Indeed, he had practiced against some of the ranking players of Proton, in special matches. They had used their legal paddles, and regarded it as an intriguing challenge to meet the special one. A number of them were clearly superior to Mach, as he had played before, but the paddle added considerably to Bane’s effectiveness. He had taken them, in the early games, then lost again as they learned how to compensate, but all admitted that he was a more formidable player this way. They doubted that any player on the planet could take him in the first game, this way; the difference was too striking. It was hardly possible to learn in the course of a single game what he had spent a month mastering, and it was not easy to do in several games.
So Bane was confident. Mach, attuned to the conventional mode of the first game, would find himself up against a totally different creature in the second. He would compensate—but hardly before he had lost the game.
Yet as they stepped up to their ends of the composite image table, Mach seemed oddly confident. Had he devised a similar paddle, and practiced against it? That seemed unlikely, because the tricks he had learned with the conventional paddle should have taken most of his training time.
They rallied, as before, and things seemed normal. Mach had a different paddle, but of course so did Bane. He did not try any special shots, preferring to save them for the game. Soon they were ready, and Mach caught the ball and hid his fists under the table.
Bane guessed right, and was right; he had the serve. Now was time for the surprises.
He started with a fierce crosscourt topspin, the rubber softened and rendered tacky so that it imparted far more spin to the ball than would ordinarily have been the case. Mach, judging by the prior surface, would fail to compensate sufficiently, and the ball would fly well beyond the end of the table.
Mach returned it, and the ball did loop up, but the force was gone, and it plunked down in the center of the table. Obviously he had been caught by surprise, but had a lucky shot. Table tennis was a game of skill, but luck played its part, as it did in every game to some extent. That was part of the excitement: the invocation of chance.
No problem. Bane smashed it down the center, an easy put-away shot. The first point was his.
Except that the ball looped up giddily, and somehow managed to catch Bane’s side of the table again. Was the frame translation mechanism malfunctioning? No, the arc was true; Mach had just somehow managed to aim it right, obviously with no certainty on his part. Sometimes it happened.
Bane made sure it would not happen again. He thumbed his paddle to maximum force, producing a surface that had all the thrusting power of a trampoline, and smashed the ball down with such velocity that Mach would have to retreat far back from the table to have any hope of returning it.
But Mach remained up close—and the ball, crazily, came back, in another shaky but fair return. It seemed impossible, but there it was. How could it have happened?
Bane, shaken by this freak series, tried a trick shot. He wound up as if for the hardest slam yet, then dinked the ball down just over the net with a heavy backspin that damped it almost to a standstill.
Mach, though, was ready. The tip of his paddle caught the ball and nipped it to the side, forcing Bane to dive for the return—and then, of course, Mach slammed the setup to the other side, winning the point. Love-one.
But Bane knew that freak shots could not be depended on. Mach had been extraordinarily lucky in his returns, then pounced on the opportunity that offered when Bane changed the pace. Had Mach been playing well back from the table, in anticipation of a slam, he would never have caught up to the dink shot.
He served again, this time putting on backspin so heavy that though the ball started fast, it slowed dramatically and failed to clear the table for the second bounce on the far side. Bane returned it without even trying to counter the spin; as a result, the ball sailed up in an invitation for another smash.
Bane of course accepted the invitation, and slammed it off Mach’s backhand corner. But Mach took it on his backhand without effort, and again it looped back.
Bane slammed it off Mach’s forehand corner. Yet again Mach intercepted it in what should have been a return that careered wildly, but again the ball simply looped back to strike at the center of Bane’s table.
This was crazy! Mach wasn’t even trying to play offensively; he was simply making fluke returns! What was he up to? No one could play that way for long without losing the point; human reflexes were not swift enough or good enough to handle slammed balls up close.
This time Bane softened his rubber and sliced, so that the ball curved visibly in the air before striking the table. The sidespin did not have much effect on the bounce, but would be very strong against the opposing paddle. The shot was hard enough so that Mach would not have much time to analyze or compensate.
But Mach didn’t try. He simply poked his paddle at the ball—and the ball looped back in another of those high, amateurish returns.
This time Bane had been watching that paddle closely. The angle had not even been correct. By rights the ball should have flown off the table, a lost point. Yet it had flown fair, to the center of the table. It was like magic.
Magic! Suddenly Bane caught on. Mach had gotten hold of a magic paddle! That possibility had never occurred to him. There had been no magic paddles in Phaze, because there was no point to them; why use magic to foul up a game of skill? But evidently someone had crafted one, perhaps simply for the challenge of it, and now Mach had it.
Bane tried to slam the ball again, but his realization about the paddle distracted him, and he missed the table. Love-two.
Obviously the paddle was enchanted so that any shot it made was fair. If no effort was made to guide it, the ball returned in neutral fashion: a high arc to the center of the table. If Mach made a more aggressive shot, then it went where he sent it—but wouldn’t miss if he sent it wrong. Thus he could try for the most difficult shots with the certainty of making them. Or not try at all, and still get the ball back. He could not miss.
How was he, Bane, to win the game—when his opponent could not miss a shot? All his preparation with the special paddle had been nullified in a single stroke! Only in Phaze would magic work—but Mach was playing in Phaze. Since the validity of a shot was determined at the point of the ball’s contact with the paddle, it didn’t matter that there was no magic on Bane’s end of the table; the ball was correctly guided there.
If they had set it up to exchange courts at the halfway point of each game—but in this special situation that wasn’t feasible. So Mach would have the magic throughout the game.
Bane had thought he would win this game readily. Now, suddenly, he faced defeat and loss of the entire contest, because he had overlooked this possibility.
He glanced at the audience. They were watching, in Proton and in Phaze, but would not speak to him in the midst of the game. What advice could anyone give him, anyway? It could not remove the enchantment on Mach’s paddle!
He was behind by two points, a trifling amount, yet he felt like resigning, to spare himself the humiliation that was coming. Could he win even a single point?