Tony, Slag, Woods and Teagle--they seemed to merge confusedly in his mind. They stood, each in turn, at the door of an iron-barred cell. For Grant, there was no way out. Win or lose, live or die, he was doomed. The light dimmed in the cell. Just for an instant Bee appeared, her hair throwing off sparks of brilliance. She, too, faded out. Neither Bee the child, whom he did not love, nor Bee the woman, who did not love him, could save him. Before him gaped the bottomless pit of shame and penance. He had unloosed a monster on the world. He had to pay for that. But first Grant had another debt to pay. He tried to throw off the depression, imagining as he did so a sob of joy in the disembodied Bee. He wrested the sweeping ball from Slag, even from the opposite end of the court. He spun it in wild orbits and compensated for the other's furious thrusts. Faster and faster he circled it. Slag's mind could not keep up the pace. The even swings acquired a jogging pattern, edged farther out--to within ten feet of Slag. A quick break lanced behind the man, out again, and then the sphere fell into helical loops, thrice differentiated by harmonic variations, and swept wide around the court. Somehow Slag's distress gave Grant no pleasure. Defeat seemed to face him everywhere; he read it in his opponent's twisted features, even in the futile effort to withdraw attention from the ball. _It's no good_, he thought. _I have failed all along._ Savagely he worked the sphere. He would do it quickly. There was no use expecting Tony's fate. The ball darted again for Slag and this time there could be no interference. It became pure mathematics, the motion, complicated far beyond Tony's simple _corondo_, a flashing three-dimensional blur of color. He could not keep it up. The concentration brought an invading blackness to his mind. Somewhere there was a dull roar, and he felt as if his own mind were cracking. His nerves quivered to put an end to it, to touch Slag with the ball. Slowly, cautiously, he brought the sphere down.... Slag was not there! He gaped. His eyes suddenly found the crumpled heap across the court, and relief swept ever him. The man was beaten, in a state of collapse, and there was nothing more Grant could do. "Grant!" Bee screamed. "Oh, no! Grant darling, look up!" Her radiance was almost blinding. He half-twisted to reach her, and then his eyes caught it--the ugly sheen of the fast-growing ball. Desperately he turned, and it shifted in unison. Then she shrieked once more, despairingly, and he threw himself flat, arms outstretched, toward her. The ball's speed was so great that it shattered to pieces against the shield behind him.