. "No," she said, "but I'm not afraid to. Go ahead if you must, Bo. It's all right." * * * * * Bo felt cold. He knew he wouldn't. He was bluffing. In the final showdown he could not crash her. He had seen too many withered space drained mummies in his time. But maybe Lundgard didn't realize that. "Give up," he said. "You can't gain a damn thing. I'm not going to see a billion people burned alive just to save our necks. Make a bargain for your life." "No," said Lundgard with a curious gentleness. "I have my own brand of honor. I'm not going to surrender to you. You can't sit there forever." Impasse. The ship floated through eternal silence while they waited. "All right," said Bo. "I'll fight you for the power beam." "How's that?" "I can throw this ship into orbit around the asteroid. We can go down there and settle the thing between us. The winner can jump up here again with the help of a jet of tanked air. The lump hasn't got much gravity." Lundgard hesitated. "And how do I know you'll keep your end of the bargain?" he asked. "You could let me go through the airlock, then close it and blast off." Bo had had some such thought, but he might have known it wouldn't work. "What do you suggest?" he countered, never taking his eyes off the planetoid. "Remember, I don't trust you either." Lundgard laughed suddenly, a hard yelping bark. "I know! Valeria, go aft and remove all the control-rod links and spares. Bring them back here. I'll go out first, taking half of them with me, and Bo can follow with the other half. He'll have to." "I--no! I won't," she whispered. "I can't let you--" "Go ahead and do it," said Bo. He felt a sudden vast weariness. "It's the only way we can break this deadlock." She wept as she went toward the engine room. Lundgard's thought was good. Without linked control-rods, the converter couldn't operate five minutes, it would flare up and melt itself and kill everyone aboard in a flood of radiation. Whoever won the duel could quickly re-install the necessary parts. There was a waiting silence. At last Lundgard said, almost abstractedly: "Holmgang. Do you know what that means, Bo?" "No." "You ought to. It was a custom of our ancestors back in the early Middle Ages--the Viking time. Two men would go off to a little island, a holm, to settle their differences; one would come back. I never thought it could happen out here." He chuckled bleakly. "Valkyries in spacesuits?" The girl came back with the links tied in two bundles. Lundgard counted them and nodded. "All right." He seemed strangely calm, an easy assurance lay over him like armor. Bo's fear was cold in his belly, and Valeria wept still with a helpless horror.