BOUNDARY(77)

The result was that she found herself flipped around and landing hard despite a reflexive tuck and roll, and heard Yame! called out. "Ring out! Shiro, point!"



Some schools didn't do points for ring-outs, but she wasn't going to argue. In real life, if you could take control of your opponent enough to arrange a ring-out, you could probably arrange something more painful.



Once more they faced off. "One point all. Hajime!"



A.J. scored again, this time with a kick that concluded a five-attack string which was designed to trick the opponent into thinking it was a four-attack string. The impact staggered her back but didn't hurt much. A.J. clearly didn't mean to hurt anyone, and had good control.



The next face-off was critical. If A.J. scored again, he'd win. Madeline focused carefully this time, and the next flurry of blows ended when her high side kick rapped A.J. (gently) in the head.



"Last point. Good fight so far, people, let's have a good finish. Hajime!"



By then, they had gathered something of an audience. Ken Hathaway had come into the gym, along with half a dozen other people.



Madeline was pleased. Perfect. I won't have to spread the story myself.



The two combatants circled each other. Madeline knew precisely how skilled A.J. was now, and he'd definitely gotten a healthy respect for her at this point. Exploratory jabs and kicks, attempts at throws and holds, nothing quite getting through.



All right, time to finish this.



She let a slight opening show, let A.J. take it and then dropped down to take out his legs with a different move.



But this time A.J. wasn't having any of that and his legs weren't there; one of them was in fact trying to deliver a foot to her face. She rolled gracefully away and blocked another kick and punch as she came to her feet, then drove in on the attack.



Once more the smooth, circular motion of aikido sent her sailing gracefully out of the ring.



"Ring out! Shiro, victory!"



A.J. and Maddie exchanged bows. He grinned at her. "That was a hell of a match. We have to do that again sometime!" His breathing was heavy and a slight whistling tone could be heard, but he wasn't exhausted yet. Despite the damage to his lungs, the man was in such good physical shape that he could maintain even something this strenuous for a fair period of time. A few more minutes of it, of course, would start taking a real toll.



"Definitely. I'll have to practice more, though. I didn't see that last one coming."



"Well, I am considered pretty fast. Still, that move relies on you coming in to me. You can avoid it if you watch carefully."



"I certainly will. You won't get me the same way twice."



A.J. laughed. "I wouldn't expect to."



"Well, I'd better get to my real exercises," Maddie said, sighing. "This was good, but I have to run through the boring routine." Sergeant Skonicki came over to help her set up the weights. "Nice dive," he murmured. "Top security," she murmured back. "Need to know—and you don't."



Skonicki chuckled. "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, that's me. Though I would enjoy being there if he ever discovers what's what."



She shook her head. "Hopefully, this will all be a waste of effort."





Chapter 25




"Is this really going to work, Dr. Friedet?"



The head of Ares Project shrugged. "It basically has to work, General Deiderichs. We're doing—by far—the largest construction project in space anyone's attempted. Without factories operating out there, we have to throw everything up there, and that's not an easy task. In fact, it's exceedingly hard, which is the reason that both NASA and Ares exist. In the past twenty years, we've added reusable first-stage heavy-lift vehicles and upped the cargo capacity of the shuttles. But the fact is that even if we ignore the fuel, we are trying to assemble a ship in orbit that masses two thousand tons. Fueled, Nike will mass nearly four times that. It's immense, General. So we need all the tricks we can get in order to get that much stuff into assembly orbit in time to meet your deadlines."



General Deiderichs nodded reluctantly. The schedule Glenn Friedet presented had been generated by Ares and NASA's engineers working together to find a way to move that immense mass of "stuff" into space in as short a time as possible. Deiderichs found it a bit bemusing. Eight thousand tons was absolutely nothing on an Earthbound scale; freight trains carried that much. But then, trains could use seventy cars or more for a single trip. The situation for space was more like having to expend the same time, effort and money the railroads did per train—more, actually—except your trains could only move one boxcar load at a time.