Charlie Jingle gripped the edge of the ring hard, digging his hands into the canvas, straining and twisting in tortured anguish with every slashing blow that struck the Tanker. He watched the two fighters weave, jerk, dart—bodies and arms flashing blurs, smashing blows one to the other in sequences that were too complex for the eye to follow in detail. He groaned, cursed, hoped, bellowed, roared and screamed along with two thousand nine hundred and seventy four other human beings in the arena. The round was the twenty-sixth. This was the stretch. The final, ineradicable stretch. The bell banged away and the fighters parted under the glare of the lights, dancing away from each other to their corners. Charlie shot the stool into the ring and went through the ropes. Tanker dropped like a chunk of hot lead onto the stool.
"How do you feel, boy? How do you feel?" prompted Charlie, pumping the cooling-fluid into Tanker's insides.
"Hot," rasped the Tanker. "Hot as hell."
"Want me to throw in the towel?" asked Charlie, working fast, wor............