_Pok! Pok! Ping!_
_Pok! Pok! Ping!_
_Pok! Pok! Ping!_
The action in the handball court was beautiful to watch. The robot
mechanism behind Bart Stanton would fire out a ball at random intervals
ranging from a tenth to a quarter of a second, bouncing them off the wall
in a random pattern. Stanton would retrieve the ball before it hit the
ground, bounce it off the wall again to strike the target on the moving
robot. Stanton had to work against a machine; no ordinary human being
could have given him any competition.
_Pok! Pok! Ping!_
_Pok! Pok! Ping!_
_Pok! Pok! PLUNK._
"One miss," Stanton said to himself. But he fielded the next one nicely
and slammed it home.
_Pok! Pok! Ping!_
The physical therapist who was standing by glanced at his watch. It was
almost time.
_Pok! Pok! Ping!_
The machine, having delivered its last ball, shut itself off with a smug
click. Stanton turned away from the handball court and walked toward the
physical therapist, who held out a robe for him.
"That was good, Bart," he said, "real good."
"One miss," Stanton said as he shrugged into the robe.
"Yeah. Your timing was a shade off there, I guess. But you ran a full
minute over your previous record."
Stanton looked at him. "You re-set the timer again," he said accusingly.
But there was a grin on his face.
The P.T. man grinned back. "Yup. Come on, step into the mummy case." He
waved toward the narrow niche in the wall of the court, a niche just big
enough to hold a standing man. Stanton stepped in, and various instrument
pick-ups came out of the walls and touched his body. Hidden machines
recorded his heartbeat, blood pressure, brain activity, muscular tension,
and several other factors.