or go dim. People were gradually gravitating toward the game table, to the seats and loungers and standing areas

overlooking it. In the glare of

the overhead lights, tall figures in black robes moved slowly, checking pieces of the game

equipment. They were the adjudicators: Ishlorsinami.

The species was renowned for being the most unimaginative, humorless,

prissy, honest and incorruptible group in the galaxy and they always

officiated at Damage games because hardly anybody else

could be trusted.

Horza stopped by a food stall to stock up on food and drink; he watched the game table and the figures around it while his

order was

prepared. The woman with the heavy dress and long white hair passed him, still going down the steps. Her tiara was

almost straight, though her

long, loose gown was crumpled. She yawned as she went past.

Horza paid for his food with a card, then followed the woman again, going toward the growing crowd of people and machines

starting to

cluster all around the outer perimeter of the game area. The woman looked suspiciously at him when he half ran,

half walked down the steps

past her again.

Horza bribed his way into one of the better terraces. He pulled the hood of his heavy blouse out from the thick collar, stretching

it over his

forehead and out a little so that his face was in shadow. He didn’t want the real Kraiklyn to see him now. The

terrace jutted out over lower ones,

slanting down with an excellent view of the table itself and the gantries above. Most

of the fenced areas around the table were visible too. Horza

settled onto a soft lounger near a noisy group of extravagantly

dressed tripedals who hooted a lot and kept spitting into a large pot in the center

of their group of gently rocking couches.

The Ishlorsinami seemed to have satisfied themselves that everything was working and was set up fairly. They walked down a

ramp set into

the surface of the arena’s ellipsoid floor. Some lights went off; a quietfield slowly cut off the sounds from

the rest of the auditorium. Horza took a

quick look round. A few stages and sets still showed lights, but they were going

out. The slow-motion animal trapeze act was still going on,

though, high up in the darkness below the stars; the huge ponderous

beasts were swinging through the air, field harnesses glittering. They

somersaulted and twisted, but now as they did so, passing

each other in midair, they reached out with their clawed paws, slashing slowly and

silently at each other’s fur. Nobody else

seemed to be watching.

Horza was surprised to see the woman he had passed twice on the stairs walk past him again and drape herself over a vacant

couch which

had been reserved near the front of the terrace. Somehow he hadn’t thought she would be rich enough to afford

this area.

Without a fanfare or announcement, the Players of the Eve of Destruction appeared, coming up the ramp in the arena floor,

led by a single

Ishlorsinami. Horza checked his terminal; it was exactly seven hours standard to the Orbital’s destruction.

Applause, cheers and, near Horza at

least, loud hooting greeted the contestants, though the quietfields muffled everything.

As they appeared from the shadows on the ramp, some of

the Players acknowledged the crowd who had come to see them play, while

other Players totally ignored them.

Horza recognized few of them. The ones he did know, or had at least heard of, were Ghalssel, Tengayet Doy-Suut, Wilgre and

Neeporlax.

Ghalssel of Ghalssel’s Raiders—probably the most successful of the Free Companies. Horza had heard the mercenary

ship arrive from about

eleven kilometers away, while he was making the deal with the shuttle saleswoman. She had frozen at

the time; her eyes glazed. Horza didn’t

like to ask whether she thought the noise was the Culture coming to destroy the Orbital

a few hours early or just coming to get her for buying a

hot shuttle craft.

Ghalssel was an average-looking man, stocky enough to be obviously from a high-G planet, but without the look of compressed

power that

most such people possessed. He was simply dressed and his head was clean shaven. Supposedly only a Damage game,

where such things

were banned, could force Ghalssel out of the suit he always wore.

Tengayet Doy-Suut was tall, very dark and also simply dressed. The Suut was the champion Damage Player, on both game average,

wins

and maximum credits. He had come from a recently Contacted planet twenty years before, and had been a champion player

of games of

chance and bluff there, too. That was where he had had his face removed and a stainless-steel mask grafted on;

only the eyes looked alive:

expressionless soft jewels set in the sculpted metal. The mask had a matte finish, to prevent

his opponents seeing his cards reflected in his

face.

Wilgre had to be helped up the ramp by some slaves from his retinue. The blue giant from Ozhleh, clad in a mirror robe, looked

almost as

though he was being rolled up the slope by the small humans behind, although the hem of his robe kicked out now

and again to show where his

four stubby legs were scrabbling to propel his great body up the ramp. In one of his two hands

he held a large mirror, in the other a whip lead on

the end of which a blinded rogothuyr—its four paws encrusted with precious

metals, its snout encased in a platinum muzzle and its eyes

replaced by emeralds—padded like a lithe nightmare in pure white.

The animal’s giant head swept from side to side as it used its ultrasonic

sense to map out its surroundings. On another terrace,

almost opposite Horza’s, all thirty-two of Wilgre’s concubines threw aside their body

veils and went down on their knees and

elbows, worshipping their lord. He waved the mirror at them briefly. Virtually every magnifier and micro-

camera smuggled into

the auditorium also swiveled to focus on the thirty-two assorted females, reputedly the finest one-sex harem in the

galaxy.

Neeporlax presented something of a contrast. The youth was a shambling, gaunt, shoddily clothed figure, blinking in the lights

of the arena

and clutching a soft toy. The boy was perhaps the secondbest Damage Player in the galaxy, but he always gave

his winnings away, and the

average meterbed hotel would have thought twice about admitting him; he was diseased, half blind,

incontinent and albino. His head was liable

to shake out of control at an anxious moment in a game, but his hands held holocards

as though the plastics had been set in rock. He, too, was

assisted up the ramp, by a young girl who helped him to his seat,

combed his hair and kissed his cheek, then went to stand in the area behind

the twelve seats set immediately aft of the youth’s

chair.

Wilgre raised one of his chubby blue hands and threw a few Hundredths at the crowd beyond the fences; people scrabbled for

the coins.

Wilgre always mixed in a few higher denominations as well. Once, at a game a few years previously inside a moon

heading for a black hole, he

had thrown a Billion away with the small change, disposing of perhaps a tenth of a percent of

his fortune with just one flick of the wrist. A

decrepit asteroid tramp, who had just been turned down as a Life because he

had only one arm, ended up buying his own planet.

The rest of the Players were a pretty varied-looking bunch as well; but with one exception, Horza didn’t recognize them. Three

or four of the

others were greeted with shouts and some fireworks, so presumably they were well known; the rest were either

disliked or unknown.

The last Player to come up the ramp was Kraiklyn.

Horza settled back in his lounger, smiling. The Free Company leader had had a little temporary facial alteration done—probably

pull-off—

and his hair was dyed, but it was him all right. He wore a light-colored one-piece fabric suit, he was clean shaven

and his hair was brown.

Perhaps the others on the

CAT

wouldn’t have recognized him, but Horza had studied the man—to see how he carried himself, how he walked,

how the muscles

in his face were set—and to the Changer, Kraiklyn stood out like a boulder in a pebble-field.

When all the Players were seated, their Lives were led in to sit on the seats immediately behind each Player.

The Lives were all humans; most already looked half dead anyway, though they were all physically whole. One by one they were

taken to

their seats, strapped in and helmeted. The lightweight black helmets covered their faces except for the eyes. Most

slumped forward once they

were strapped in; a few sat more upright, but none raised their eyes or looked round. All the regular

Players had the full complement of Lives

allowed; some had them specially bred, while others had their agents supply all they

wanted. The less rich, not so well known Players, like

Kraiklyn, had the sweepings of prisons and asylums, and a few paid

depressives who had willed their share of any proceeds to somebody

else. Often members of the Despondent sect could be persuaded

to become Lives, either for free or for a donation to their cause, but Horza