At the end of the twenty-eighth, Tanker was dragging his feet, hanging on by a thread of will, except of course that there was no will in a fighting machine except the mechanistic desire to be a great fighting-machine. "He'll nail you this one," said Charlie Jingle.
"Thass what you think," challenged Tanker.
"That's what I know. The fans are already going to the windows to collect their bets."
"Yeah? They got another guess com—Why ain't you collectin'?"
"I gotta stick it out, you know that!"
"You mean to say you really bet on Iron Man?"
"Sure," said Charlie Jingle, pulling a ticket out of his shirt pocket. "See?"
Tanker bent close, scrutinizing the ticket. He looked up into Charlie's face, his own blotchy with color.
"Five thousand dollars you bet on that bum?"
Charlie Jingle laughed.
"He don't look like no bum from where I am."
The buzzer sounded, drowning out the string of curses the Tanker loosed at him. Charlie calmly shoved his equipment out of the ring.
"Make it look good right to the end, you hear?"
The bell banged. Tanker Bell got up slowly, moving in a clumsy waddling gait toward the Champion, arms hanging like stiffened lead weights by his sides, head bulled forward, shoulders hunched. He did not spring, did not dance. He shuffled forward, shoulders rocking from side to side.
Iron-Man Pugg saw the stance of the beaten fighting-machine. He knew the dead-locked expression in the face, knew the shuffling, springless walk that indicated that the opponent was cold, was dead on his feet, jammed away inside, locked and............