Jacques sighed, still struggling against the despondency that had been within him since the vacation interlude with the brunette government worker in Curaçao had ended as unsatisfactorily as all the rest. Someday it would be his body bleeding in the dust, smashed at last by the soft-nosed bullets from Le Pistolet du Mort. Then the flowers and adulation would go to the condemned man, and the Bureau would add his name to the plaque at the base of the towering statue on the Washington Mall. So be it. He had played a long roll of the dice, and the stakes had been high. But if only once, just once before it ended.... The bell on his instrument panel told him that the servo-pilot in the tower below had taken over for the landing. He sniffed with disgust again, but this time the disgust was for himself. God, but he was in a foul humor today! He released the controls and stared at his strong hands, grimly admiring them. There was still speed as well as strength in these fingers. His lips twisted into a thin smile, cold and confident. Whoever he was to meet at joute à l'outrance, let him try to match twenty years of training and skill! His rocket cradled with scarcely a jar into the small landing space at the north end of the arena, between the two replicas of 15th century towers, reproduced so faithfully by 22nd century technicians. Jacques squeezed his huge frame through the door of the small craft and looked dourly around. A squire, in scarlet leggings and tunic, his long black wig slightly askew, came running toward him and knelt three paces away, as prescribed by the Judicial Code of Heraldry. "Oh, sire!" he panted, "Thanks be that ye have arrived! The hour is well past noonday, and we had begun to fear...." "Time enough," Jacques growled. He gestured impatiently, and the squire clambered to his feet, bowing again. "This way, your Lordship!" The squire led him to the lower room in the north tower. It was the usual room of monastic simplicity--whitewashed stone walls, a single window, two wooden benches and a low couch on which his garments for the occasion had been carefully arrayed. After the execution, he would be moved to his black silk tent in the center of the camping grounds. While the squire fluttered around him, eager to be of help, Jacques removed his short-sleeved dacron shirt, kicked off his sandals and stepped out of the comfortable shorts he always wore for traveling. The squire gaped with awe at the sight of his muscular body. "M'Lord, truly thou art a powerful man!" Jacques looked down at him with mixed contempt and amusement. The squire was a thin, pale little man, with the pinched look of nearsightedness about his eyes. His wig and tunic were much too big for him. "What do you do, Squire?" Jacques inquired, not unkindly. The man looked hurt, as if the question reflected somehow on his ability to serve as a squire to the Lord High Executioner.