"Hear me out. Did you like what we just went through? Your friends and comrades dying—my friends dead and wounded? And all to settle some territorial dispute or to wipe out some imagined slur.

"Would you like to prevent your kid, or mine, from having to face this again?"

"Stop sounding off, Treb, and say something." Neilson scrubbed vigorously. "Of course I would—if I ever had a kid, I mean."

"We could help, Harl. By calling off the duel and making peace right here. Of course there might be new balloting—even another battle between our countries. But we would crack the theory that victory means more than humanity."

Neilson snorted. He splashed water into his eyes and over his soapy beard and hair.

"And go home penniless? To have every friend and neighbor avoid us? What's eating you? You won. You'll get the quarter of a million."

"I want you to share equally. I want our two countries to know that friendship means more than glory."

"I don't get it. If neither side wins we get nothing."

"You forget about the Hubble Award. Two hundred thousand to each member of both sides, or their survivors, if they declare an armistice."

"I had forgotten. You'd give up fifty thousand so I could get the same two hundred thousand! You're a prince, Treb.

"But I couldn't do it. Jane would turn against me. The radio, the newswires, television and the magazines would crucify me—both of us."

"We'd ride it out. None of the participants in the twenty-two duels here in Satellite has had the courage to admit he hates war. In years to come our stand would be honored."

"It means losing Jane. I can't do it."

"You've lost her anyway, Harl, if she's the way you say. How about your three wounded buddies: Wasson, Clark, and Thomason? Badly cut up aren't they? Clark blind. Wasson with no arms.

"Couldn't they use the two hundred thousand?"

Neilson was coming ashore. A sudden resolve hardened his face, and his blue eyes were dark and angry. His jaw jutted through the sandy fairness of his draggled beard.

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