Transcriber's note:

This etext was produced from the 1962 book publication of the story, which was originally published in Analog Science Fact—Science Fiction,
Sept.–Nov. 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the copyright
on this publication was renewed.

[Pg 1]

[Pg 2]

PLANET OF

THE DAMNED



BY HARRY HARRISON

A NATIONAL GENERAL COMPANY
[Pg 4]

For my Mother and Father—

RIA AND LEO HARRISON

[Pg 6]

I

Sweat covered Brion's body, trickling into the tight
loincloth that was the only garment he wore. The
light fencing foil in his hand felt as heavy as a bar of
lead to his exhausted muscles, worn out by a month
of continual exercise. These things were of no importance.
The cut on his chest, still dripping blood, the
ache of his overstrained eyes—even the soaring arena
around him with the thousands of spectators—were
trivialities not worth thinking about. There was only
one thing in his universe: the button-tipped length of
shining steel that hovered before him, engaging his
own weapon. He felt the quiver and scrape of its life,
knew when it moved and moved himself to counteract
it. And when he attacked, it was always there
to beat him aside.

A sudden motion. He reacted—but his blade just
met air. His instant of panic was followed by a small
sharp blow high on his chest.

"Touch!" A world-shaking voice bellowed the word
to a million waiting loudspeakers, and the applause
of the audience echoed back in a wave of sound.

"One minute," a voice said, and the time buzzer
sounded.

Brion had carefully conditioned the reflex in himself.
A minute is not a very large measure of time
and his body needed every fraction of it. The
buzzer's whirr triggered his muscles into complete
relaxation. Only his heart and lungs worked on at a[Pg 7]
strong, measured rate. His eyes closed and he was
only distantly aware of his handlers catching him as
he fell, carrying him to his bench. While they massaged
his limp body and cleansed the wound, all of
his attention was turned inward. He was in reverie,
sliding along the borders of consciousness. The nagging
memory of the previous night loomed up then,
and he turned it over and over in his mind, examining
it from all sides.

It was the very unexpectedness of the event that
had been so unusual. The contestants in the Twenties
needed undisturbed rest, therefore nights in the dormitories
were as quiet as death. During the first few
days, of course, the rule wasn't observed too closely.
The men themselves were too keyed up and excited
to rest easily. But as soon as the scores began to
mount and eliminations cut into their ranks, there
was complete silence after dark. Particularly so on
this last night, when only two of the little cubicles
were occupied, the thousands of others standing with
dark, empty doors.

Angry words had dragged Brion from a deep and
exhausted sleep. The words were whispered but
clear—two voices, just outside the thin metal of his
door. Someone spoke his name.

"... Brion Brandd. Of course not. Whoever said
you could was making a big mistake and there is
going to be trouble—"

"Don't talk like an idiot!" The other voice snapped
with a harsh urgency, clearly used to command. "I'm
here because the matter is of utmost importance, and
Brandd is the one I must see. Now stand aside!"

"The Twenties—"

"I don't give a damn about your games, hearty
cheers and physical exercises. This is important, or I
wouldn't be here!"

The other didn't speak—he was surely one of the
officials—and Brion could sense his outraged anger.
He must have drawn his gun, because the intruder
said quickly, "Put that away. You're being a fool!"

"Out!" was the single snarled word of the response.[Pg 8]
There was silence then and, still wondering, Brion
was once more asleep.

"Ten seconds."

The voice chopped away Brion's memories and he
let awareness seep back into his body. He was unhappily
conscious of his total exhaustion. The month of
continuous mental and physical combat had taken
its toll. It would be hard to stay on his feet, much less
summon the strength and skill to fight and win a
touch.

"How do we stand?" he asked the handler who was
kneading his aching muscles.

"Four-four. All you need is a touch to win!"

"That's all he needs too," Brion grunted, opening
his eyes to look at the wiry length of the man at the
other end of the long mat. No one who had reached
the finals in the Twenties could possibly be a weak
opponent, but this one, Irolg, was the pick of the lot.
A red-haired mountain of a man, with an apparently
inexhaustible store of energy. That was really all that
counted now. There could be little art in this last and
final round of fencing. Just thrust and parry, and
victory to the stronger.

Brion closed his eyes again and knew the moment
he had been hoping to avoid had arrived.

Every man who entered the Twenties had his own
training tricks. Brion had a few individual ones that
had helped him so far. He was a moderately strong
chess player, but he had moved to quick victory in
the chess rounds by playing incredibly unorthodox
games. This was no accident, but the result of years
of work. He had a standing order with off-planet
agents for archaic chess books, the older the better.
He had memorized thousands of these ancient games
and openings. This was allowed. Anything was allowed
that didn't involve drugs or machines. Self-hypnosis
was an accepted tool.

It had taken Brion over two years to find a way to
tap the sources of hysterical strength. Common as the
phenomenon seemed to be in the textbooks, it proved
impossible to duplicate. There appeared to be an
immediate association with the death-trauma, as if[Pg 9]
the two were inextricably linked into one. Berserkers
and juramentados continue to fight and kill though
carved by scores of mortal wounds. Men with bullets
in the heart or brain fight on, though already clinically
dead. Death seemed an inescapable part of this
kind of strength. But there was another type that
could easily be brought about in any deep trance—hypnotic
rigidity. The strength that enables someone
in a trance to hold his body stiff and unsupported except
at two points, the head and heels. This is physically
impossible when conscious. Working with this as
a clue, Brion had developed a self-hypnotic technique
that allowed him to tap this reservoir of unknown
strength—the source of "second wind," the survival
strength that made the difference between life and
death.

It could also kill—exhaust the body beyond hope of
recovery, particularly when in a weakened condition
as his was now. But that wasn't important. Others
had died before during the Twenties, and death during
the last round was in some ways easier than
defeat.

Breathing deeply, Brion softly spoke the auto-hypnotic
phrases that triggered the process. Fatigue
fell softly from him, as did all sensations of heat, cold
and pain. He could feel with acute sensitivity, hear,
and see clearly when he opened his eyes.

With each passing second the power drew at the
basic reserves of life, draining it from his body.

When the buzzer sounded he pulled his foil from
his second's startled grasp, and ran forward. Irolg had
barely time to grab up his own weapon and parry
Brion's first thrust. The force of his rush was so great
that the guards on their weapons locked, and their
bodies crashed together. Irolg looked amazed at the
sudden fury of the attack—then smiled. He thought it
was a last burst of energy, he knew how close they
both were to exhaustion. This must be the end for
Brion.

They disengaged and Irolg put up a solid defense.
He didn't attempt to attack, just let Brion wear himself
out against the firm shield of his defense.[Pg 10]

Brion saw something close to panic on his opponent's
face when the man finally recognized his
error. Brion wasn't tiring. If anything, he was pressing
the attack. A wave of despair rolled out from
Irolg—Brion sensed it and knew the fifth point was
his.

Thrust—thrust—and each time the parrying sword
a little slower to return. Then the powerful twist that
thrust it aside. In and under the guard. The slap of
the button on flesh and the arc of steel that reached
out and ended on Irolg's chest over his heart.

Waves of sound—cheering and screaming—lapped
against Brion's private world, but he was only remotely
aware of their existence. Irolg dropped his foil,
and tried to shake Brion's hand, but his legs suddenly
gave way. Brion had an arm around him, holding
him up, walking towards the rushing handlers. Then
Irolg was gone and he waved off his own men, walking
slowly by himself.

Except that something was wrong and it was like
walking through warm glue. Walking on his knees.
No, not walking, falling. At last. He was able to let go
and fall.[Pg 11]

II

Ihjel gave the doctors exactly one day before he
went to the hospital. Brion wasn't dead, though there
had been some doubt about that the night before.
Now, a full day later, he was on the mend and that
was all Ihjel wanted to know. He bullied and strong-armed
his way to the new Winner's room, meeting
his first stiff resistance at the door.

"You're out of order, Winner Ihjel," the doctor said.
"And if you keep on forcing yourself in here, where
you are not wanted, rank or no rank, I shall be
obliged to break your head."

Ihjel had just begun to tell him, in some detail, just
how slim his chances were of accomplishing that,
when Brion interrupted them both. He recognized the
newcomer's voice from the final night in the barracks.

"Let him in, Dr. Caulry," he said. "I want to meet a
man who thinks there is something more important
than the Twenties."

While the doctor stood undecided, Ihjel moved
quickly around him and closed the door in his
flushed face. He looked down at the Winner in the
bed. There was a drip plugged into each one of Brion's
arms. His eyes peered from sooty hollows; the eyeballs
were a network of red veins. The silent battle he
fought against death had left its mark. His square,
jutting jaw now seemed all bone, as did his long nose
and high cheekbones. They were prominent landmarks
rising from the limp greyness of his skin. Only the
erect bristle of his close-cropped hair was unchanged.
He had the appearance of having suffered a long and
wasting illness.

"You look like sin," Ihjel said. "But congratulations
on your victory."

"You don't look so very good yourself—for a Win[Pg 12]ner,"
Brion snapped back. His exhaustion and sudden
peevish anger at this man let the insulting words slip
out. Ihjel ignored them.

But it was true; Winner Ihjel looked very little like
a Winner, or even an Anvharian. He had the height
and the frame all right, but it was draped in billows
of fat—rounded, soft tissue that hung loosely from his
limbs and made little limp rolls on his neck and
under his eyes. There were no fat men on Anvhar,
and it was incredible that a man so gross could ever
have been a Winner. If there was muscle under the
fat it couldn't be seen. Only his eyes appeared to still
hold the strength that had once bested every man on
the planet to win the annual games. Brion turned
away from their burning stare, sorry now he had
insulted the man without good reason. He was too
sick, though, to bother about apologizing.

Ihjel didn't care either. Brion looked at him again
and felt the impression of things so important that he
himself, his insults, even the Twenties were of no
more interest than dust motes in the air. It was only a
fantasy of a sick mind, Brion knew, and he tried to
shake the feeling off. The two men stared at each
other, sharing a common emotion.

The door opened soundlessly behind Ihjel and he
wheeled about, moving as only an athlete of Anvhar
can move. Dr. Caulry was halfway through the door,
off balance. Two men in uniform came close behind
him. Ihjel's body pushed against them, his speed and
the mountainous mass of his flesh sending them back
in a tangle of arms and legs. He slammed the door
and locked it in their faces.

"I have to talk to you," he said, turning back to
Brion. "Privately," he added, bending over and ripping
out the communicator with a sweep of one
hand.

"Get out," Brion told him. "If I were able—"

"Well, you're not, so you're just going to have to lie
there and listen. I imagine we have about five minutes
before they decide to break the door down, and
I don't want to waste any more of that. Will you
come with me offworld? There's a job that must be[Pg 13]
done; it's my job, but I'm going to need help. You're
the only one who can give me that help.

"Now refuse," he added as Brion started to answer.

"Of course I refuse," Brion said, feeling a little
foolish and slightly angry, as if the other man had
put the words into his mouth. "Anvhar is my planet—why
should I leave? My life is here and so is my
work. I also might add that I have just won the
Twenties. I have a responsibility to remain."

"Nonsense. I'm a Winner, and I left. What you
really mean is you would like to enjoy a little of the
ego-inflation you have worked so hard to get. Off
Anvhar no one even knows what a Winner is—much
less respects one. You will have to face a big universe
out there, and I don't blame you for being a little
frightened."

Someone was hammering loudly on the door.

"I haven't the strength to get angry," Brion said
hoarsely. "And I can't bring myself to admire your
ideas when they permit you to insult a man too ill to
defend himself."

"I apologize," Ihjel said, with no hint of apology or
sympathy in his voice. "But there are more desperate
issues involved than your hurt feelings. We don't
have much time now, so I want to impress you with
an idea."

"An idea that will convince me to go offplanet with
you? That's expecting a lot."

"No, this idea won't convince you—but thinking
about it will. If you really consider it you will find a
lot of your illusions shattered. Like everyone else on
Anvhar, you're a scientific humanist, with your faith
firmly planted in the Twenties. You accept both of
these noble institutions without an instant's thought.
All of you haven't a single thought for the past, for
the untold billions who led the bad life as mankind
slowly built up the good life for you to lead. Do you
ever think of all the people who suffered and died in
misery and superstition while civilization was clicking
forward one more slow notch?"

"Of course I don't think about them," Brion retorted.
"Why should I? I can't change the past."[Pg 14]

"But you can change the future!" Ihjel said. "You
owe something to the suffering ancestors who got you
where you are today. If Scientific Humanism means
anything more than just words to you, you must
possess a sense of responsibility. Don't you want to
try and pay off a bit of this debt by helping others
who are just as backward and disease-ridden today
as great-grandfather Troglodyte ever was?"

The hammering on the door was louder. This and
the drug-induced buzzing in Brion's ear made thinking
difficult. "Abstractly, I of course agree with you,"
he said haltingly. "But you know there is nothing I
can do personally without being emotionally involved.
A logical decision is valueless for action without personal
meaning."

"Then we have reached the crux of the matter,"
Ihjel said gently. His back was braced against the
door, absorbing the thudding blows of some heavy
object on the outside. "They're knocking, so I must be
going soon. I have no time for details, but I can
assure you upon my word of honor as a Winner that
there is something you can do. Only you. If you help
me we might save seven million human lives. That is
a fact."

The lock burst and the door started to open. Ihjel
shouldered it back into the frame for a final instant.

"Here is the idea I want you to consider. Why is it
that the people of Anvhar, in a galaxy filled with
warring, hate-filled, backward planets, should be the
only ones who base their entire existence on a complicated
series of games?"[Pg 15]

III

This time there was no way to hold the door. Ihjel
didn't try. He stepped aside and two men stumbled
into the room. He walked out behind their backs
without saying a word.

"What happened? What did he do?" the doctor
asked, rushing in through the ruined door. He swept a
glance over the continuous recording dials at the foot
of Brion's bed. Respiration, temperature, heart, blood
pressure—all were normal. The patient lay quietly
and didn't answer him.

For the rest of that day, Brion had much to think
about. It was difficult. The fatigue, mixed with the
tranquilizers and other drugs, had softened his contact
with reality. His thoughts kept echoing back and
forth in his mind, unable to escape. What had Ihjel
meant? What was that nonsense about Anvhar?
Anvhar was that way because—well, it just was. It
had come about naturally. Or had it?

The planet had a very simple history. From the
very beginning there had never been anything of real
commercial interest on Anvhar. Well off the interstellar
trade routes, there were no minerals worth digging
and transporting the immense distances to the
nearest inhabited worlds. Hunting the winter beasts
for their pelts was a profitable but very minor enterprise,
never sufficient for mass markets. Therefore no
organized attempt had ever been made to colonize
the planet. In the end it had been settled completely
by chance. A number of offplanet scientific groups
had established observation and research stations,
finding unlimited data to observe and record during
Anvhar's unusual yearly cycle. The long-duration observations
encouraged the scientific workers to bring
their families and, slowly but steadily, small settlements
grew up. Many of the fur hunters settled there[Pg 16]
as well, adding to the small population. This had been
the beginning.

Few records existed of those early days, and the
first six centuries of Anvharian history were more
speculation than fact. The Breakdown occurred
about that time, and in the galaxy-wide disruption
Anvhar had to fight its own internal battle. When the
Earth Empire collapsed it was the end of more than
an era. Many of the observation stations found themselves
representing institutions that no longer existed.
The professional hunters no longer had markets for
their furs, since Anvhar possessed no interstellar ships
of its own. There had been no real physical hardship
involved in the Breakdown as it affected Anvhar,
since the planet was completely self-sufficient. Once
they had made the mental adjustment to the fact
that they were now a sovereign world, not a collection
of casual visitors with various loyalties, life continued
unchanged. Not easy—living on Anvhar is
never easy—but at least without difference on the
surface.

The thoughts and attitudes of the people were,
however, going through a great transformation. Many
attempts were made to develop some form of stable
society and social relationship. Again, little record
exists of these early trials, other than the fact of their
culmination in the Twenties.

To understand the Twenties, you have to understand
the unusual orbit that Anvhar tracks around its
sun, 70 Ophiuchi. There are other planets in this
system, all of them more or less conforming to the
plane of the ecliptic. Anvhar is obviously a rogue,
perhaps a captured planet of another sun. For the
greatest part of its 780-day year it arcs far out from
its primary, in a high-angled sweeping cometary orbit.
When it returns there is a brief, hot summer of
approximately eighty days before the long winter sets
in once more. This severe difference in seasonal
change has caused profound adaptations in the native
life forms. During the winter most of the animals
hibernate, the vegetable life lying dormant as spores
or seeds. Some of the warm-blooded herbivores stay[Pg 17]
active in the snow-covered tropics, preyed upon by
fur-insulated carnivores. Though unbelievably cold,
the winter is a season of peace in comparison to the
summer.

For summer is a time of mad growth. Plants burst
into life with a strength that cracks rocks, growing
fast enough for the motion to be seen. The snowfields
melt into mud and within days a jungle stretches
high into the air. Everything grows, swells, proliferates.
Plants climb on top of plants, fighting for the
life-energy of the sun. Everything is eat and be eaten,
grow and thrive in that short season. Because
when the first snow of winter falls again, ninety per
cent of the year must pass until the next coming of
warmth.

Mankind has had to adapt to the Anvharian cycle
in order to stay alive. Food must be gathered and
stored, enough to last out the long winter. Generation
after generation had adapted until they look on the
mad seasonal imbalance as something quite ordinary.
The first thaw of the almost nonexistent spring triggers
a wide-reaching metabolic change in the humans.
Layers of subcutaneous fat vanish and half-dormant
sweat glands come to life. Other changes are more
subtle than the temperature adjustment, but equally
important. The sleep center of the brain is depressed.
Short naps or a night's rest every third or
fourth day becomes enough. Life takes on a hectic and
hysterical quality that is perfectly suited to the environment.
By the time of the first frost, rapid-growing
crops have been raised and harvested, sides of meat
either preserved or frozen in mammoth lockers. With
this supreme talent of adaptability mankind has become
part of the ecology and guaranteed his own
survival during the long winter.

Physical survival has been guaranteed. But what
about mental survival? Primitive Earth Eskimos can
fall into a long doze of half-conscious hibernation.
Civilized men might be able to do this, but only for
the few cold months of terrestrial midwinter. It
would be impossible to do during a winter that is
longer than an Earth year. With all the physical[Pg 18]
needs taken care of, boredom became the enemy of
any Anvharian who was not a hunter. And even the
hunters could not stay out on solitary trek all winter.
Drink was one answer, and violence another. Alcoholism
and murder were the twin terrors of the cold
season, after the Breakdown.

It was the Twenties that ended all that. When they
became a part of normal life the summer was considered
just an interlude between games. The Twenties
were more than just a contest—they became a way of
life that satisfied all the physical, competitive and
intellectual needs of this unusual planet. They were a
decathlon—rather a double decathlon—raised to its
highest power, where contests in chess and poetry
composition held equal place with those in ski-jumping
and archery. Each year there were two
planet-wide contests held, one for men and one for
women. This was not an attempt at sexual discrimination,
but a logical facing of facts. Inherent differences
prevented fair contests—for example, it is
impossible for a woman to win a large chess tournament—and
this fact was recognized. Anyone could
enter for any number of years. There were no scoring
handicaps.

When the best man won he was really the best
man. A complicated series of playoffs and eliminations
kept contestants and observers busy for half the
winter. They were only preliminary to the final encounter
that lasted a month, and picked a single
winner. That was the title he was awarded. Winner.
The man—and woman—who had bested every other
contestant on the entire planet and who would remain
unchallenged until the following year.

Winner. It was a title to take pride in. Brion stirred
weakly on his bed and managed to turn so he could
look out of the window. Winner of Anvhar. His name
was already slated for the history books, one of the
handful of planetary heroes. School children would
be studying him now, just as he had read of the
Winners of the past. Weaving daydreams and imaginary
adventures around Brion's victories, hoping and[Pg 19]
fighting to equal them someday. To be a Winner was
the greatest honor in the universe.

Outside, the afternoon sun shimmered weakly in a
dark sky. The endless icefields soaked up the dim
light, reflecting it back as a colder and harsher illumination.
A single figure on skis cut a line across the
empty plain; nothing else moved. The depression of
the ultimate fatigue fell on Brion and everything
changed, as if he looked in a mirror at a previously
hidden side.

He saw suddenly—with terrible clarity—that to be
a Winner was to be absolutely nothing. Like being the
best flea, among all the fleas on a single dog.

What was Anvhar after all? An ice-locked planet,
inhabited by a few million human fleas, unknown
and unconsidered by the rest of the galaxy. There
was nothing here worth fighting for; the wars after
the Breakdown had left them untouched. The
Anvharians had always taken pride in this—as if
being so unimportant that no one else even wanted
to come near you could possibly be a source of pride.
All the other worlds of man grew, fought, won, lost,
changed. Only on Anvhar did life repeat its sameness
endlessly, like a loop of tape in a player....

Brion's eyes were moist; he blinked. Tears! Realization
of this incredible fact wiped the maudlin pity
from his mind and replaced it with fear. Had his mind
snapped in the strain of the last match? These
thoughts weren't his. Self-pity hadn't made him a Winner—why
was he feeling it now? Anvhar was his
universe—how could he even imagine it as a tag-end
planet at the outer limb of creation? What had come
over him and induced this inverse thinking?

As he thought the question, the answer appeared
at the same instant. Winner Ihjel. The fat man with
the strange pronouncements and probing questions.
Had he cast a spell like some sorcerer—or the devil in
Faust? No, that was pure nonsense. But he had done
something. Perhaps planted a suggestion when
Brion's resistance was low. Or used subliminal vocalization
like the villain in Cerebrus Chained. Brion
could find no adequate reason on which to base his[Pg 20]
suspicions. But he knew, with sure positiveness, that
Ihjel was responsible.

He whistled at the sound-switch next to his pillow
and the repaired communicator came to life. The
duty nurse appeared in the small screen.

"The man who was here today," Brion said, "Winner
Ihjel. Do you know where he is? I must contact
him."

For some reason this flustered her professional
calm. The nurse started to answer, excused herself,
and blanked the screen. When it lit again a man in
guard's uniform had taken her place.

"You made an inquiry," the guard said, "about
Winner Ihjel. We are holding him here in the hospital,
following the disgraceful way in which he broke
into your room."

"I have no charges to make. Will you ask him to
come and see me at once?"

The guard controlled his shock. "I'm sorry, Winner—I
don't see how we can. Dr. Caulry left specific orders
that you were not to be—"

"The doctor has no control over my personal life."
Brion interrupted. "I'm not infectious, nor ill with
anything more than extreme fatigue. I want to see
that man. At once."

The guard took a deep breath, and made a quick
decision. "He is on the way up now," he said, and
rung off.

"What did you do to me?" Brion asked as soon as
Ihjel had entered and they were alone. "You won't
deny that you have put alien thoughts in my head?"

"No, I won't deny it. Because the whole point of
my being here is to get those 'alien' thoughts across to
you."

"Tell me how you did it," Brion insisted. "I must
know."

"I'll tell you—but there are many things you should
understand first, before you decide to leave Anvhar.
You must not only hear them, you will have to believe
them. The primary thing, the clue to the rest, is
the true nature of your life here. How do you think
the Twenties originated?"[Pg 21]

Before he answered, Brion carefully took a double
dose of the mild stimulant he was allowed. "I don't
think," he said; "I know. It's a matter of historical
record. The founder of the games was Giroldi, the
first contest was held in 378 A.B. The Twenties have
been held every year since then. They were strictly
local affairs in the beginning, but were soon well
established on a planet-wide scale."

"True enough," Ihjel said. "But you're describing
what happened. I asked you how the Twenties originated.
How could any single man take a barbarian
planet, lightly inhabited by half-mad hunters and
alcoholic farmers, and turn it into a smooth-running
social machine built around the artificial structure of
the Twenties? It just couldn't be done."

"But it was done!" Brion insisted. "You can't deny
that. And there is nothing artificial about the Twenties.
They are a logical way to live a life on a planet
like this."

Ihjel laughed, a short ironic bark. "Very logical," he
said; "but how often does logic have anything to do
with the organization of social groups and governments?
You're not thinking. Put yourself in founder
Giroldi's place. Imagine that you have glimpsed the
great idea of the Twenties and you want to convince
others. So you walk up to the nearest louse-ridden,
brawling, superstitious, booze-embalmed hunter and
explain clearly. How a program of his favorite sports—things
like poetry, archery and chess—can make his
life that much more interesting and virtuous. You do
that. But keep your eyes open at the same time, and
be ready for a fast draw."

Even Brion had to smile at the absurdity of the
suggestion. Of course it couldn't happen that way.
Yet, since it had happened, there must be a simple
explanation.

"We can beat this back and forth all day," Ihjel
told him, "and you won't get the right idea unless—"
He broke off suddenly, staring at the communicator.
The operation light had come on, though the screen
stayed dark. Ihjel reached down a meaty hand and
pulled loose the recently connected wires. "That doc[Pg 22]tor
of yours is very curious—and he's going to stay
that way. The truth behind the Twenties is none of
his business. But it's going to be yours. You must
come to realize that the life you lead here is a complete
and artificial construction, developed by Societics
experts and put into application by skilled field
workers."

"Nonsense!" Brion broke in. "Systems of society
can't be dreamed up and forced on people like that.
Not without bloodshed and violence."

"Nonsense, yourself," Ihjel told him. "That may
have been true in the dawn of history, but not any
more. You have been reading too many of the old
Earth classics; you imagine that we still live in the
Ages of Superstition. Just because fascism and communism
were once forced on reluctant populations,
you think this holds true for all time. Go back to your
books. In exactly the same era democracy and
self-government were adapted by former colonial
states, like India and the Union of North Africa, and
the only violence was between local religious groups.
Change is the lifeblood of mankind. Everything we
today accept as normal was at one time an innovation.
And one of the most recent innovations is the
attempt to guide the societies of mankind into something
more consistent with the personal happiness of
individuals."

"The God complex," Brion said; "forcing human
lives into a mold whether they want to be fitted into
it or not."

"Societies can be that," Ihjel agreed. "It was in the
beginning, and there were some disastrous results of
attempts to force populations into a political climate
where they didn't belong. They weren't all failures—Anvhar
here is a striking example of how good the
technique can be when correctly applied. It's not
done this way any more, though. As with all of the
other sciences, we have found out that the more we
know, the more there is to know. We no longer
attempt to guide cultures towards what we consider
a beneficial goal. There are too many goals, and from
our limited vantage point it is hard to tell the good[Pg 23]
ones from the bad ones. All we do now is try to
protect the growing cultures, give a little jolt to the
stagnating ones—and bury the dead ones. When the
work was first done here on Anvhar the theory hadn't
progressed that far. The understandably complex
equations that determine just where in the scale from
a Type I to a Type V a culture is, had not yet been
completed. The technique then was to work out an
artificial culture that would be most beneficial for a
planet, then bend it into the mold."

"How can that be done?" Brion asked. "How was it
done here?"

"We've made some progress—you're finally asking
'how.' The technique here took a good number of
agents, and a great deal of money. Personal honor
was emphasized in order to encourage dueling, and
this led to a heightened interest in the technique of
personal combat. When this was well intrenched
Giroldi was brought in, and he showed how organized
competitions could be more interesting than
haphazard encounters. Tying the intellectual aspects
onto the framework of competitive sports was a little
more difficult, but not overwhelmingly so. The details
aren't important; all we are considering now is
the end product. Which is you. You're needed very
much."

"Why me?" Brion asked. "Why am I special? Because
I won the Twenties? I can't believe that. Taken
objectively, there isn't that much difference between
myself and the ten runner-ups. Why don't you ask
one of them? They could do your job as well as I."

"No, they couldn't. I'll tell you later why you are
the only man I can use. Our time is running out and
I must convince you of some other things first." Ihjel
glanced at his watch. "We have less than three hours
to dead-deadline. Before that time I must explain
enough of our work to you to enable you to decide
voluntarily to join us."

"A very tall order," Brion said. "You might begin by
telling me just who this mysterious 'we' is that you
keep referring to."

"The Cultural Relationships Foundation. A non-[Pg 24]governmental
body, privately endowed, existing to
promote peace and ensure the sovereign welfare of
independent planets, so that all will prosper from the
good will and commerce thereby engendered."

"Sounds as if you're quoting," Brion told him. "No
one could possibly make up something that sounds
like that on the spur of the moment."

"I was quoting, from our charter of organization.
Which is all very fine in a general sense, but I'm
talking specifically now. About you. You are the product
of a tightly knit and very advanced society.
Your individuality has been encouraged by your
growing up in a society so small in population that a
mild form of government control is necessary. The
normal Anvharian education is an excellent one, and
participation in the Twenties has given you a general
and advanced education second to none in the
galaxy. It would be a complete waste of your entire
life if you now took all this training and wasted it on
some rustic farm."

"You give me very little credit. I plan to teach—"

"Forget Anvhar!" Ihjel cut him off with a chop of
his hand. "This world will roll on quite successfully
whether you are here or not. You must forget it, think
of its relative unimportance on a galactic scale, and
consider instead the existing, suffering hordes of
mankind. You must think what you can do to help
them."

"But what can I do—as an individual? The day is
long past when a single man, like Caesar or Alexander,
could bring about world-shaking changes."

"True—but not true," Ihjel said. "There are key
men in every conflict of forces, men who act like
catalysts applied at the right instant to start a chemical
reaction. You might be one of these men, but I
must be honest and say that I can't prove it yet. So in
order to save time and endless discussion, I think I
will have to spark your personal sense of obligation."

"Obligation to whom?"

"To mankind, of course, to the countless billions of
dead who kept the whole machine rolling along that
allows you the full, long and happy life you enjoy[Pg 25]
today. What they gave to you, you must pass on to
others. This is the keystone of humanistic morals."

"Agreed. And a very good argument in the long
run. But not one that is going to tempt me out of this
bed within the next three hours."

"A point of success," Ihjel said. "You agree with the
general argument. Now I apply it specifically to you.
Here is the statement I intend to prove. There exists a
planet with a population of seven million people.
Unless I can prevent it, this planet will be completely
destroyed. It is my job to stop that destruction, so
that is where I am going now. I won't be able to do
the job alone. In addition to others, I need you. Not
anyone like you—but you, and you alone."

"You have precious little time left to convince me
of all that," Brion told him, "so let me make the job
easier for you. The work you do, this planet, the
imminent danger of the people there—these are all
facts that you can undoubtedly supply. I'll take a
chance that this whole thing is not a colossal bluff,
and admit that given time, you could verify them all.
This brings the argument back to me again. How can
you possibly prove that I am the only person in the
galaxy who can help you?"

"I can prove it by your singular ability, the thing I
came here to find."

"Ability? I am different in no way from the other
men on my planet."

"You're wrong," Ihjel said. "You are the embodied
proof of evolution. Rare individuals with specific talents
occur constantly in any species, man included. It
has been two generations since an empathetic was
last born on Anvhar, and I have been watching carefully
most of that time."

"What in blazes is an empathetic—and how do you
recognize it when you have found it?" Brion
chuckled, this talk was getting preposterous.

"I can recognize one because I'm one myself—there
is no other way. As to how projective empathy
works, you had a demonstration of that a little earlier,
when you felt those strange thoughts about
Anvhar. It will be a long time before you can master[Pg 26]
that, but receptive empathy is your natural trait. This
is mentally entering into the feeling, or what could be
called the spirit of another person. Empathy is not
thought perception; it might better be described as
the sensing of someone else's emotional makeup, feelings
and attitudes. You can't lie to a trained empathetic,
because he can sense the real attitude behind
the verbal lies. Even your undeveloped talent has
proved immensely useful in the Twenties. You can
outguess your opponent because you know his movements
even as his body tenses to make them. You
accept this without ever questioning it."

"How do you know?" This was Brion's understood,
but never voiced secret.

Ihjel smiled. "Just guessing. But I won the Twenties
too, remember, also without knowing a thing
about empathy at the time. On top of our normal
training, it's a wonderful trait to have. Which brings
me to the proof we mentioned a minute ago. When
you said you would be convinced if I could prove
you were the only person who could help me. I
believe you are—and that is one thing I cannot lie
about. It's possible to lie about a belief verbally, to
have a falsely based belief, or to change a belief. But
you can't lie about it to yourself.

"Equally important—you can't lie about a belief to
an empathetic. Would you like to see how I feel
about this? 'See' is a bad word—there is no vocabulary
yet for this kind of thing. Better, would you join
me in my feelings? Sense my attitudes, memories and
emotions just as I do?"

Brion tried to protest, but he was too late. The
doors of his senses were pushed wide and he was
overwhelmed.

"Dis ..." Ihjel said aloud. "Seven million people ...
hydrogen bombs ... Brion Brandd." These were just
key words, landmarks of association. With each one
Brion felt the rushing wave of the other man's emotions.

There could be no lies here—Ihjel was right in
that. This was the raw stuff that feelings are made of,[Pg 27]
the basic reactions to the things and symbols of memory.

DIS ... DIS ... DIS ... it was a word it was a
planet and the word thundered

like a drum a drum the sound

of its thunder surrounded and

was a wasteland a planet

of death a planet where

living was dying and

dying was very

better than

living

DIS

DEAD

and DEAD they would be seven million blackened corpses

that would blacken your dreams all dreams dreams

forever because those

HYDROGEN BOMBS

were waiting

to kill

them unless .. unless .. unless ..

you Ihjel stopped it you Ihjel (DEATH) you (DEATH)

you (DEATH) alone couldn't do it you (DEATH)

must have

BRION BRANDD wet-behind-the-ears-raw-untrained-

Brion-Brandd-to-help-you he was the only one in the

galaxy who could finish the job..................................
[Pg 28]

As the flow of sensation died away, Brion realized
he was sprawled back weakly on his pillows, soaked
with sweat, washed with the memory of the raw
emotion. Across from him Ihjel sat with his face
bowed in his hands. When he lifted his head Brion
saw within his eyes a shadow of the blackness he had
just experienced.

"Death," Brion said. "That terrible feeling of death.
It wasn't just the people of Dis who would die. It
was something more personal."

"Myself," Ihjel said, and behind this simple word
were the repeated echoes of night that Brion had
been made aware of with his newly recognized ability.
"My own death, not too far away. This is the
wonderfully terrible price you must pay for your
talent. Angst is an inescapable part of empathy. It is
a part of the whole unknown field of psi phenomena
that seems to be independent of time. Death is so
traumatic and final that it reverberates back along
the time line. The closer I get, the more aware of it I
am. There is no exact feeling of date, just a rough
location in time. That is the horror of it. I know I will
die soon after I get to Dis—and long before the work
there is finished. I know the job to be done there,
and I know the men who have already failed at it. I
also know you are the only person who can possibly
complete the work I have started. Do you agree
now? Will you come with me?"

"Yes, of course," Brion said. "I'll go with you."[Pg 29]

IV

"I've never seen anyone quite as angry as that
doctor," Brion said.

"Can't blame him." Ihjel shifted his immense
weight and grunted from the console, where he was
having a coded conversation with the ship's brain. He
hit the keys quickly, and read the answer from the
screen. "You took away his medical moment of glory.
How many times in his life will he have a chance to
nurse back to rugged smiling health the triumphantly
exhausted Winner of the Twenties?"

"Not many, I imagine. The wonder of it is how you
managed to convince him that you and the ship here
could take care of me as well as his hospital could."

"I could never convince him of that," Ihjel said.
"But I and the Cultural Relationships Foundation
have some powerful friends on Anvhar. I'm forced to
admit I brought a little pressure to bear." He leaned
back and read the course tape as it streamed out of
the printer. "We have a little time to spare, but I
would rather spend it waiting at the other end. We'll
blast as soon as I have you tied down in a stasis
field."

The completeness of the stasis field leaves no impressions
on the body or mind. In it there is no
weight, no pressure, no pain—no sensation of any
kind. Except for a stasis of very long duration, there
is no sensation of time. To Brion's consciousness, Ihjel
flipped the switch off with a continuation of the same
motion that had turned it on. The ship was
unchanged, only outside of the port was the red-shot
blankness of jump-space.

"How do you feel?" Ihjel asked.

Apparently the ship was wondering the same
thing. Its detector unit, hovering impatiently just outside
of Brion's stasis field, darted down and settled[Pg 30]
on his bare forearm. The doctor back on Anvhar had
given the medical section of the ship's brain a complete
briefing. A quick check of a dozen factors of
Brion's metabolism was compared to the expected
norm. Apparently everything was going well, because
the only reaction was the expected injection of vitamins
and glucose.

"I can't say I'm feeling wonderful yet," Brion answered,
levering himself higher on the pillows. "But
every day it's a bit better—steady progress."

"I hope so, because we have about two weeks
before we get to Dis. Do you think you'll be back in
shape by that time?"

"No promises," Brion said, giving a tentative
squeeze to one bicep. "It should be enough time,
though. Tomorrow I start mild exercise and that will
tighten me up again. Now—tell me more about Dis
and what you have to do there."

"I'm not going to do it twice, so just save your
curiosity awhile. We're heading for a rendezvous
point now to pick up another operator. This is going
to be a three-man team, you, me and an exobiologist.
As soon as he is aboard I'll do a complete briefing for
you both at the same time. What you can do now is
get your head into the language box and start working
on your Disan. You'll want to speak it perfectly
by the time we touchdown."

With an autohypno for complete recall, Brion had
no difficulty in mastering the grammar and vocabulary
of Disan. Pronunciation was a different matter
altogether. Almost all the word endings were swallowed,
muffled or gargled. The language was rich in
glottal stops, clicks and guttural strangling sounds.
Ihjel stayed in a different part of the ship when
Brion used the voice mirror and analysis scope,
claiming that the awful noises interfered with his
digestion.

Their ship angled through jump-space along its
calculated course. It kept its fragile human cargo
warm, fed them and supplied breathable air. It had
orders to worry about Brion's health, so it did, checking
constantly against its recorded instructions and[Pg 31]
noting his steady progress. Another part of the ship's
brain counted microseconds with moronic fixation,
finally closing a relay when a predetermined number
had expired in its heart. A light flashed and a buzzer
hummed gently but insistently.

Ihjel yawned, put away the report he had been
reading, and started for the control room. He shuddered
when he passed the room where Brion was
listening to a playback of his Disan efforts.

"Turn off that dying brontosaurus and get strapped
in," he called through the thin door. "We're coming to
the point of optimum possibility and well be dropping
back into normal space soon."

The human mind can ponder the incredible distances
between the stars, but cannot possibly contain
within itself a real understanding of them. Marked
out on a man's hand an inch is a large unit of measure.
In interstellar space a cubical area with sides a
hundred thousand miles long is a microscopically fine
division. Light crosses this distance in a fraction of a
second. To a ship moving with a relative speed far
greater than that of light, this measuring unit is even
smaller. Theoretically, it appears impossible to find a
particular area of this size. Technologically, it was a
repeatable miracle that occurred too often to even be
interesting.

Brion and Ihjel were strapped in when the jump-drive
cut off abruptly, lurching them back into normal
space and time. They didn't unstrap, but just sat
and looked at the dimly distant pattern of stars. A
single sun, apparently of fifth magnitude, was their
only neighbor in this lost corner of the universe. They
waited while the computer took enough star sights to
triangulate a position in three dimensions, muttering
to itself electronically while it did the countless calculations
to find their position. A warning bell
chimed and the drive cut on and off so quickly that
the two acts seemed simultaneous. This happened
again, twice, before the brain was satisfied it had
made as good a fix as possible and flashed a NAVIGATION
POWER OFF light. Ihjel unstrapped,
stretched, and made them a meal.[Pg 32]

Ihjel had computed their passage time with precise
allowances. Less than ten hours after they arrived a
powerful signal blasted into their waiting receiver.
They strapped in again as the NAVIGATION POWER
ON signal blinked insistently.

A ship had paused in flight somewhere relatively
near in the vast volume of space. It had entered
normal space just long enough to emit a signal of
radio query on an assigned wave length. Ihjel's ship
had detected this and instantly responded with a
verifying signal. The passenger spacer had accepted
this assurance and gracefully laid a ten-foot metal
egg in space. As soon as this had cleared its jump
field the parent ship vanished towards its destination,
light years away.

Ihjel's ship climbed up the signal it had received.
This signal had been recorded and examined minutely.
Angle, strength and Doppler movement were
computed to find course and distance. A few minutes
of flight were enough to get within range of the far
weaker transmitter in the drop-capsule. Homing on
this signal was so simple, a human pilot could have
done it himself. The shining sphere loomed up, then
vanished out of sight of the viewports as the ship
rotated to bring the spacelock into line. Magnetic
clamps cut in when they made contact.

"Go down and let the bug-doctor in," Ihjel said.
"I'll stay and monitor the board in case of trouble."

"What do I have to do?"

"Get into a suit and open the outer lock. Most of
the drop sphere is made of inflatable metallic foil, so
don't bother to look for the entrance. Just cut a hole
in it with the oversize can-opener you'll find in the
tool box. After Dr. Morees gets aboard jettison the
thing. Only get the radio and locator unit out first—it
gets used again."

The tool did look like a giant can-opener. Brion
carefully felt the resilient metal skin that covered the
lock entrance, until he was sure there was nothing on
the other side. Then he jabbed the point through and
cut a ragged hole in the thin foil. Dr. Morees boiled
out of the sphere, knocking Brion aside.[Pg 33]

"What's the matter?" Brion asked.

There was no radio on the other's suit; he couldn't
answer. But he did shake his fist angrily. The helmet
ports were opaque, so there was no way to tell what
expressions went with the gesture. Brion shrugged
and turned back to salvaging the equipment pack,
pushing the punctured balloon free and sealing the
lock. When pressure was pumped back to ship-normal,
he cracked his helmet and motioned the
other to do the same.

"You're a pack of dirty lying dogs!" Dr. Morees
said when the helmet came off. Brion was completely
baffled. Dr. Lea Morees had long dark hair,
large eyes, and a delicately shaped mouth now taut
with anger. Dr. Morees was a woman.

"Are you the filthy swine responsible for this atrocity?"
Dr. Morees asked menacingly.

"In the control room," Brion said quickly, knowing
when cowardice was preferable to valor. "A man
named Ihjel. There's a lot of him to hate, you can
have a good time doing it. I just joined up myself...."
He was talking to her back as she stormed
from the room. Brion hurried after her, not wanting
to miss the first human spark of interest in the trip to
date.

"Kidnapped! Lied to, and forced against my will!
There is no court in the galaxy that won't give you
the maximum sentence, and I'll scream with pleasure
as they roll your fat body into solitary—"

"They shouldn't have sent a woman," Ihjel said,
completely ignoring her words. "I asked for a highly
qualified exobiologist for a difficult assignment.
Someone young and tough enough to do field work
under severe conditions. So the recruiting office sends
me the smallest female they can find, one who'll melt
in the first rain."

"I will not!" Lea shouted. "Female resiliency is a
well-known fact, and I'm in far better condition than
the average woman. Which has nothing to do with
what I'm telling you. I was hired for a job in the
university on Moller's World and signed a contract to[Pg 34]
that effect. Then this bully of an agent tells me the
contract has been changed—read subparagraph
189-C or some such nonsense—and I'll be transhipping.
He stuffed me into that suffocating basketball
without a by-your-leave and they threw me overboard.
If that is not a violation of personal privacy—"

"Cut a new course, Brion," Ihjel broke in. "Find the
nearest settled planet and head us there. We have to
drop this woman and find a man for this job. We are
going to what is undoubtedly the most interesting
planet an exobiologist ever conceived of, but we need
a man who can take orders and not faint when it gets
too hot."

Brion was lost. Ihjel had done all the navigating
and Brion had no idea how to begin a search like
this.

"Oh, no you don't," Lea said. "You don't get rid of
me that easily. I placed first in my class, and most of
the five hundred other students were male. This is
only a man's universe because the men say so. What
is the name of this garden planet where we are
going?"

"Dis. I'll give you a briefing as soon as I get this
ship on course." He turned to the controls and Lea
slipped out of her suit and went into the lavatory to
comb her hair. Brion closed his mouth, aware suddenly
it had been open for a long time. "Is that what
you call applied psychology?" he asked.

"Not really. She was going to go along with the job
in the end—since she did sign the contract even if she
didn't read the fine print—but not until she had
exhausted her feelings. I just shortened the process
by switching her onto the male-superiority hate. Most
women who succeed in normally masculine fields
have a reflexive antipathy there; they have been hit
on the head with it so much."

He fed the course tape into the console and scowled.
"But there was a good chunk of truth in what I said.
I wanted a young, fit and highly qualified biologist
from recruiting. I never thought they would find a[Pg 35]
female one—and it's too late to send her back now.
Dis is no place for a woman."

"Why?" Brion asked, as Lea appeared in the doorway.

"Come inside, and I'll show you both," Ihjel said.[Pg 36]

V

"Dis," Ihjel said, consulting a thick file, "third planet
out from its primary, Epsilon Eridani. The fourth
planet is Nyjord—remember that, because it is going
to be very important. Dis is a place you need a good
reason to visit and no reason at all to leave. Too hot,
too dry; the temperature in the temperate zones
rarely drops below a hundred Fahrenheit. The planet
is nothing but scorched rock and burning sand. Most
of the water is underground and normally inaccessible.
The surface water is all in the form of briny,
chemically saturated swamps—undrinkable without
extensive processing. All the facts and figures are
here in the folder and you can study them later.
Right now I want you just to get the idea that this
planet is as loathsome and inhospitable as they come.
So are the people. This is a solido of a Disan."

Lea gasped at the three-dimensional representation
on the screen. Not at the physical aspects of the man;
as a biologist trained in the specialty of alien life she
had seen a lot stranger sights. It was the man's pose,
the expression on his face—tensed to leap, his lips
drawn back to show all of this teeth.

"He looks as if he wanted to kill the photographer,"
she said.

"He almost did—just after the picture was taken.
Like all Disans, he has an overwhelming hatred and
loathing of offworlders. Not without good reason,
though. His planet was settled completely by chance
during the Breakdown. I'm not sure of the details,
but the overall picture is clear, since the story of their
desertion forms the basis of all the myths and animistic
religions on Dis.

"Apparently there were large-scale mining operations
carried on there once; the world is rich enough
in minerals and mining them is very simple. But water[Pg 37]
came only from expensive extraction processes and I
imagine most of the food came from offworld. Which
was good enough until the settlement was forgotten,
the way a lot of other planets were during the Breakdown.
All the records were destroyed in the fighting,
and the ore carriers were pressed into military service.
Dis was on its own. What happened to the
people there is a tribute to the adaptation possibilities
of homo sapiens. Individuals died, usually in enormous
pain, but the race lived. Changed a good deal,
but still human. As the water and food ran out and
the extraction machinery broke down, they must
have made heroic efforts to survive. They couldn't do
it mechanically, but by the time the last machine
collapsed, enough people were adjusted to the environment
to keep the race going.

"Their descendants are still there, completely
adapted to the environment. Their body temperatures
are around a hundred and thirty degrees. They
have specialized tissue in the gluteal area for storing
water. These are minor changes, compared to the
major ones they have done in fitting themselves for
this planet. I don't know the exact details, but the
reports are very enthusiastic about symbiotic relationships.
They assure us that this is the first time homo
sapiens has been an active part of either commensalism
or inquilinism other than in the role of host."

"Wonderful!" Lea exclaimed.

"Is it?" Ihjel scowled. "Perhaps from the abstract
scientific point of view. If you can keep notes perhaps
you might write a book about it some time. But
I'm not interested. I'm sure all these morphological
changes and disgusting intimacies will fascinate you,
Dr. Morees. But while you are counting blood types
and admiring your thermometers, I hope you will be
able to devote a little time to a study of the Disans'
obnoxious personalities. We must either find out what
makes these people tick—or we are going to have to
stand by and watch the whole lot blown up!"

"Going to do what!" Lea gasped. "Destroy them?
Wipe out this fascinating genetic pool? Why?

"Because they are so incredibly loathsome, that's[Pg 38]
why!" Ihjel said. "These aboriginal hotheads have
managed to lay their hands on some primitive cobalt
bombs. They want to light the fuse and drop these
bombs on Nyjord, the next planet. Nothing said or
done can convince them differently. They demand
unconditional surrender, or else. This is impossible
for a lot of reasons—most important, because the
Nyjorders would like to keep their planet for their
very own. They have tried every kind of compromise
but none of them works. The Disans are out to commit
racial suicide. A Nyjord fleet is now over Dis and the
deadline has almost expired for the surrender of the
cobalt bombs. The Nyjord ships carry enough H-bombs
to turn the entire planet into an atomic pile.
That is what we must stop."

Brion looked at the solido on the screen, trying to
make some judgment of the man. Bare, horny feet. A
bulky, ragged length of cloth around the waist was
the only garment. What looked like a piece of green
vine was hooked over one shoulder. From a plaited
belt were suspended a number of odd devices made
of hand-beaten metal, drilled stone and looped
leather. The only recognizable item was a thin knife
of unusual design. Loops of piping, flared bells,
carved stones tied in senseless patterns of thonging
gave the rest of the collection a bizarre appearance.
Perhaps they had some religious significance. But the
well-worn and handled look of most of them gave
Brion an uneasy sensation. If they were used—what
in the universe could they be used for?

"I can't believe it," he finally concluded. "Except
for the exotic hardware, this lowbrow looks as if he
has sunk back into the Stone Age. I don't see how his
kind can be any real threat to another planet."

"The Nyjorders believe it, and that's good enough
for me," Ihjel said. "They are paying our Cultural
Relationships Foundation a good sum to try and prevent
this war. Since they are our employers, we must
do what they ask." Brion ignored this large lie, since
it was obviously designed as an explanation for Lea.
But he made a mental note to query Ihjel later about
the real situation.[Pg 39]

"Here are the tech reports." Ihjel dropped them on
the table. "Dis has some spacers as well as the cobalt
bombs—though these aren't the real threat. A tramp
trader was picked up leaving Dis. It had delivered a
jump-space launcher that can drop those bombs on
Nyjord while anchored to the bedrock of Dis. While
essentially a peaceful and happy people, the Nyjorders
were justifiably annoyed at this and convinced the
tramp's captain to give them some more information.
It's all here. Boiled down, it gives a minimum deadline
by which time the launcher can be set up and start
throwing bombs."

"When is that deadline?" Lea asked.

"In ten more days. If the situation hasn't been
changed drastically by then, the Nyjorders are going
to wipe all life from the face of Dis. I assure you they
don't want to do it. But they will drop the bombs in
order to assure their own survival."

"What am I supposed to do?" Lea asked, flipping
the pages of the report. "I don't know a thing about
nucleonics or jump-space. I'm an exobiologist, with a
supplementary degree in anthropology. What help
could I possibly be?"

Ihjel looked down at her, stroking his jaw, fingers
sunk deep into the rolls of flesh. "My faith in our
recruiters is restored," he said. "That's a combination
that is probably rare—even on Earth. You're as
scrawny as an underfed chicken, but young enough
to survive if we keep a close eye on you." He cut off
Lea's angry protest with a raised hand. "No more
bickering. There isn't time. The Nyjorders must have
lost over thirty agents trying to find the bombs. Our
foundation has had six people killed—including my
late predecessor in charge of the project. He was a
good man, but I think he went at this problem the
wrong way. I think it is a cultural one, not a physical
one."

"Run it through again with the power turned up,"
Lea said, frowning. "All I hear is static."

"It's the old problem of genesis. Like Newton and
the falling apple, Levy and the hysteresis in the warp
field. Everything has a beginning. If we can find out[Pg 40]
why these people are so hell-bent on suicide we
might be able to change the reasons. Not that I
intend to stop looking for the bombs or the jump-space
generator either. We are going to try anything
that will avert this planetary murder."

"You're a lot brighter than you look," Lea said,
rising and carefully stacking the sheets of the report.
"You can count on me for complete cooperation. Now
I'll study all this in bed if one of you overweight
gentlemen will show me to a room with a strong lock
on the inside of the door. Don't call me; I'll call you
when I want breakfast."

Brion wasn't sure how much of her barbed speech
was humor and how much was serious, so he said
nothing. He showed her to an empty cabin—she did
lock the door—then looked for Ihjel. The Winner
was in the galley adding to his girth with an immense
gelatin dessert that filled a good-sized tureen.

"Is she short for a native Terran?" Brion asked.
"The top of her head is below my chin."

"That's the norm. Earth is a reservoir of tired
genes. Weak backs, vermiform appendixes, bad eyes.
If they didn't have the universities and the trained
people we need I would never use them."

"Why did you lie to her about the Foundation?"

"Because it's a secret—isn't that reason enough?"
Ihjel rumbled angrily, scraping the last dregs from
the bowl. "Better eat something. Build up the strength.
The Foundation has to maintain its undercover status
if it is going to accomplish anything. If she returns to
Earth after this it's better that she should know nothing
of our real work. If she joins up, there'll be time
enough to tell her. But I doubt if she will like the
way we operate. Particularly since I plan to drop
some H-bombs on Dis myself—if we can't turn off the
war."

"I don't believe it!"

"You heard me correctly. Don't bulge your eyes
and look moronic. As a last resort I'll drop the bombs
myself rather than let the Nyjorders do it. That
might save them."[Pg 41]

"Save them—they'd all be radiated and dead!"
Brion's voice rose in anger.

"Not the Disans. I want to save the Nyjorders. Stop
clenching your fists and sit down and have some of
this cake. It's delicious. The Nyjorders are all that
counts here. They have a planet blessed by the laws
of chance. When Dis was cut off from outside contact,
the survivors turned into a gang of swampcrawling
homicidals. It did the opposite for Nyjord.
You can survive there just by pulling fruit off a tree.
The population was small, educated, intelligent. Instead
of sinking into an eternal siesta they matured
into a vitally different society. Not mechanical—they
weren't even using the wheel when they were rediscovered.
They became sort of cultural specialists,
digging deep into the philosophical aspects of interrelationship—the
thing that machine societies never have
had time for. Of course this was ready-made for the
Cultural Relationships Foundation, and we have
been working with them ever since. Not guiding so
much as protecting them from any blows that might
destroy this growing idea. But we've fallen down on
the job. Nonviolence is essential to these people—they
have vitality without needing destruction. But if
they are forced to blow up Dis for their own survival—against
every one of their basic tenets—their philosophy
won't endure. Physically they'll live on, as just
one more dog-eat-dog planet with an A-bomb for any
of the competition who drop behind."

"Sounds like paradise now."

"Don't be smug. It's just another worldful of people
with the same old likes, dislikes and hatreds. But
they are evolving a way of living together, without
violence, that may some day form the key to mankind's
survival. They are worth looking after. Now
get below and study your Disan and read the reports.
Get it all pat before we land."[Pg 42]

VI

"Identify yourself, please." The quiet words from
the speaker in no way appeared to coincide with
the picture on the screen. The spacer that had
matched their orbit over Dis had recently been a
freighter. A quick conversion had tacked the hulking
shape of a primary weapons turret on top of her hull.
The black disc of the immense muzzle pointed
squarely at them. Ihjel switched open the ship-to-ship
communication channel.

"This is Ihjel. Retinal pattern 490-BJ4-67—which is
also the code that is supposed to get me through your
blockade. Do you want to check that pattern?"

"There will be no need, thank you. If you will turn
on your recorder I have a message relayed to you
from Prime-four."

"Recording and out," Ihjel said. "Damn! Trouble
already, and four days to blowup. Prime-four is our
headquarters on Dis. This ship carries a cover cargo
so we can land at the spaceport. This is probably a
change of plan and I don't like the smell of it."

There was something behind Ihjel's grumbling this
time, and without conscious effort Brion could sense
the chilling touch of the other man's angst. Trouble
was waiting for them on the planet below. When the
message was typed by the decoder Ihjel hovered
over it, reading each word as it appeared on the
paper. When it was finished he only snorted and
went below to the galley. Brion pulled the message
out of the machine and read it.

[Pg 43]

Dropping into the darkness was safe enough. It
was done on instruments, and the Disans were
thought to have no detection apparatus. The altimeter
dials spun backwards to zero and a soft vibration
was the only indication they had landed. All of the
cabin lights were off except for the fluorescent glow
of the instruments. A white-speckled grey filled the
infra-red screen, radiation from the still warm sand
and stone. There were no moving blips on it, not the
characteristic shape of a shielded atomic generator.

"We're here first," Ihjel said, opaqueing the ports
and turning on the cabin lights. They blinked at each
other, faces damp with perspiration.

"Must you have the ship this hot?" Lea asked,
patting her forehead with an already sodden kerchief.
Stripped of her heavier clothing, she looked
even tinier to Brion. But the thin cloth tunic—reaching
barely halfway to her knees—concealed
very little. Small she may have appeared to him:
unfeminine she was not. Her breasts were full and
high, her waist tiny enough to offset the outward
curve of her hips.

"Shall I turn around so you can stare at the back
too?" she asked Brion. Five days' experience had
taught him that this type of remark was best ignored.
It only became worse if he tried to make an intelligent
answer.

"Dis is hotter than this cabin," he said, changing
the subject. "By raising the interior temperature we
can at least prevent any sudden shock when we go
out—"

"I know the theory—but it doesn't stop me from
sweating," she said curtly.

"Best thing you can do is sweat." Ihjel said. He
looked like a glistening captive balloon in shorts.
Finishing a bottle of beer, he took another from the
freezer. "Have a beer."

"No, thank you. I'm afraid it would dissolve the
last shreds of tissue and my kidneys would float
completely away. On Earth we never—"

"Get Professor Morees' luggage for her," Ihjel inter[Pg 44]rupted.
"Vion's coming, there's his signal. I'm sending
this ship up before any of the locals spot it."

When he cracked the outer port the puff of air
struck them like the exhaust from a furnace, dry and
hot as a tongue of flame. Brion heard Lea's gasp in
the darkness. She stumbled down the ramp and he
followed her slowly, careful of the weight of packs
and equipment he carried. The sand, still hot from
the day, burned through his boots. Ihjel came last,
the remote-control unit in his hand. As soon as they
were clear he activated it and the ramp slipped back
like a giant tongue. As soon as the lock had swung
shut, the ship lifted and drifted upwards silently
towards its orbit, a shrinking darkness against the
stars.

There was just enough starlight to see the sandy
wastes around them, as wave-filled as a petrified sea.
The dark shape of a sand car drew up over a dune
and hummed to a stop. When the door opened Ihjel
stepped towards it and everything happened at once.

Ihjel broke into a blue nimbus of crackling flame,
his skin blackening, charred. He was dead in an instant.
A second pillar of flame bloomed next to the
car, and a choking scream was cut off at the moment
it began. Ihjel died silently.

Brion was diving even as the electrical discharges
still crackled in the air. The boxes and packs dropped
from him and he slammed against Lea, knocking her
to the ground. He hoped she had the sense to stay
there and be quiet. This was his only conscious
thought, the rest was reflex. He was rolling over and
over as fast as he could.

The spitting electrical flames flared again, playing
over the bundles of luggage he had dropped. This
time Brion was expecting it, pressed flat on the
ground a short distance away. He was facing the
darkness away from the sand car and saw the brief,
blue glow of the ion-rifle discharge. His own gun was
in his hand. When Ihjel had given him the missile
weapon he had asked no questions, but had just
strapped it on. There had been no thought that he
would need it this quickly. Holding it firmly before[Pg 45]
him in both hands, he let his body aim at the spot
where the glow had been. A whiplash of explosive
slugs ripped the night air. They found their target
and something thrashed voicelessly and died.

In the brief instant after he fired, a jarring weight
landed on his back and a line of fire circled his
throat. Normally he fought with a calm mind, with
no thoughts other than of the contest. But Ihjel, a
friend, a man of Anvhar, had died a few seconds
before, and Brion found himself welcoming this
physical violence and pain.

There are many foolish and dangerous things that
can be done, such as smoking next to high-octane
fuel and putting fingers into electrical sockets. Just as
dangerous, and equally deadly, is physically attacking
a Winner of the Twenties.

Two men hit Brion together, though this made
very little difference. The first died suddenly as
hands like steel claws found his neck and in a single
spasmodic contraction did such damage to the large
blood vessels there that they burst and tiny hemorrhages
filled his brain. The second man had time for
a single scream, though he died just as swiftly when
those hands closed on his larynx.

Running in a crouch, partially on his knuckles,
Brion swiftly made a circle of the area, gun ready.
There were no others. Only when he touched the
softness of Lea's body did the blood anger seep from
him. He was suddenly aware of the pain and fatigue,
the sweat soaking his body and the breath rasping in
his throat. Holstering the gun, he ran light fingers
over her skull, finding a bruised spot on one temple.
Her chest was rising and falling regularly. She had
struck her head when he pushed her. It had undoubtedly
saved her life.

Sitting down suddenly, he let his body relax,
breathing deeply. Everything was a little better now,
except for the pain at his throat. His fingers found a
thin strand on the side of his neck with a knobby
weight on the end. There was another weight on his
other shoulder and a thin line of pain across his neck.
When he pulled on them both, the strangler's cord[Pg 46]
came away in his hand. It was thin fiber, strong as a
wire. When it had been pulled around his neck it
had sliced the surface skin and flesh like a knife,
halted only by the corded bands of muscle below.
Brion threw it from him, into the darkness where it
had come from.

He could think again, and he carefully kept his
thoughts from the men he had killed. Knowing it was
useless, he went to Ihjel's body. A single touch of the
scorched flesh was enough. Behind him Lea moaned
with returning consciousness and he hurried on to the
sand car, stepping over the charred body outside the
door. The driver slumped, dead, killed perhaps by
the same strangling cord that had sunk into Brion's
throat. He laid the man gently on the sand and closed
the lids over the staring horror of the eyes. There was
a canteen in the car and he brought it back to Lea.

"My head—I've hurt my head," she said groggily.

"Just a bruise," he reassured her. "Drink some of
this water and you'll soon feel better. Lie back. Everything's
over for the moment and you can rest."

"Ihjel's dead!" Lea said with sudden shocked memory.
"They've killed him! What's happened?" she
tensed, tried to rise, and he pressed her back gently.

"I'll tell you everything. Just don't try to get up
yet. There was an ambush and they killed Vion and
the driver of the sand car, as well as Ihjel. Three men
did it and they're all dead now too. I don't think
there are any more around, but if there are I'll hear
them coming. We're just going to wait a few minutes
until you feel better, then we're getting out of here in
the car."

"Bring the ship down!" There was a thin note of
hysteria in her voice. "We can't stay here alone. We
don't know where to go or what to do. With Ihjel
dead, the whole thing's spoiled. We have to get
out...."

There are some things that can't sound gentle, no
matter how gently they are said. This was one of
them. "I'm sorry, Lea, but the ship is out of our reach
right now. Ihjel was killed with an ion gun and it
fused the control unit into a solid lump. We must[Pg 47]
take the car and get to the city. We'll do it now. See
if you can stand up—I'll help you."

She rose, not saying anything, and as they walked
towards the car a single, reddish moon cleared the
hills behind them. In its light Brion saw a dark line
bisecting the rear panel of the sand car. He stopped
abruptly. "What's the matter?" Lea asked.

The unlocked engine cover could have only one
significance and he pushed it open, knowing in advance
what he would see. The attackers had been
very thorough and fast. In the short time available to
them they had killed the driver and the car as well.
Ruddy light shone on torn wires, ripped out connections.
Repair would be impossible.

"I think we'll have to walk," he told her, trying to
keep the gloom out of his voice. "This spot is roughly
a hundred and fifty kilometres from the city of
Hovedstad, where we have to go. We should be able
to—"

"We're going to die. We can't walk anywhere. This
whole planet is a death trap. Let's get back in the
ship!" The shrillness of hysteria was at the edge of
her voice, as well as a subtle slurring of sounds.

Brion didn't try to reason with her or bother to
explain. She had a concussion from the blow, that
much was obvious. He had her sit and rest while he
made what preparations he could for the long walk.

Clothing first. With each passing minute the desert
air was growing colder as the day's heat ebbed away.
Lea was beginning to shiver, and he took some heavier
clothing from her charred bag and made her pull
it on over her light tunic. There was little else that
was worth carrying—the canteen from the car and a
first-aid kit he found in one of the compartments.
There were no maps and no radio. Navigation was
obviously done by compass on this almost featureless
desert. The car was equipped with an electrically
operated gyrocompass, of no use to him now. But he
did use it to check the direction of Hovedstad, as he
remembered it from the map, and found it lined up
perfectly with the tracks the car had cut into the[Pg 48]
sand. It had come directly from the city. They could
find their way by back-tracking.

Time was slipping away. He would have liked to
bury Ihjel and the men from the car, but the night
hours were too valuable to be wasted. The best he
could do was put the three corpses in the car, for
protection from the Disan animals. He locked the
door and threw the key as far as he could into the
blackness. Lea had slipped into a restless sleep and
he carefully shook her awake.

"Come," Brion said. "We have a little walking to
do."[Pg 49]

VII

With the cool air and firmly packed sand under
foot, walking should have been easy. Lea spoiled
that. The concussion seemed to have temporarily cut
off the reasoning part of her brain, leaving a direct
connection to her vocal cords. As she stumbled along,
only half conscious, she mumbled all of her darkest
fears that were better left unvoiced. Occasionally
there was relevancy in her complaints. They would
lose their way, never find the city, die of thirst,
freezing, heat or hunger. Interspersed and entwined
with these were fears from her past that still floated,
submerged in the timeless ocean of her subconscious.
Some Brion could understand, though he tried not to
listen. Fears of losing credits, not getting the highest
grade, falling behind, a woman alone in a world of
men, leaving school, being lost, trampled among the
nameless hordes that struggled for survival in the
crowded city-states of Earth.

There were other things she was afraid of that
made no sense to a man of Anvhar. Who were the
alkians that seemed to trouble her? Or what was
canceri? Daydle and haydle? Who was Manstan,
whose name kept coming up, over and over, each
time accompanied by a little moan?

Brion stopped and picked her up in both arms.
With a sigh she settled against the hard width of his
chest and was instantly asleep. Even with the additional
weight he made better time now, and he
stretched to his fastest, kilometre-consuming stride to
make good use of these best hours.

Somewhere on a stretch of gravel and shelving
rock he lost the track of the sand car. He wasted no
time looking for it. By carefully watching the glistening
stars rise and set he had made a good estimate of
the geographic north. Dis didn't seem to have a pole[Pg 50]
star; however, a boxlike constellation turned slowly
around the invisible point of the pole. Keeping this
positioned in line with his right shoulder guided him
on the westerly course he needed.

When his arms began to grow tired he lowered
Lea gently to the ground; she didn't wake. Stretching
for an instant, before taking up his burden again,
Brion was struck by the terrible loneliness of the
desert. His breath made a vanishing mist against the
stars; all else was darkness and silence. How distant
he was from his home, his people, his planet! Even
the constellations of the night sky were different. He
was used to solitude, but this was a loneliness that
touched some deep-buried instinct. A shiver that
wasn't from the desert cold touched lightly along his
spine, prickling at the hairs on his neck.

It was time to go on. He shrugged the disquieting
sensations off and carefully tied Lea into the jacket
he had been wearing. Slung like a pack on his back,
it made the walking easier. The gravel gave way to
sliding dunes of sand that seemed to continue to
infinity. It was a painful, slipping climb to the top of
each one, then an equally difficult descent to the
black-pooled hollow at the foot of the next.

With the first lightening of the sky in the east he
stopped, breath rasping in his chest, to mark his
direction before the stars faded. One line scratched
in the sand pointed due north, a second pointed out
the course they should follow. When they were
aligned to his satisfaction he washed his mouth out
with a single swallow of water and sat on the sand
next to the still form of the girl.

Gold fingers of fire searched across the sky, wiping
out the stars. It was magnificent; Brion forgot his
fatigue in appreciation. There should be some way of
preserving it. A quatrain would be best. Short
enough to be remembered, yet requiring attention
and skill to compact everything into it. He had scored
high with his quatrains in the Twenties. This would
be a special one. Taind, his poetry mentor, would
have to get a copy.

"What are you mumbling about?" Lea asked, look[Pg 51]ing
up at the craggy blackness of his profile against
the reddening sky.

"Poem," he said. "Shhh. Just a minute."

It was too much for Lea, coming after the tension
and dangers of the night. She began to laugh, laughing
even harder when he scowled at her. Only when
she heard the tinge of growing hysteria did she make
an attempt to break off the laughter. The sun cleared
the horizon, washing a sudden warmth over them.
Lea gasped.

"Your throat's been cut! You're bleeding to death!"

"Not really," he said, touching his fingertips lightly
against the blood-clotted wound that circled his
neck. "Just superficial."

Depression sat on him as he suddenly remembered
the battle and death of the previous night. Lea didn't
notice his face; she was busy digging in the pack he
had thrown down. He had to use his fingers to massage
and force away the grimace of pain that twisted
his mouth. Memory was more painful than the
wound. How easily he had killed! Three men. How
close to the surface of the civilized man the animal
dwelled! In countless matches he had used those
holds, always drawing back from the exertion of the
full killing power. They were part of a game, part of
the Twenties. Yet when his friend had been killed he
had become a killer himself. He believed in nonviolence
and the sanctity of life—until the first test,
when he had killed without hesitation. More ironic
was the fact he really felt no guilt, even now. Shock
at the change, yes. But no more than that.

"Lift your chin," Lea said, brandishing the antiseptic
applicator she had found in the medicine kit. He
lifted his chin obligingly and the liquid drew a cool,
burning line across his neck. Antibio pills would do a
lot more good, since the wound was completely
clotted by now, but he didn't speak his thoughts
aloud. For the moment Lea had forgotten herself in
taking care of him. He put some of the antiseptic on
her scalp bruise and she squeaked, pulling back.
They both swallowed the pills.

"That sun is hot already," Lea said, peeling off her[Pg 52]
heavy clothing. "Let's find a nice cool cave or an
air-cooled saloon to crawl into for the day."

"I don't think there are any here. Just sand. We
have to walk—"

"I know we have to walk," she interrupted.
"There's no need for a lecture about it. You're as
seriously cubical as the Bank of Terra. Relax. Count
ten and start again." Lea was making empty talk
while she listened to the memory of hysteria tittering
at the fringes of her brain.

"No time for that. We have to keep going." Brion
climbed slowly to his feet after stowing everything in
the pack. When he sighted along his marker at the
western horizon he saw nothing to mark their course,
only the marching dunes. He helped Lea to her feet
and began walking slowly towards them.

"Just hold on a second," Lea called after him.
"Where do you think you're going?"

"In that direction," he said, pointing. "I hoped
there would be some landmarks, but there aren't.
We'll have to keep on by dead reckoning. The sun
will keep us pretty well on course. If we aren't there
by night the stars will be a better guide."

"All this on an empty stomach? How about breakfast?
I'm hungry—and thirsty."

"No food." He shook the canteen that gurgled emptily.
It had been only partly filled when he found it.
"The water's low and we'll need it later."

"I need it now," she said shortly. "My mouth tastes
like an unemptied ashtray and I'm dry as paper."

"Just a single swallow," he said after the briefest
hesitation. "This is all we have."

Lea sipped at it with her eyes closed in appreciation.
Then he sealed the top and returned it to the
pack without taking any himself. They were sweating
as they started up the first dune.

The desert was barren of life; they were the only
things moving under that merciless sun. Their shadows
pointed the way ahead of them, and as the
shadows shortened the heat rose. It had an intensity
Lea had never experienced before, a physical weight
that pushed at her with a searing hand. Her clothing[Pg 53]
was sodden with perspiration, and it trickled burning
into her eyes. The light and heat made it hard to see,
and she leaned on the immovable strength of Brion's
arm. He walked on steadily, apparently ignoring the
heat and discomfort.

"I wonder if those things are edible—or store
water?" Brion's voice was a harsh rasp. Lea blinked
and squinted at the leathery shape on the summit of
the dune. Plant or animal, it was hard to tell. It was
the size of a man's head, wrinkled and grey as dried-out
leather, knobbed with thick spikes. Brion pushed
it up with his toe and they had a brief glimpse of a
white roundness, like a shiny taproot, going down
into the dune. Then the thing contracted, pulling
itself lower into the sand. At the same instant something
thin and sharp lashed out through a fold in the
skin, striking at Brion's boot and withdrawing. There
was a scratch on the hard plastic, beaded with drops
of green liquid.

"Probably poison," he said, digging his toe into the
sand. "This thing is too mean to fool with—without a
good reason. Let's keep going."

It was before noon when Lea fell down. She really
wanted to go on, but her body wouldn't obey. The
thin soles of her shoes were no protection against the
burning sand and her feet were lumps of raw pain.
Heat hammered down, poured up from the sand and
swirled her in an oven of pain. The air she gasped in
was molten metal that dried and cracked her mouth.
Each pulse of her heart throbbed blood to the wound
in her scalp until it seemed her skull would burst
with the agony. She had stripped down to the short
tunic—in spite of Brion's insistence that she keep her
body protected from the sun—and that clung to her,
soaked with sweat. She tore at it in a desperate effort
to breathe. There was no escape from the unending
heat.

Though the baked sand burned torture into her
knees and hands, she couldn't rise. It took all her
strength not to fall further. Her eyes closed and everything
swirled in immense circles.

Brion, blinking through slitted eyes, saw her go[Pg 54]
down. He lifted her, and carried her again as he had
the night before. The hot touch of her body shocked
his bare arms. Her skin was flushed pink. The tunic
was torn open and one pointed breast rose and fell
unevenly with the irregularity of her breathing.
Wiping his palm free of sweat and sand, he touched
her skin and felt the ominous hot dryness.

Heat-shock, all the symptoms. Dry, flushed skin, the
ragged breathing. Her temperature rising quickly as
her body stopped fighting the heat and succumbed.

There was nothing he could do here to protect her
from the heat. He measured a tiny portion of the
remaining water into her mouth and she swallowed
convulsively. Her thin clothing was little protection
from the sun. He could only take her in his arms and
keep on towards the horizon. An outcropping of rock
threw a tiny patch of shade and he walked towards
it.

The ground here, shielded from the direct rays of
the sun, felt almost cool by contrast. Lea opened her
eyes when he put her down, peering up at him
through a haze of pain. She wanted to apologize to
him for her weakness, but no words came from the
dried membrane of her throat. His body above her
seemed to swim back and forth in the heat waves,
swaying like a tree in a high wind.

Shock drove her eyes open, cleared her mind for an
instant. He really was swaying. Suddenly she realized
how much she had come to depend on the unending
solidity of his strength—and now it was failing. All
over his body the corded muscles contracted in
ridges, striving to keep him erect. She saw his mouth
pulled open by the taut cords of his neck, and the
gaping, silent scream was more terrible than any
sound. Then she herself screamed as his eyes rolled
back, leaving only the empty white of the eyeballs
staring terribly at her. He went over, back, down, like
a felled tree, thudding heavily on the sand. Unconscious
or dead, she couldn't tell. She pulled limply at
his leg, but couldn't drag his immense weight into the
shade.

Brion lay on his back in the sun, sweating. Lea saw[Pg 55]
this and knew that he was still alive. Yet what was
happening? She groped for memory in the red haze
of her mind, but could remember nothing from her
medical studies that would explain this. On every
square inch of his body the sweat glands seethed
with sudden activity. From every pore oozed great
globules of oily liquid, far thicker than normal perspiration.
Brion's arms rippled with motion and Lea
gaped, horrified as the hairs there writhed and
stirred as though endowed with separate life. His
chest rose and fell rapidly, deep, gasping breaths
racking his body. Lea could only stare through the
dim redness of unreality and wonder if she was going
mad before she died.

A coughing fit broke the rhythm of his rasping
breath, and when it was over his breathing was easier.
The perspiration still covered his body, the individual
beads touching and forming tiny streams that
trickled down his body and vanished in the sand. He
stirred and rolled onto his side, facing her. His eyes
were open and normal now as he smiled.

"Didn't mean to frighten you. It caught me suddenly
coming at the wrong season and everything. It
was a bit of a jar to my system. I'll get you some
water now—there's still a bit left."

"What happened? When you looked like that, when
you fell...."

"Take two swallows, no more," he said, holding the
open canteen to her mouth. "Just summer change,
that's all. It happens to us every year on Anvhar—only
not that violently, of course. In the winter our
bodies store a layer of fat under the skin for insulation,
and sweating almost ceases completely. There
are a lot of internal changes too. When the weather
warms up the process is reversed. The fat is metabolized
and the sweat glands enlarge and begin working
overtime as the body prepares for two months of
hard work, heat and little sleep. I guess the heat here
triggered off the summer change early."

"You mean—you've adapted to this terrible
planet?"

"Just about. Though it does feel a little warm. I'll[Pg 56]
need a lot more water soon, so we can't remain here.
Do you think you can stand the sun if I carry you?"

"No, but I won't feel any better staying here." She
was light-headed, scarcely aware of what she said.
"Keep going, I guess. Keep going."

As soon as she was out of the shadow of the rock
the sunlight burst over her again in a wave of hot
pain. She fell unconscious at once. Brion picked her
up and staggered forward. After a few yards, he
began to feel the pull of the sand. He knew he was
reaching the end of his strength. He went more slowly
and each dune seemed a bit higher than the one
before. Giant, sand-scoured rocks pushed through the
dunes here and he had to stumble around them. At
the base of the largest of these monoliths was a
straggling clump of knotted vegetation. He passed it
by—then stopped as something tried to penetrate his
heat-crazed mind. What was it? A difference. Something
about these plants that he hadn't noticed in
any of the others he had passed during the day.

It was almost like defeat to turn and push his
clumsy feet backwards in his own footprints; to stand
blinking helplessly at the plants. Yet they were important.
Some of them had been cut off close to the
sand. Not broken by any natural cause, but cut
sharply and squarely by a knife or blade of some
sort. The cut plants were long dried and dead, but a
tiny hope flared up in him. This was the first sign
that other people were actually alive on this heat-blasted
planet. And whatever the plants had been
cut for, they might be of aid to him. Food—perhaps
drink. His hands trembled at the thought as he
dropped Lea heavily into the shade of the rock. She
didn't stir.

His knife was sharp, but most of the strength was
gone from his hands. Breath rasping in his dried
throat, he sawed at the tough stem, finally cutting it
through. Raising up the shrub, he saw a thick liquid
dripping from the severed end. He braced his hand
against his leg, so it wouldn't shake and spill, until his
cupped palm was full of sap.

It was wet, even a little cool as it evaporated.[Pg 57]
Surely it was mostly life-giving water. He had a
moment's misgiving as he raised it to his lips, and
instead of drinking it merely touched it with the tip
of his tongue.

At first nothing—then a searing pain. It stabbed deep
into his throat and choked him. His stomach heaved
and he vomited bitter bile. On his knees, fighting the
waves of pain, he lost body fluid he vitally needed.

Despair was worse than the pain. The plant juice
must have some use; there must be a way of purifying
it or neutralizing it. But Brion, a stranger on this
planet, would be dead long before he found out how
to do this.

Weakened by the cramps that still tore at him, he
tried not to realize how close to the end he was.
Getting the girl on his back seemed an impossible
task, and for an instant he was tempted to leave her
there. Yet even as he considered this he shouldered
her leaden weight and once more went on. Each
footstep an effort, he followed his own track up the
dune. Painfully he forced his way to the top, and
looked at the Disan standing a few feet away.

They were both too surprised by the sudden encounter
to react at once. For a breath of time they
stared at each other, unmoving. When they reacted it
was the same defense of fear. Brion dropped the girl,
bringing the gun up from the holster in the return of
the same motion. The Disan jerked a belled tube
from his waistband and raised it to his mouth.

Brion didn't fire. A dead man had taught him how
to train his empathetic sense, and to trust it. In spite
of the fear that wanted him to jerk the trigger, a
different sense read the unvoiced emotions of the
native Disan. There was fear there, and hatred. Welling
up around these was a strong desire not to commit
violence, this time, to communicate instead.
Brion felt and recognized all this in a fraction of a
second. He had to act instantly to avoid a tragic
happening. A jerk of his wrist threw the gun to one
side.

As soon as it was gone he regretted its loss. He was
gambling their lives on an ability he still was not sure[Pg 58]
of. The Disan had the tube to his mouth when the
gun hit the ground. He held the pose, unmoving,
thinking. Then he accepted Brion's action and thrust
the tube back into his waistband.

"Do you have any water?" Brion asked, the guttural
Disan words hurting his throat.

"I have water," the man said. He still didn't move.
"Who are you? What are you doing here?"

"We're from offplanet. We had ... an accident. We
want to go to the city. The water."

The Disan looked at the unconscious girl and made
his decision. Over one shoulder he wore one of the
green objects that Brion remembered from the solido.
He pulled it off and the thing writhed slowly in his
hands. It was alive—a green length a metre long, like
a noduled section of a thick vine. One end flared out
into a petal-like formation. The Disan took a hook-shaped
object from his waist and thrust it into the
petaled orifice. When he turned the hook in a quick
motion the length of green writhed and curled
around his arm. He pulled something small and dark
out and threw it to the ground, extending the twisting
green shape towards Brion. "Put your mouth to the end
and drink," he said.

Lea needed the water more, but he drank first,
suspicious of the living water source. A hollow below
the writhing petals was filling with straw-colored
water from the fibrous, reedy interior. He raised it to
his mouth and drank. The water was hot and tasted
swampy. Sudden sharp pains around his mouth made
him jerk the thing away. Tiny glistening white barbs
projected from the petals pink-tipped now with his
blood. Brion swung towards the Disan angrily—and
stopped when he looked at the other man's face. His
mouth was surrounded by many small white scars.

"The vaede does not like to give up its water, but
it always does," the man said.

Brion drank again, then put the vaede to Lea's
mouth. She moaned without regaining consciousness,
her lips seeking reflexively for the life-saving liquid.
When she was satisfied Brion gently drew the barbs
from her flesh and drank again. The Disan hunkered[Pg 59]
down on his heels and watched them expressionlessly.
Brion handed back the vaede, then held some of
the clothes so that Lea was in their shade. He settled
to the same position as the native and looked closely
at him.

Squatting immobile on his heels, the Disan appeared
perfectly comfortable under the flaming sun.
There was no trace of perspiration on his naked,
browned skin. Long hair fell to his shoulders, and
startlingly blue eyes stared back at Brion from deepset
sockets. The heavy kilt around his loins was the
only garment he wore. Once more the vaede rested
over his shoulder, still stirring unhappily. Around his
waist was the same collection of leather, stone and
brass objects that had been in the solido. Two of them
now had meaning to Brion: the tube-and-mouthpiece,
a blowgun of some kind; and the specially shaped
hook for opening the vaede. He wondered if the other
strangely formed things had equally practical functions.
If you accepted them as artifacts with a purpose—not
barbaric decorations—you had to accept
their owner as something more than the crude savage
he resembled.

"My name is Brion. And you—"

"You may not have my name. Why are you here?
To kill my people?"

Brion forced away the memory of last night. Killing
was just what he had done. Some expectancy in
the man's manner, some sensed feeling of hope
prompted Brion to speak the truth.

"I'm here to stop your people from being killed. I
believe in the end of the war."

"Prove it."

"Take me to the Cultural Relationships Foundations
in the city and I'll prove it. I can do nothing
here in the desert. Except die."

For the first time there was emotion on the Disan's
face. He frowned and muttered something to himself.
There was a fine beading of sweat above his eyebrows
now as he fought an internal battle. Coming to
a decision, he rose, and Brion stood too.[Pg 60]

"Come with me. I'll take you to Hovedstad. But first
you will tell me—are you from Nyjord?"

"No."

The nameless Disan merely grunted and turned
away. Brion shouldered Lea's unconscious body and
followed him. They walked for two hours, the Disan
setting a cruel pace, before they reached a wasteland
of jumbled rock. The native pointed to the highest
tower of sand-eroded stone. "Wait near this," he said.
"Someone will come for you." He watched while
Brion placed the girl's still body in the shade, and
passed over the vaede for the last time. Just before
leaving he turned back, hesitating.

"My name is ... Ulv," he said. Then he was gone.

Brion did what he could to make Lea comfortable,
but it was very little. If she didn't get medical attention
soon she would be dead. Dehydration and shock
were uniting to destroy her.

Just before sunset he heard clanking, and the
throbbing whine of a sand car's engine coming from
the west.[Pg 61]

VIII

With each second the noise grew louder, coming
their way. The tracks squeaked as the car turned
around the rock spire, obviously seeking them out. A
large carrier, big as a truck, it stopped before them in
a cloud of its own dust and the driver kicked the
door open.

"Get in here—and fast!" the man shouted. "You're
letting in all the heat." He gunned the engine, ready
to kick in the gears, and looked at them irritatedly.

Ignoring the driver's nervous instructions, Brion
carefully placed Lea on the rear seat before he
pulled the door shut. The car surged forward instantly,
a blast of icy air pouring from the air-cooling
vents. It wasn't cold in the vehicle—but the temperature
was at least forty degrees lower than the outer
air. Brion covered Lea with all their extra clothing to
prevent any further shock to her system. The driver,
hunched over the wheel and driving with an intense
speed, hadn't said a word to them since they had
entered.

Brion looked up as another man stepped from the
engine compartment in the rear of the car. He was
thin, harried-looking. And he was pointing a gun.

"Who are you?" he said, without a trace of warmth
in his voice.

It was a strange reception, but Brion was beginning
to realize that Dis was a strange planet. The
other man chewed at his lip nervously while Brion
sat, relaxed and unmoving. He didn't want to startle
him into pulling the trigger, and he kept his voice
pitched low as he answered.

"My name is Brandd. We landed from space two
nights ago and have been walking in the desert ever
since. Now don't get excited and shoot the gun when
I tell you this—but both Vion and Ihjel are dead."[Pg 62]

The man with the gun gasped, his eyes widened.
The driver threw a single frightened look over his
shoulder, then turned quickly back to the wheel.
Brion's probe had hit its mark. If these men weren't
from the Cultural Relationships Foundation they at
least knew a lot about it. It seemed safe to assume
they were C.R.F. men.

"When they were shot the girl and I escaped. We
were trying to reach the city and contact you. You are
from the Foundation, aren't you?"

"Yes. Of course," the man said, lowering the gun.
He stared glassy-eyed into space for a moment, nervously
working his teeth against his lip. Startled at
his own inattention, he raised the gun again.

"If you're Brandd, there's something I want to
know." Rummaging in his breast pocket with his free
hand, he brought out a yellow message form. He
moved his lips as he reread the message. "Now answer
me—if you can—what are the last three events
in the ..." He took a quick look at the paper again.
"... in the Twenties?"

"Chess finals, rifle prone position, and fencing
playoffs. Why?"

The man grunted and slid the pistol back into its
holder, satisfied. "I'm Faussel," he said, and waved
the message at Brion. "This is Ihjel's last will and
testament, relayed to us by the Nyjord blockade control.
He thought he was going to die and he sure was
right. Passed on his job to you. You're in charge. I
was Mervv's second-in-command, until he was poisoned.
I was supposed to work for Ihjel, and now I
guess I'm yours. At least until tomorrow, when we'll
have everything packed and get off this hell planet."

"What do you mean, tomorrow?" Brion asked. "It's
three days to deadline and we still have a job to do."

Faussel had dropped heavily into one of the seats
and he sprang to his feet again, clutching the seat
back to keep his balance in the swaying car.

"Three days, three weeks, three minutes—what
difference does it make?" His voice rose shrilly with
each word, and he had to make a definite effort to
master himself before he could go on. "Look. You[Pg 63]
don't know anything about this. You just arrived and
that's your bad luck. My bad luck is being assigned
to this death trap and watching the depraved and
filthy things the natives do. And trying to be polite to
them even when they are killing my friends, and
those Nyjord bombers up there with their hands on
the triggers. One of those bombardiers is going to
start thinking about home and about the cobalt
bombs down here and he's going to press that button,
deadline or no deadline."

"Sit down, Faussel. Sit down and take a rest."
There was sympathy in Brion's voice—but also the
firmness of an order. Faussel swayed for a second
longer, then collapsed. He sat with his cheek against
the window, eyes closed. A pulse throbbed visibly in
his temple and his lips worked. He had been under
too much tension for too long a time.

This was the atmosphere that hung heavily in the
air at the C.R.F. building when they arrived. Despair
and defeat. The doctor was the only one who didn't
share this mood as he bustled Lea off to the clinic
with prompt efficiency. He obviously had enough patients
to keep his mind occupied. With the others the
feeling of depression was unmistakable. From the
instant they had driven through the automatic garage
door, Brion had swum in this miasma of defeat. It
was omnipresent and hard to ignore.

As soon as he had eaten he went with Faussel into
what was to have been Ihjel's office. Through the
transparent walls he could see the staff packing the
records, crating them for shipment. Faussel seemed
less nervous now that he was no longer in command.
Brion rejected any idea he had of letting the man
know that he himself was only a novice in the foundation.
He was going to need all the authority he
could muster, since they would undoubtedly hate him
for what he was going to do.

"Better take notes of this, Faussel, and have it
typed. I'll sign it." The printed word always carried
more weight. "All preparations for leaving are to be
stopped at once. Records are to be returned to the
files. We are going to stay here just as long as we[Pg 64]
have clearance from the Nyjorders. If this operation
is unsuccessful we will all leave together when the
time expires. We will take whatever personal baggage
we can carry by hand; everything else stays
here. Perhaps you don't realize we are here to save a
planet—not file cabinets full of papers."

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Faussel flush
with anger. "As soon as that is typed bring it back.
And all the reports as to what has been accomplished
on this project. That will be all for now."

Faussel stamped out, and a minute later Brion saw
the shocked, angry looks from the workers in the
outer office. Turning his back to them, he opened the
drawers in the desk, one after another. The top
drawer was empty, except for a sealed envelope. It
was addressed to Winner Ihjel.

Brion looked at it thoughtfully, then ripped it
open. The letter inside was handwritten.

Brion ticked off the relevant points in the letter. He
had to find some way of discovering what Pareto
Extrapolations were—without uncovering his own
lack of knowledge. The staff would vanish in five
minutes if they knew how new he was at the job.
Poisson Distribution made more sense. It was used in
physics as the unchanging probability of an event
that would be true at all times. Such as the numbers
of particles that would be given off by a lump of
radioactive matter during a short period. From the
way Mervv used it in his letter it looked as if the
societics people had found measurable applications in
societies and groups. At least on other planets. None
of the rules seemed to be working on Dis. Ihjel had
admitted that, and Mervv's death had proven it.
Brion wondered who this Lig-magte was who appeared
to have killed Mervv.

A forged cough broke through Brion's concentration,
and he realized that Faussel had been standing
in front of his desk for some minutes. Brion looked up
and mopped perspiration from his face.

"Your air conditioner seems to be out of order,"
Faussel said. "Should I have the mechanic look at
it?"

"There's nothing wrong with the machine; I'm just
adapting to Dis's climate. What else do you want,
Faussel?"

The assistant had a doubting look that he didn't
succeed in hiding. He also had trouble believing the
literal truth. He placed the small stack of file folders
on the desk.

"These are the reports to date, everything we have[Pg 66]
uncovered about the Disans. It's not very much; but
considering the anti-social attitudes on this lousy
world it is the best we could do." A sudden thought
hit him, and his eyes narrowed slyly. "It can't be
helped, but some of the staff have been wondering
out loud about that native that contacted us. How did
you get him to help you? We've never gotten to first
base with these people, and as soon as you land you
have one working for you. You can't stop people from
thinking about it, you being a newcomer and a
stranger. After all, it looks a little odd—" He broke off
in midsentence as Brion looked at him in cold fury.

"I can't stop people from thinking about it—but I
can stop them from talking. Our job is to contact the
Disans and stop this suicidal war. I have done more
in one day than you all have done since you arrived.
I have accomplished this because I am better at my
work than the rest of you. That is all the information
any of you are going to receive. You are dismissed."

White with anger, Faussel turned on his heel and
stamped out—to spread the word about what a slave-driver
the new director was. They would then all
hate him passionately, which was just the way he
wanted it. He couldn't risk exposure as the tyro he
was. And perhaps a new emotion, other than disgust
and defeat, might jar them into a little action. They
certainly couldn't do any worse than they had been
doing.

It was a tremendous amount of responsibility. For
the first time since setting foot on this barbaric planet
Brion had time to stop and think. He was taking an
awful lot upon himself. He knew nothing about this
world, nor about the powers involved in the conflict.
Here he sat pretending to be in charge of an organization
he had first heard about only a few weeks
earlier. It was a frightening situation. Should he slide
out from under?

There was just one possible answer, and that was
no. Until he found someone else who could do better,
he seemed to be the one best suited for the job. And
Ihjel's opinion had to count for something. Brion had
felt the surety of the man's conviction that Brion was[Pg 67]
the only one who might possibly succeed in this
difficult spot.

Let it go at that. If he had any qualms it would be
best to put them behind him. Aside from everything
else, there was a primary bit of loyalty involved. Ihjel
had been an Anvharian and a Winner. Maybe it was
a provincial attitude to hold in this big universe—Anvhar
was certainly far enough away from here—but
honor is very important to a man who must stand
alone. He had a debt to Ihjel, and he was going to
pay it off.

Once the decision had been made, he felt easier.
There was an intercom on the desk in front of him
and he leaned with a heavy thumb on the button
labeled Faussel.

"Yes?" Even through the speaker the man's voice
was cold with ill-concealed hatred.

"Who is Lig-magte? And did the former director
ever return from seeing him?"

"Magte is a title that means roughly noble or lord.
Lig-magte is the local overlord. He has an ugly
stoneheap of a building just outside the city. He
seems to be the mouthpiece for the group of magter
that are pushing this idiotic war. As to your second
question, I have to answer yes and no. We found
Director Mervv's head outside the door next morning
with all the skin gone. We knew who it was because
the doctor identified the bridgework in his mouth.
Do you understand?"

All pretense of control had vanished, and Faussel
almost shrieked the last words. They were all close to
cracking up, if he was any example. Brion broke in
quickly.

"That will be all, Faussel. Just get word to the
doctor that I would like to see him as soon as I can."
He broke the connection and opened the first of the
folders. By the time the doctor called he had
skimmed the reports and was reading the relevant
ones in greater detail. Putting on his warm coat, he
went through the outer office. The few workers still
on duty turned their backs in frigid silence.

Doctor Stine had a pink and shiny bald head that[Pg 68]
rose above a thick black beard. Brion had liked him
at once. Anyone with enough firmness of mind to
keep a beard in this climate was a pleasant exception
after what he had met so far.

"How's the new patient, Doctor?"

Stine combed his beard with stubby fingers before
answering. "Diagnosis: heat-syncope. Prognosis: complete
recovery. Condition fair, considering the dehydration
and extensive sunburn. I've treated the
burns, and a saline drip is taking care of the other.
She just missed going into heat-shock. I have her
under sedation now."

"I'd like to have her up and helping me tomorrow
morning. Could she do this—with stimulants or
drugs?"

"She could—but I don't like it. There might be side
factors, perhaps long-standing debilitation. It's a
chance."

"A chance we will have to take. In less than seventy
hours this planet is due for destruction. In attempting
to avert that tragedy I'm expendable, as is everyone
else here. Agreed?"

The doctor grunted deep in his beard and looked
Brion's immense frame up and down. "Agreed," he
said, almost happily. "It is a distinct pleasure to see
something beside black defeat around here. I'll go
along with you."

"Well, you can help me right now. I checked the
personnel roster and discovered that out of the twenty-eight
people working here there isn't a physical
scientist of any kind—other than yourself."

"A scruffy bunch of button-pushers and theoreticians.
Not worth a damn for field work, the whole
bunch of them!" The doctor toed the floor switch on
a waste receptacle and spat into it with feeling.

"Then I'm going to depend on you for some
straight answers," Brion said. "This is an un-standard
operation, and the standard techniques just don't begin
to make sense. Even Poisson Distributions and
Pareto Extrapolations don't apply here." Stine nodded
agreement and Brion relaxed a bit. He had just relieved
himself of his entire knowledge of societics,[Pg 69]
and it had sounded authentic. "The more I look at
it the more I believe that this is a physical problem,
something to do with the exotic and massive adjustments
the Disans have made to this hellish environment.
Could this tie up in any way with their
absolutely suicidal attitude towards the cobalt bombs?"

"Could it? Could it?" Dr. Stine paced the floor
rapidly on his stocky legs, twining his fingers behind
his back. "You are bloody well right it could. Someone
is thinking at last and not just punching bloody
numbers into a machine and sitting and scratching
his behind while waiting for the screen to light up
with the answers. Do you know how Disans exist?"
Brion shook his head. "The fools here think it disgusting
but I call it fascinating. They have found ways
to join a symbiotic relationship with the life forms on
this planet. Even a parasitic relationship. You must
realize that living organisms will do anything to survive.
Castaways at sea will drink their own urine in
their need for water. Disgust at this is only the attitude
of the overprotected who have never experienced
extreme thirst or hunger. Well, here on Dis
you have a planet of castaways."

Stine opened the door of the pharmacy. "This talk
of thirst makes me dry." With economically efficient
motions he poured grain alcohol into a beaker, thinned
it with distilled water and flavored it with some crystals
from a bottle. He filled two glasses and handed
Brion one. It didn't taste bad at all.

"What do you mean by parasitic, Doctor? Aren't
we all parasites of the lower life forms? Meat animals,
vegetables and such?"

"No, no—you miss the point! I speak of parasitic in
the exact meaning of the word. You must realize that
to a biologist there is no real difference between
parasitism, symbiosis, mutualism, biontergasy, commensalism—"

"Stop, stop!" Brion said. "Those are just meaningless
sounds to me. If that is what makes this
planet tick I'm beginning to see why the rest of the
staff has that lost feeling."

"It is just a matter of degree of the same thing.[Pg 70]
Look. You have a kind of crustacean living in the
lakes here, very much like an ordinary crab. It has
large claws in which it holds anemones, tentacled sea
animals with no power of motion. The crustacean
waves these around to gather food, and eats the
pieces they capture that are too big for them. This is
biontergasy, two creatures living and working together,
yet each capable of existing alone.

"Now, this same crustacean has a parasite living
under its shell, a degenerated form of a snail that has
lost all powers of movement. A true parasite that
takes food from its host's body and gives nothing in
return. Inside this snail's gut there is a protozoan that
lives off the snail's ingested food. Yet this little organism
is not a parasite, as you might think at first, but a
symbiote. It takes food from the snail, but at the
same time it secretes a chemical that aids the snail's
digestion of the food. Do you get the picture? All
these life forms exist in a complicated interdependence."

Brion frowned in concentration, sipping at the
drink. "It's making some kind of sense now. Symbiosis,
parasitism and all the rest are just ways of
describing variations of the same basic process of
living together. And there is probably a grading and
shading between some of these that make the exact
relationship hard to define."

"Precisely. Existence is so difficult on this world
that the competing forms have almost died out.
There are still a few left, preying off the others. It
was the cooperating and interdependent life forms
that really won out in the race for survival. I say life
forms with intent. The creatures here are mostly a
mixture of plant and animal, like the lichens you
have elsewhere. The Disans have a creature they call
a "vaede" that they use for water when traveling. It
has rudimentary powers of motion from its animal
part, yet uses photosynthesis and stores water like a
plant. When the Disans drink from it the thing taps
their blood streams for food elements."

"I know," Brion said wryly. "I drank from one. You
can see my scars. I'm beginning to comprehend how[Pg 71]
the Disans fit into the physical pattern of their world,
and I realize it must have all kinds of psychological
effects on them. Do you think this has any effect on
their social organization?"

"An important one. But maybe I'm making too
many suppositions now. Perhaps your researchers upstairs
can tell you better; after all, this is their field."

Brion had studied the reports on the social setup
and not one word of them made sense. They were a
solid maze of unknown symbols and cryptic charts.
"Please continue, Doctor," he insisted. "The societics
reports are valueless so far. There are factors missing.
You are the only one I have talked to so far who can
give me any intelligent reports or answers."

"All right then—be it on your own head. The way I
see it, you've got no society here at all, just a bunch
of rugged individualists. Each one for himself, getting
nourishment from the other life forms of the planet.
If they have a society, it is orientated towards the
rest of the planetary life—instead of towards other
human beings. Perhaps that's why your figures don't
make sense. They are set up for the human societies.
In their relations with each other, these people are
completely different."

"What about the magter, the upper-class types who
build castles and are causing all this trouble?"

"I have no explanation," Dr. Stine admitted. "My
theories hold water and seem logical enough up to
this point. But the magter are the exception, and I
have no idea why. They are completely different
from the rest of the Disans. Argumentative, blood-thirsty,
looking for planetary conquest instead of
peace. They aren't rulers, not in the real sense. They
hold power because nobody else wants it. They grant
mining concessions to offworlders because they are
the only ones with a sense of property. Maybe I'm
going out on a limb. But if you can find out why they
are so different you may be onto the clue to our
difficulties."

For the first time since his arrival Brion began to
feel a touch of enthusiasm. Plus a sense of the remote[Pg 72]
possibility that there might even be a solution to the
deadly problem. He drained his glass and stood up.

"I hope you'll wake your patient early, Doctor. You
might be as interested in talking to her as I am. If
what you told me is true, she could well be our key
to the answer. She is Professor Lea Morees, and she
is just out from Earth with degrees in exobiology and
anthropology, and has a head stuffed with vital facts."

"Wonderful!" Stine said. "I shall take care of the
head, not only because it is so pretty but because of
its knowledge. Though we totter on the edge of
atomic destruction I have a strange feeling of optimism—for
the first time since I landed on this
planet."[Pg 73]

IX

The guard inside the front entrance of the Foundation
building jumped at the thunderous noise and
reached for his gun. He dropped his hand sheepishly
when he realized it was only a sneeze—though a
gargantuan one. Brion came up, sniffling, huddling
down into his coat. "I'm going out before I catch
pneumonia," he said. The guard saluted dumbly, and
after checking his proximity detector screens he
slipped out and the heavy portal thudded shut behind
him. The street was still warm from the heat of
the day and he sighed happily and opened his coat.

This was partly a reconnaissance trip—and partly a
way of getting warmed up. There was little else he
could do in the building; the staff had long since
retired. He had slept for a half an hour, and had
waked refreshed and ready to work. All of the reports
he could understand had been read and reread
until they were memorized. He could use the time
now, while the rest of them were asleep, to get better
acquainted with the main city of Dis.

As he walked the dark streets he realized how
alien the Disan way of life was to everything he
knew. This city—Hovedstad—literally meant "main
place" in the native language. And that's all it was. It
was only the presence of the offworlders that made it
into a city. Building after building, standing deserted,
bore the names of mining companies, traders,
space transporters. None of them was occupied now.
Some still had lights burning, switched on by automatic
apparatus, others were as dark as the Disan
structures. There weren't many of these native constructions
and they seemed out of place among the
rammed earth and prefab offworld buildings. Brion
examined one that was dimly illuminated by the light
on the corner of VEGAN SMELTERS, LTD.[Pg 74]

It consisted of a single large room, resting right on
the ground. There were no windows, and the whole
thing appeared to have been constructed of some sort
of woven material plastered with stone-hard mud.
Nothing was blocking the door and he was thinking
seriously of going in when he became aware that he
was being followed.

It was only a slight noise, almost lost in the night.
Normally it would never have been noticed, but
tonight Brion was listening with his entire body.
Someone was behind him, swallowed up in the pools
of darkness. Brion shrank back against the wall.
There was very little chance this could be anyone but
a Disan. He had a sudden memory of Mervv's severed
head as it had been discovered outside the door.

Ihjel had helped him train his empathetic sense
and he reached out with it. It was difficult working
in the dark; he could be sure of nothing. Was he
getting a reaction—or just wishing for one? Why did
it have a ring of familiarity to it? A sudden idea
struck him.

"Ulv," he said, very softly. "This is Brion." He
crouched, ready for any attack.

"I know," a voice said softly in the night. "Do not
talk. Walk in the direction you were going before."

Asking questions now would accomplish nothing.
Brion turned instantly and did as he was bidden. The
buildings grew further apart until he realized from
the sand underfoot that he was back in the planet-wide
desert. It could be a trap—he hadn't recognized
the voice behind the whisper—yet he had to take
this chance. A darker shape appeared in the dark
night near him, and a burning hot hand touched his
arm lightly.

"I will walk ahead. Follow close behind me." The
words were louder and this time Brion recognized
the voice.

Without waiting for an answer, Ulv turned and his
dimly seen shape vanished into the darkness. Brion
moved swiftly after him, until they walked side by
side over the rolling hills of sand. The sand merged
into hard-baked ground, became cracked and scarred[Pg 75]
with rock-filled gulleys. They followed a deepening
gulley that grew into a good-sized ravine. When they
turned an angle of the ravine Brion saw a weak
yellow light coming from an opening in the hard dirt
wall.

Ulv dropped on all fours and vanished through
the shoulder-wide hole. Brion followed him, trying to
ignore the growing tension and unease he felt.
Crawling like this, head down, he was terribly vulnerable.
He tried to shrug off the feeling, mentally
blaming it on tense nerves.

The tunnel was short and opened into a larger
chamber. A sudden scuffle of feet sounded at the
same instant that a wave of empathetic hatred struck
him. It took vital seconds to fight his way out of the
trapping tunnel, to roll clear and bring his gun up.
During those seconds he should have died. The
Disan poised above him had the short-handled stone
hammer raised to strike a skull-crushing blow.

Ulv was clutching the man's wrist, fighting silently
to keep the hammer from falling. Neither combatant
said a word, the rasp of their calloused feet on the
sand the only sound. Brion backed away from the
struggling men, his gun centered on the stranger. The
Disan followed him with burning eyes, and dropped
the hammer as soon as it was obvious the attack had
failed.

"Why did you bring him here?" he growled at Ulv.
"Why didn't you kill him?"

"He is here so we can listen to what he says, Gebk.
He is the one I told you of, that I found in the
desert."

"We listen to what he says and then we kill him,"
Gebk said with a mirthless grin. The remark wasn't
meant to be humorous, but was made in all seriousness.
Brion recognized this and knew that there was
no danger for the present moment. He slid the gun
away, and for the first time looked around the chamber.

It was domed in shape and was still hot from the
heat of the day. Ulv took off the length of cloth he
had wrapped around his body against the chill, and[Pg 76]
refolded it as a kilt, strapping it on under his belt
artifacts. He grunted something unintelligible and
when a muttered answer came, Brion for the first
time became aware of the woman and the child.

The two sat against the far wall, squatting on
either side of a heap of fibrous plants. Both were
nude, clothed only in the matted hair that fell below
their shoulders. The belt of strange tools could not be
classified as clothing. Even the child wore a tiny
replica of her mother's. Putting down a length of
plant she had been chewing, the woman shuffled
over to the tiny fire that illuminated the room. A clay
pot stood over it, and from this she ladled three
bowls of food for the men. It smelled atrocious, and
Brion tried not to taste or smell the sickening mixture
while he ate it. He used his fingers, as did the other
men, and did not talk while he ate. There was no
way to tell if the silence was ritual or habit. It gave
him a chance for a closer look at the Disan way of
living.

The cave was obviously hand-made; tool marks
could be clearly seen in the hard clay of the walls,
except in the portion opposite the entrance. This was
covered with a network of roots, rising out of the
floor and vanishing into the roof of earth above.
Perhaps this was the reason for the cave's existence.
The thin roots had been carefully twisted and plaited
together until they formed a single swollen root in
the center, as thick as a man's arm. From this hung
four of the vaedes: Ulv had placed his there before
he sat down. The teeth must have instantly sunk in,
for it hung unsupported—another link in the Disan
life cycle. This appeared to be the source of the
vaede's water that nourished the people.

Brion was aware of eyes upon him and turned and
smiled at the little girl. She couldn't have been over
six years old, but she was already a Disan in every
way. She neither returned his smile nor changed her
expression, unchildlike in its stolidity. Her hands and
jaw never stopped as she worked on the lengths of
fibrous plant her mother had placed before her. The
child split them with a small tool and removed a pod[Pg 77]
of some kind. This was peeled—partially by scraping
with a different tool, and partially by working between
her teeth. It took long minutes to remove the
tough rind; the results seemed scarcely worth it. A
tiny wriggling object was finally disclosed which the
girl instantly swallowed. She then began working on
the next pod.

Ulv put down his clay bowl and belched. "I
brought you to the city as I told you I would," he
said. "Have you done as you said you would?"

"What did he promise?" Gebk asked.

"That he would stop the war. Have you stopped
it?"

"I am trying to stop it," Brion said. "But it is not
that easy. I'll need some help. It is your life that
needs saving—yours and your families'. If you would
help me—"

"What is the truth?" Ulv broke in savagely. "All I
hear is difference, and there is no longer any way to
tell truth. For as long as always we have done as the
magter say. We bring them food and they give us the
metal and sometimes water when we need it. As long
as we do as they ask they do not kill us. They live
the wrong way, but I have had bronze from them for
my tools. They have told us that they are getting a
world for us from the sky people, and that is good."

"It has always been known that the sky people are
evil in every way, and only good can come from
killing them," Gebk said.

Brion stared back at the two Disans and their
obvious hatred. "Then why didn't you kill me, Ulv?"
he asked. "That first time in the desert, or tonight
when you stopped Gebk?"

"I could have. But there was something more important.
What is the truth? Can we believe as we
have always done? Or should we listen to this?"

He threw a small sheet of plastic to Brion, no
bigger than the palm of his hand. A metal button was
fastened to one corner of the wafer, and a simple
drawing was imbedded in the wafer. Brion held it to
the light and saw a picture of a man's hand squeezing
the button between thumb and forefinger. It was[Pg 78]
a subminiaturized playback; mechanical pressure on
the case provided enough current to play the recorded
message. The plastic sheet vibrated, acting as a
loudspeaker.

Though the voice was thin and scratchy, the words
were clearly audible. It was an appeal for the Disan
people not to listen to the magter. It explained that
the magter had started a war that could have only
one ending—the destruction of Dis. Only if the magter
were thrown down and their weapons discovered
could there be any hope.

"Are these words true?" Ulv asked.

"Yes," Brion said.

"They are perhaps true," Gebk said, "but there is
nothing that we can do. I was with my brother when
these word-things fell out of the sky and he listened
to one and took it to the magter to ask them. They
killed him, as he should have known they would do.
The magter kill us if they know we listen to the
words."

"And the words tell us we will die if we listen to
the magter!" Ulv shouted, his voice cracking. Not
with fear, but with frustration at the attempt to
reconcile two opposite points of view. Up until this
time his world had consisted of black and white
values, with very few shadings of difference in between.

"There are things you can do that will stop the war
without hurting yourself or the magter," Brion said,
searching for a way to enlist their aid.

"Tell us," Ulv grunted.

"There would be no war if the magter could be
contacted, made to listen to reason. They are killing
you all. You could tell me how to talk to the magter,
how I could understand them—"

"No one can talk to the magter," the woman broke
in. "If you say something different they will kill you
as they killed Gebk's brother. So they are easy to
understand. That is the way they are. They do not
change." She put the length of plant she had been
softening for the child back into her mouth. Her lips
were deeply grooved and scarred from a lifetime of[Pg 79]
this work, her teeth at the sides worn almost to the
bone.

"Mor is right," Ulv said. "You do not talk to magter.
What else is there to do?"

Brion looked at the two men before he spoke, and
shifted his weight. The motion brought his fingertips
just a few inches from his gun. "The magter have
bombs that will destroy Nyjord—this is the next
planet, a star in your sky. If I can find where the
bombs are, I will have them taken away and there
will be no war."

"You want to aid the devils in the sky against our
own people!" Gebk shouted, half rising. Ulv pulled
him back to the ground, but there was no more
warmth in his voice as he spoke.

"You are asking too much. You will leave now."

"Will you help me, though? Will you help stop the
war?" Brion asked, aware he had gone too far, but
unable to stop. Their anger was making them forget
the reasons for his being there.

"You ask too much," Ulv said again. "Go back now.
We will talk about it."

"Will I see you again? How can I reach you?"

"We will find you if we wish to talk to you," was
all Ulv said. If they decided he was lying he would
never see them again. There was nothing he could do
about it.

"I have made up my mind," Gebk said, rising to his
feet and drawing his cloth up until it covered his
shoulders. "You are lying and this is all a lie of the
sky people. If I see you again I will kill you." He
stepped to the tunnel and was gone.

There was nothing more to be said. Brion went out
next—checking carefully to be sure that Gebk really
had left—and Ulv guided him to the spot where the
lights of Hovedstad were visible. He did not speak
during their return journey and vanished without a
word. Brion shivered in the night chill of the air and
wrapped his coat more tightly around himself. Depressed,
he walked back towards the warmer streets
of the city.

It was dawn when he reached the Foundation[Pg 80]
building; a new guard was at the front entrance. No
amount of hammering or threats could convince the
man to open until Faussel came down, yawning and
blinking with sleep. He was starting some complaint
when Brion cut him off curtly and ordered him to
finish dressing and report for work at once. Still
feeling elated, Brion hurried into his office and
cursed the overly efficient character who had turned
on his air conditioner to chill the room again. When
he turned it off this time he removed enough vital
parts to keep it out of order for the duration.

When Faussel came in he was still yawning behind
his fist—obviously a low morning-sugar type. "Before
you fall on your face, go out and get some coffee,"
Brion said. "Two cups. I'll have a cup too."

"That won't be necessary," Faussel said, drawing
himself up stiffly. "I'll call the canteen if you wish
some." He said it in the iciest tone he could manage
this early in the morning.

In his enthusiasm Brion had forgotten the hate
campaign he had directed against himself. "Suit
yourself," he said shortly, getting back into the role.
"But the next time you yawn there'll be a negative
entry in your service record. If that's clear—you can
brief me on this organization's visible relations with
the Disans. How do they take us?"

Faussel choked and swallowed a yawn. "I believe
they look on the C.R.F. people as some species of
simpleton, sir. They hate all offworlders; memory of
their desertion has been passed on verbally for generations.
So by their one-to-one logic we should either
hate back or go away. We stay instead. And give
them food, water, medicine and artifacts. Because of
this they let us remain on sufferance. I imagine they
consider us do-gooder idiots, and as long as we cause
no trouble they'll let us stay." He was struggling miserably
to suppress a yawn, so Brion turned his back
and gave him a chance to get it out.

"What about the Nyjorders? How much do they
know of our work?" Brion looked out the window at
dusty buildings, outlined in purple against the violent
colors of the desert sunrise.[Pg 81]

"Nyjord is a cooperating planet, and has full
knowledge at all executive levels. They are giving us
all the aid they can."

"Well, now is the time to ask for more. Can I
contact the commander of the blockading fleet?"

"There is a scrambler connection right through to
him. I'll set it up." Faussel bent over the desk and
punched a number into the phone controls. The
screen flowed with the black and white patterns of
the scrambler.

"That's all, Faussel," Brion said. "I want privacy for
this talk. What's the commander's name?"

"Professor Krafft—he's a physicist. They have no
military men at all, so they called him in for the
construction of the bombs and energy weapons. He's
still in charge." Faussel yawned extravagantly as he
went out the door.

The Professor-Commander was very old, with
wispy grey hair and a network of wrinkles surrounding
his eyes. His image shimmered, then cleared as
the scrambler units aligned.

"You must be Brion Brandd," he said. "I have to
tell you how sorry we all are that your friend Ihjel
and the two others—had to die, after coming so far to
help us. I'm sure you are very happy to have had a
friend like that."

"Why ... yes, of course," Brion said, reaching for
the scattered fragments of his thought processes. It
took an effort to remember the first conflict, now that
he was worrying about the death of a planet. "It's
very kind of you to mention it. But I would like to
find out a few things from you, if I could."

"Anything at all; we are at your disposal. Before
we begin, though, I shall pass on the thanks of our
council for your aid in joining us. Even if we are
eventually forced to drop the bombs, we shall never
forget that your organization did everything possible
to avert the disaster."

Once again Brion was caught off balance. For an
instant he wondered if Krafft was being insincere,
then recognized the baseness of this thought. The
completeness of the man's humanity was obvious and[Pg 82]
compelling. The thought passed through Brion's mind
that now he had an additional reason for wanting the
war ended without destruction on either side. He very
much wanted to visit Nyjord and see these people on
their home grounds.

Professor Krafft waited, patiently and silently,
while Brion pulled his thoughts together and answered.
"I still hope that this thing can be stopped in
time. That's what I wanted to talk to you about. I
want to see Lig-magte and I thought it would be
better if I had a legitimate reason. Are you in contact
with him?"

Krafft shook his head. "No, not really in contact.
When this trouble started I sent him a transceiver so
we could talk directly. But he has delivered his ultimatum,
speaking for the magter. The only terms he
will hear are unconditional surrender. His receiver is
on, but he has said that is the only message he will
answer."

"Not much chance of him ever being told that,"
Brion said.

"There was—at one time. I hope you realize,
Brion, that the decision to bomb Dis was not easily
arrived at. A great many people—myself included—voted
for unconditional surrender. We lost the vote
by a very small margin."

Brion was getting used to these philosophical body
blows and he rolled with the punches now. "Are
there any of your people left on this planet? Or do
you have any troops I can call on for help? This is
still a remote possibility, but if I do find out where
the bombs or the launchers are, a surprise raid would
knock them out."

"We have no people left in Hovedstad now—all the
ones who weren't evacuated were killed. But there
are commando teams standing by here to make a
landing if the weapons are detected. The Disans
must depend on secrecy to protect their armament,
since we have both the manpower and the technology
to reach any objective. We also have technicians
and other volunteers looking for the weapon sites.[Pg 83]
They have not been successful as yet, and most of
them were killed soon after landing."

Krafft hesitated for a moment. "There is another
group you should know about; you will need all the
factors. Some of our people are in the desert outside
of Hovedstad. We do not officially approve of them,
though they have a good deal of popular support.
They are mostly young men, operating as raiders,
killing and destroying with very little compunction.
They are attempting to uncover the weapons by
sheer strength of arms."

This was the best news yet. Brion controlled his
voice and kept his expression calm when he spoke. "I
don't know how far I can stretch your cooperation—but
could you possibly tell me how to get in touch
with them?"

Kraft allowed himself a small smile. "I'll give you
the wave length on which you can reach their radio.
They call themselves the 'Nyjord army.' When you
talk to them you can do me a favor. Pass on a
message. Just to prove things aren't bad enough,
they've become a little worse. One of our technical
crews has detected jump-space energy transmissions
in the planetary crust. The Disans are apparently
testing their projector, sooner than we had estimated.
Our deadline has been revised by one day. I'm afraid
there are only two days left before you must evacuate."
His eyes were large with compassion. "I'm sorry.
I know this will make your job that much harder."

Brion didn't want to think about the loss of a full
day from his already close deadline. "Have you told
the Disans this yet?"

"No," Krafft told him. "The decision was reached a
few minutes before your call. It is going on the radio
to Lig-magte now."

"Can you cancel the transmission and let me take
the message in person?"

"I can do that." Krafft thought for a moment. "But
it would surely mean your death at their hands. They
have no hesitation in killing any of our people. I
would prefer to send it by radio."

"If you do that you will be interfering with my[Pg 84]
plans, and perhaps destroying them under the guise
of saving my life. Isn't my life my own—to dispose of
as I will?"

For the first time Professor Krafft was upset. "I'm
sorry, terribly sorry. I'm letting my concern and worry
wash over into my public affairs. Of course you
may do as you please; I could never think of stopping
you." He turned and said something inaudible
offscreen. "The call is cancelled. The responsibility is
yours. All our wishes for success go with you. End of
transmission."

"End of transmission," Brion said, and the screen
went dark.

"Faussel!" he shouted into the intercom. "Get me
the best and fastest sand car we have, a driver who
knows his way around, and two men who can handle
a gun and know how to take orders. We're going to
get some positive action at last."[Pg 85]

X

"It's suicide," the taller guard grumbled.

"Mine, not yours, so don't worry about it," Brion
barked at him. "Your job is to remember your orders
and keep them straight. Now—let's hear them
again."

The guard rolled his eyes up in silent rebellion and
repeated in a toneless voice: "We stay here in the car
and keep the motor running while you go inside the
stone pile there. We don't let anybody in the car and
we try and keep them clear of the car—short of shooting
them, that is. We don't come in, no matter what
happens or what it looks like, but wait for you here.
Unless you call on the radio, in which case we come
in with the automatics going and shoot the place up,
and it doesn't matter who we hit. This will be done
only as a last resort."

"See if you can't arrange that last resort thing," the
other guard said, patting the heavy blue barrel of his
weapon.

"I meant that last resort," Brion said angrily. "If
any guns go off without my permission you will pay
for it, and pay with your necks. I want that clearly
understood. You are here as a rear guard and a base
for me to get back to. This is my operation and mine
alone—unless I call you in. Understood?"

He waited until all three men had nodded in agreement,
then checked the charge on his gun—it was
fully loaded. It would be foolish to go in unarmed,
but he had to. One gun wouldn't save him. He put it
aside. The button radio on his collar was working and
had a strong enough signal to get through any number
of walls. He took off his coat, threw open the door
and stepped out into the searing brilliance of the
Disan noon.

There was only the desert silence, broken by the[Pg 86]
steady throb of the car's motor behind him.
Stretching away to the horizon in every direction was
the eternal desert of sand. The keep stood nearby,
solitary, a massive pile of black rock. Brion plodded
closer, watching for any motion from the walls. Nothing
stirred. The high-walled, irregularly shaped construction
sat in a ponderous silence. Brion was
sweating now, only partially from the heat.

He circled the thing, looking for a gate. There
wasn't one at ground level. A slanting cleft in the
stone could be climbed easily, but it seemed incredible
that this might be the only entrance. A complete
circuit proved that it was. Brion looked unhappily at
the slanting and broken ramp, then cupped his hands
and shouted loudly.

"I'm coming up. Your radio doesn't work any more.
I'm bringing the message from Nyjord that you have
been waiting to hear." This was a slight bending of
the truth without fracturing it. There was no answer—just
the hiss of wind-blown sand against the rock and
the mutter of the car in the background. He started to
climb.

The rock underfoot was crumbling and he had to
watch where he put his feet. At the same time he
fought a constant impulse to look up, watching for
anything falling from above. Nothing happened.
When he reached the top of the wall he was breathing
hard; sweat moistened his body. There was still
no one in sight. He stood on an unevenly shaped wall
that appeared to circle the building. Instead of having
a courtyard inside it, the wall was the outer face
of the structure, the domed roof rising from it. At
varying intervals dark openings gave access to the
interior. When Brion looked down, the sand car was
just a dun-colored bump in the desert, already far
behind him.

Stooping, he went through the nearest door. There
was still no one in sight. The room inside was something
out of a madman's funhouse. It was higher than
it was wide, irregular in shape, and more like a
hallway than a room. At one end it merged into an
incline that became a stairwell. At the other it ended[Pg 87]
in a hole that vanished in darkness below. Light of
sorts filtered in through slots and holes drilled into
the thick stone wall. Everything was built of the
same crumble-textured but strong rock. Brion took
the stairs. After a number of blind passages and
wrong turns he saw a stronger light ahead, and went
on. There was food, metal, even artifacts of the unusual
Disan design in the different rooms he passed
through. Yet no people. The light ahead grew stronger,
and the last passageway opened and swelled out
until it led into the large central chamber.

This was the heart of the strange structure. All the
rooms, passageways and halls existed just to give
form to this gigantic chamber. The walls rose sharply,
the room being circular in cross section and
growing narrower towards the top. It was a truncated
cone, since there was no ceiling; a hot blue disk of
sky cast light on the floor below.

On the floor stood a knot of men who stared at
Brion.

Out of the corner of his eyes, and with the very
periphery of his consciousness, he was aware of the
rest of the room—barrels, stores, machinery, a radio
transceiver, various bundles and heaps that made no
sense at first glance. There was no time to look
closer. Every fraction of his attention was focused on
the muffled and hooded men.

He had found the enemy.

Everything that had happened to him so far on Dis
had been preparation for this moment. The attack in
the desert, the escape, the dreadful heat of sun and
sand. All this had tempered and prepared him. It
had been nothing in itself. Now the battle would
begin in earnest.

None of this was conscious in his mind. His fighter's
reflexes bent his shoulders, curved his hands before
him as he walked softly in balance, ready to spring in
any direction. Yet none of this was really necessary.
All the danger so far was nonphysical. When he did
give conscious thought to the situation he stopped,
startled. What was wrong here? None of the men had
moved or made a sound. How could he even know[Pg 88]
they were men? They were so muffled and wrapped
in cloth that only their eyes were exposed.

No doubt, however, existed in Brion's mind. In
spite of muffled cloth and silence, he knew them for
what they were. The eyes were empty of expression
and unmoving, yet were filled with the same negative
emptiness as those of a bird of prey. They could
look on life, death, and the rending of flesh with the
same lack of interest and compassion. All this Brion
knew in an instant of time, without words being
spoken. Between the time he lifted one foot and
walked a step he understood what he had to face.
There could be no doubt, not to an empathetic.

From the group of silent men poured a frost-white
wave of unemotion. An empathetic shares what other
men feel. He gets his knowledge of their reaction by
sensing lightly their emotions, the surges of interest,
hate, love, fear, desire, the sweep of large and small
sensations that accompany all thought and action.
The empathetic is always aware of this constant and
silent surge, whether he makes the effort to understand
it or not. He is like a man glancing across the
open pages of a tableful of books. He can see that the
type, words, paragraphs, thoughts are there, even
without focusing his attention to understand any of
it.

Then how does the man feel when he glances at
the open books and sees only blank pages? The books
are there—the words are not. He turns the pages of
one, of the others, flipping the pages, searching for
meaning. There is no meaning. All of the pages are
blank.

This was the way in which the magter were blank,
without emotions. There was a barely sensed surge
and return that must have been neural impulses on a
basic level—the automatic adjustments of nerve and
muscle that keep an organism alive. Nothing more.
Brion reached for other sensations, but there was
nothing there to grasp. Either these men were without
emotions, or they were able to block them from
his detection; it was impossible to tell which.

Very little time had passed while Brion made these[Pg 89]
discoveries. The knot of men still looked at him,
silent and unmoving. They weren't expectant, their
attitude could not have been called one of interest.
But he had come to them and now they waited to
find out why. Any questions or statements they spoke
would be superfluous, so they didn't speak. The responsibility
was his.

"I have come to talk with Lig-magte. Who is he?"
Brion didn't like the tiny sound his voice made in the
immense room.

One of the men gave a slight motion to draw
attention to himself. None of the others moved. They
still waited.

"I have a message for you," Brion said, speaking
slowly to fill the silence of the room and the emptiness
of his thoughts. This had to be handled right.
But what was right? "I'm from the Foundation in the
city, as you undoubtedly know. I've been talking to
the people of Nyjord. They have a message for you."

The silence grew longer. Brion had no intention of
making this a monologue. He needed facts to operate,
to form an opinion. Looking at the silent forms was
telling him nothing. Time stretched taut, and finally
Lig-magte spoke.

"The Nyjorders are going to surrender."

It was an impossibly strange sentence. Brion had
never realized before how much of the content of
speech was made up of emotion. If the man had
given it a positive emphasis, perhaps said it with
enthusiasm, it would have meant, "Success! The enemy
is going to surrender!" This wasn't the meaning.

With a rising inflection on the end it would have
been a question. "Are they going to surrender?" It
was neither of these. The sentence carried no other
message than that contained in the simplest meanings
of the separate words. It had intellectual connotations,
but these could only be gained from past
knowledge, not from the sound of the words. There
was only one message they were prepared to receive
from Nyjord. Therefore Brion was bringing the message.
If that was not the message Brion was bringing
the men here were not interested.[Pg 90]

This was the vital fact. If they were not interested
he could have no further value to them. Since he
came from the enemy, he was the enemy. Therefore
he would be killed. Because this was vital to his
existence, Brion took the time to follow the thought
through. It made logical sense—and logic was all he
could depend on now. He could be talking to robots
or alien creatures, for all the human response he was
receiving.

"You can't win this war—all you can do is hurry
your own deaths." He said this with as much conviction
as he could, realizing at the same time that it
was wasted effort. No flicker of response stirred in
the men before him. "The Nyjorders know you have
the cobalt bombs, and they have detected your jump-space
projector. They can't take any more chances.
They have pushed the deadline closer by an entire
day. There are one and a half days left before the
bombs fall and you are all destroyed. Do you realize
what that means—"

"Is that the message?" Lig-magte asked.

"Yes," Brion said.

Two things saved his life then. He had guessed
what would happen as soon as they had his message,
though he hadn't been sure. But even the suspicion
had put him on his guard. This, combined with the
reflexes of a Winner of the Twenties, was barely
enough to enable him to survive.

From frozen mobility Lig-magte had catapulted
into headlong attack. As he leaped forward he drew
a curved, double-edged blade from under his robes.
It plunged unerringly through the spot where Brion's
body had been an instant before.

There had been no time to tense his muscles and
jump, just the space of time to relax them and fall to
one side. His reasoning mind joined the battle as he
hit the floor. Lig-magte plunged by him, turning and
bringing the knife down at the same time. Brion's
foot lashed out and caught the other man's leg, sending
him sprawling.

They were both on their feet at the same instant,
facing each other. Brion now had his hands clasped[Pg 91]
before him in the unarmed man's best defense against
a knife, the two arms protecting the body, the two
hands joined to beat aside the knife arm from whichever
direction it came. The Disan hunched low,
flipped the knife quickly from hand to hand, then
thrust it again at Brion's midriff.

Only by the merest fractional margin did Brion
evade the attack for the second time. Lig-magte
fought with utter violence. Every action was as intense
as possible, deadly and thorough. There could
be only one end to this unequal contest if Brion
stayed on the defensive. The man with the knife had
to win.

With the next charge Brion changed tactics. He
leaped inside the thrust, clutching for the knife arm.
A burning slice of pain cut across his arm, then his
fingers clutched the tendoned wrist. They clamped
down hard, grinding shut, compressing with the
tightening intensity of a closing vise.

It was all he could do simply to hold on. There was
no science in it, just his greater strength from exercise
and existence on a heavier planet. All of this strength
went to his clutching hand, because he held his own
life in that hand, forcing away the knife that wanted
to terminate it forever. Nothing else mattered—neither
the frightening force of the knees that
thudded into his body nor the hooked fingers that
reached for his eyes to tear them out. He protected
his face as well as he could, while the nails tore
furrows through his flesh and the cut on his arm bled
freely. These were only minor things to be endured.
His life depended on the grasp of the fingers of his
right hand.

There was a sudden immobility as Brion succeeded
in clutching Lig-magte's other arm. It was a good
grip, and he could hold the arm immobilized. They
had reached stasis, standing knee to knee, their faces
only a few inches apart. The muffling cloth had
fallen from the Disan's face during the struggle, and
empty, frigid eyes stared into Brion's. No flicker of
emotion crossed the harsh planes of the other man's
face. A great puckered white scar covered one cheek[Pg 92]
and pulled up a corner of the mouth in a cheerless
grimace. It was false; there was still no expression
here, even when the pain must be growing more
intense.

Brion was winning—if none of the watchers broke
the impasse. His greater weight and strength counted
now. The Disan would have to drop the knife before
his arm was dislocated at the shoulder. He didn't do
it. With sudden horror Brion realized that he wasn't
going to drop it—no matter what happened.

A dull, hideous snap jerked through the Disan's
body and the arm hung limp and dead. No expression
crossed the man's face. The knife was still
locked in the fingers of the paralyzed hand. With his
other hand Lig-magte reached across and started to
pry the blade loose, ready to continue the battle
one-handed. Brion raised his foot and kicked the
knife free, sending it spinning across the room.

Lig-magte made a fist of his good hand and crashed
it into Brion's groin. He was still fighting, as if
nothing had changed. Brion backed slowly away
from the man. "Stop it," he said. "You can't win now.
It's impossible." He called to the other men who were
watching the unequal battle with expressionless immobility.
No one answered him.

With a terrible sinking sensation Brion then realized
what would happen and what he had to do.
Lig-magte was as heedless of his own life as he was
of the life of his planet. He would press the attack no
matter what damage was done to him. Brion had an
insane vision of him breaking the man's other arm,
fracturing both his legs, and the limbless broken creature
still coming forward. Crawling, rolling, teeth
bared, since they were the only remaining weapon.

There was only one way to end it. Brion feinted
and the Lig-magte's arm moved clear of his body.
The engulfing cloth was thin and through it Brion
could see the outlines of the Disan's abdomen and rib
cage, the clear location of the great nerve ganglion.

It was the death blow of kara-te. Brion had never
used it on a man. In practice he had broken heavy
boards, splintering them instantly with the short, pre[Pg 93]cise
stroke. The stiffened hand moving forward in a
sudden surge, all the weight and energy of his body
concentrated in his joined fingertips. Plunging deep
into the other's flesh.

Killing, not by accident or in sudden anger. Killing
because this was the only way the battle could possibly
end.

Like a ruined tower of flesh, the Disan crumpled
and fell.

Dripping blood, exhausted, Brion stood over the
body of Lig-magte and stared at the dead man's
allies.

Death filled the room.[Pg 94]

XI

Facing the silent Disans, Brion's thoughts hurtled
about in sweeping circles. There would be no more
than an instant's tick of time before the magter
avenged themselves bloodily and completely. He felt
a fleeting regret for not having brought his gun, then
abandoned the thought. There was no time for regrets—what
could he do now?

The silent watchers hadn't attacked instantly, and
Brion realized that they couldn't be positive yet that
Lig-magte had been killed. Only Brion himself knew
the deadliness of that blow. Their lack of knowledge
might buy him a little more time.

"Lig-magte is unconscious, but he will revive
quickly," Brion said, pointing at the huddled body.
As the eyes turned automatically to follow his finger,
he began walking slowly towards the exit. "I did not
want to do this, but he forced me to, because he
wouldn't listen to reason. Now I have something else
to show you, something that I hoped it would not
be necessary to reveal."

He was saying the first words that came into his
head, trying to keep them distracted as long as possible.
He must appear to be only going across the
room, that was the feeling he must generate. There
was even time to stop for a second and straighten his
rumpled clothing and brush the sweat from his eyes.
Talking easily, walking slowly towards the hall that
led out of the chamber.

He was halfway there when the spell broke and the
rush began. One of the magter knelt and touched the
body, and shouted a single word:

"Dead!"

Brion hadn't waited for the official announcement.
At the first movement of feet, he dived headlong for
the shelter of the exit. There was a spatter of tiny[Pg 95]
missiles on the wall next to him and he had a brief
glimpse of raised blowguns before the wall intervened.
He went up the dimly lit stairs three at a time.

The pack was just behind him, voiceless and deadly.
He could not gain on them—if anything, they were
closing the distance as he pushed his already tired
body to the utmost. There was no subtlety or trick he
could use now, just straightforward flight back the
way he had come. A single slip on the irregular steps
and it would be all over.

There was someone ahead of him. If the woman
had waited a few seconds more he would certainly
have been killed; but instead of slashing at him as he
went by the doorway, she made the mistake of rushing
to the center of the stairs, the knife ready to
impale him as he came up. Without slowing, Brion
fell onto his hands and easily dodged under the
blow. As he passed he twisted and seized her around
the waist, picking her from the ground.

When her legs lifted from under her the woman
screamed—the first human sound Brion had heard in
this human anthill. His pursuers were just behind
him, and he hurled the woman into them with all his
strength. They fell in a tangle, and Brion used the
precious seconds gained to reach the top of the building.

There must have been other stairs and exits, because
one of the magter stood between Brion and the
way down out of this trap—armed and ready to kill
him if he tried to pass.

As he ran towards the executioner, Brion flicked on
his collar radio and shouted into it. "I'm in trouble
here. Can you—"

The guards in the car must have been waiting for
this message. Before he had finished there was the
thud of a high-velocity slug hitting flesh and the
Disan spun and fell, blood soaking his shoulder.
Brion leaped over him and headed for the ramp.

"The next one is me—hold your fire!" he called.

Both guards must have had their telescopic sights
zeroed on the spot. They let Brion pass, then threw
in a hail of semi-automatic fire that tore chunks from[Pg 96]
the stone and screamed away in noisy ricochets.
Brion didn't try to see if anyone was braving this hail
of covering fire; he concentrated his energies on making
as quick and erratic a descent as he could. Above
the sounds of the firing he heard the car motor howl
as it leaped forward. With their careful aim spoiled,
the gunners switched to full automatic and unleashed
a hailstorm of flying metal that bracketed the top of
the tower.

"Cease ... firing!" Brion gasped into the radio as
he ran. The driver was good, and timed his arrival
with exactitude. The car reached the base of the
tower at the same instant Brion did, and he burst
through the door while it was still moving. No orders
were necessary. He fell headlong onto a seat as the
car swung in a dust-raising turn and ground into high
gear, back to the city.

Reaching over carefully, the tall guard gently extracted
a bit of pointed wood and fluff from a fold of
Brion's pants. He cracked open the car door, and just
as delicately threw it out.

"I knew that thing didn't touch you," he said,
"since you are still among the living. They've got a
poison on those blowgun darts that takes all of twelve
seconds to work. Lucky."

Lucky! Brion was beginning to realize just how
lucky he was to be out of the trap alive. And with
information. Now that he knew more about the
magter, he shuddered at his innocence in walking
alone and unarmed into the tower. Skill had helped
him survive—but better than average luck had been
necessary. Curiosity had gotten him in, brashness and
speed had taken him out. He was exhausted, battered
and bloody—but cheerfully happy. The facts about
the magter were arranging themselves into a theory
that might explain their attempt at racial suicide. It
just needed a little time to be put into shape.

A pain cut across his arm and he jumped, startled,
pieces of his thoughts crashing into ruin around him.
The gunner had cracked the first-aid box and was
swabbing his arm with antiseptic. The knife wound
was long, but not deep. Brion shivered while the[Pg 97]
bandage was going on, then quickly slipped into his
coat. The air conditioner whined industriously, bringing
down the temperature.

There was no attempt to follow the car. When the
black tower had dropped over the horizon the
guards relaxed, ran cleaning rods through their guns
and compared marksmanship. All of their antagonism
towards Brion was gone; they actually smiled at him.
He had given them the first chance to shoot back
since they had been on this planet.

The ride was uneventful, and Brion was scarcely
aware of it. A theory was taking form in his mind. It
was radical and startling—yet it seemed to be the
only one that fitted the facts. He pushed at it from all
sides, but if there were any holes he couldn't find
them. What it needed was dispassionate proving or
disproving. There was only one person on Dis who
was qualified to do this.

Lea was working in the lab when he came in, bent
over a low-power binocular microscope. Something
small, limbless and throbbing was on the slide. She
glanced up when she heard his footsteps, smiling
warmly when she recognized him. Fatigue and pain
had drawn her face; her skin, glistening with burn
ointment, was chapped and peeling.

"I must look a wreck," she said, putting the back of
her hand to her cheek. "Something like a well-oiled
and lightly cooked piece of beef." She lowered her
arm suddenly and took his hand in both of hers. Her
palms were warm and slightly moist.

"Thank you, Brion," was all she could say. Her
society on Earth was highly civilized and sophisticated,
able to discuss any topic without emotion and
without embarrassment. This was fine in most circumstances,
but made it difficult to thank a person
for saving your life. However you tried to phrase it, it
came out sounding like a last-act speech from a historical
play. There was no doubt, however, as to what
she meant. Her eyes were large and dark, the pupils
dilated by the drugs she had been given. They could
not lie, nor could the emotions he sensed. He did not
answer, just held her hand an instant longer.[Pg 98]

"How do you feel," he asked, concerned. His conscience
twinged as he remembered that he was the
one who had ordered her out of bed and back to
work today.

"I should be feeling terrible," she said, with an airy
wave of her hand. "But I'm walking on top of the
world. I'm so loaded with pain-killers and stimulants
that I'm high as the moon. All the nerves to my feet
feel turned off—it's like walking on two balls of fluff.
Thanks for getting me out of that awful hospital and
back to work."

Brion was suddenly sorry for having driven her
from her sick bed.

"Don't be sorry!" Lea said, apparently reading his
mind, but really seeing only his sudden ashamed
expression. "I'm feeling no pain. Honestly. I feel a
little light-headed and foggy at times, nothing more.
And this is the job I came here to do. In fact ... well,
it's almost impossible to tell you just how fascinating
it all is! It was almost worth getting baked
and parboiled for."

She swung back to the microscope, centering the
specimen with a turn of the stage adjustment screw.
"Poor Ihjel was right when he said this planet was
exobiologically fascinating. This is a gastropod, a lot
like Odostomia, but it has parasitical morphological
changes so profound that—"

"There's something else I remember," Brion said,
interrupting her enthusiastic lecture, only half of
which he could understand. "Didn't Ihjel also hope
that you would give some study to the natives as well
as their environment? The problem is with the Disans—not
with the local wild life."

"But I am studying them," Lea insisted. "The
Disans have attained an incredibly advanced form of
commensalism. Their lives are so intimately connected
and integrated with the other life forms that they
must be studied in relation to their environment. I
doubt if they show as many external physical changes
as little eating-foot Odostomia on the slide here, but
there will surely be a number of psychological changes
and adjustments that will crop up. One of these[Pg 99]
might be the explanation of their urge for planetary
suicide."

"That may be true—but I don't think so," Brion
said. "I went on a little expedition this morning and
found something that has more immediate relevancy."

For the first time Lea became aware of his slightly
battered condition. Her drug-grooved mind could
only follow a single idea at a time and had over-looked
the significance of the bandage and dirt.

"I've been visiting," Brion said, forestalling the
question on her lips. "The magter are the ones who
are responsible for causing the trouble, and I had to
see them up close before I could make any decisions.
It wasn't a very pleasant thing, but I found out what
I wanted to know. They are different in every way
from the normal Disans. I've compared them. I've
talked to Ulv—the native who saved us in the desert—and
I can understand him. He is not like us in many
ways—he certainly couldn't be, living in this oven—but
he is still undeniably human. He gave us drinking
water when we needed it, then brought help. The
magter, the upper-class lords of Dis, are the direct
opposite. As cold-blooded and ruthless a bunch of
murderers as you can possibly imagine. They tried to
kill me when they met me, without reason. Their
clothes, habits, dwellings, manners—everything about
them differs from that of the normal Disan. More
important, the magter are as coldly efficient and
inhuman as a reptile. They have no emotions, no
love, no hate, no anger, no fear—nothing. Each of
them is a chilling bundle of thought processes and
reactions, with all the emotions removed."

"Aren't you exaggerating?" Lea asked. "After all,
you can't be sure. It might just be part of their
training not to reveal any emotional state. Everyone
must experience emotional states, whether they like
it or not."

"That's my main point. Everyone does—except the
magter. I can't go into all the details now, so you'll
just have to take my word for it. Even at the point of[Pg 100]
death they have no fear or hatred. It may sound
impossible, but it is true."

Lea tried to shake the knots from her drug-hazed
mind. "I'm dull today," she said. "You'll have to excuse
me. If these rulers had no emotional responses,
that might explain their present suicidal position.
But an explanation like this raises more new problems
than it supplies answers to the old ones. How
did they get this way! It doesn't seem humanly possible
to be without emotions of some kind."

"Just my point. Not humanly possible. I think these
ruling class Disans aren't human at all, like the other
Disans. I think they are alien creatures—robots or
androids—anything except men. I think they are living
in disguise among the normal human dwellers."

At first Lea started to smile, then her feeling
changed when she saw his face. "You are serious?"
she asked.

"Never more so. I realize it must sound as if I've
had my brains bounced around too much this morning.
Yet this is the only idea I can come up with that
fits all of the facts. Look at the evidence yourself.
One simple thing stands out clearly, and must be
considered first if any theory is to hold up. That is
the magters' complete indifference to death—their
own or anyone else's. Is that normal to mankind?"

"No—but I can find a couple of explanations that I
would rather explore first, before dragging in an alien
life form. There may have been a mutation or an
inherited disease that has deformed or warped their
minds."

"Wouldn't that be sort of self-eliminating?" Brion
asked. "Anti-survival? People who die before puberty
would find it a little difficult to pass on a mutation to
their children. But let's not beat this one point to
death—it's the totality of these people that I find so
hard to accept. Any one thing might be explained
away, but not the collection of them. What about
their complete lack of emotion? Or their manner
of dress and their secrecy in general? The ordinary
Disan wears a cloth kilt, while the magter cover
themselves as completely as possible. They stay in[Pg 101]
their black towers and never go out except in groups.
Their dead are always removed so they can't be
examined. In every way they act like a race apart—and
I think they are."

"Granted for the moment that this outlandish idea
might be true, how did they get here? And why
doesn't anyone know about it besides them?"

"Easily enough explained," Brion insisted. "There
are no written records on this planet. After the
Breakdown, when the handful of survivors were just
trying to exist here, the aliens could have landed and
moved in. Any interference could have been wiped
out. Once the population began to grow, the invaders
found they could keep control by staying separate, so
their alien difference wouldn't be noticed."

"Why should that bother them?" Lea asked. "If
they are so indifferent to death, they can't have any
strong thoughts on public opinion or alien body odor.
Why would they bother with such a complex camouflage?
And if they arrived from another planet, what
has happened to the scientific ability that brought
them here?"

"Peace," Brion said. "I don't know enough to be
able even to guess at answers to half your questions.
I'm just trying to fit a theory to the facts. And the
facts are clear. The magter are so inhuman they
would give me nightmares—if I were sleeping these
days. What we need is more evidence."

"Then get it," Lea said with finality. "I'm not telling
you to turn murderer—but you might try a bit of
grave-digging. Give me a scalpel and one of your
friends stretched out on a slab and I'll quickly tell
you what he is or is not." She turned back to the
microscope and bent over the eyepiece.

That was really the only way to hack the Gordian
knot. Dis had only thirty-six more hours to live, so
individual deaths shouldn't be of any concern. He had
to find a dead magter, and if none was obtainable in
the proper condition he had to get one of them by
violence. For a planetary savior, he was personally
doing in an awful lot of the citizenry.

He stood behind Lea, looking down at her thought[Pg 102]fully
while she worked. The back of her neck, lightly
covered with gently curling hair, was turned toward
him. With one of the about-face shifts the mind is
capable of, his thoughts flipped from death to life,
and he experienced a strong desire to caress this spot
lightly, to feel the yielding texture of female flesh....

Plunging his hands deep into his pockets, he
walked quickly to the door. "Get some rest soon," he
called to her. "I doubt if those bugs will give you the
answer. I'm going now to see if I can get the full-sized
specimen you want."

"The truth could be anywhere. I'll stay on these
until you come back," she said, not looking up from
the microscope.

Up under the roof was a well-equipped communications
room. Brion had taken a quick look at it when
he had first toured the building. The duty operator
had earphones on—though only one of the phones
covered an ear—and was monitoring through the
bands. His shoeless feet were on the edge of the
table, and he was eating a thick sandwich held in his
free hand. His eyes bulged when he saw Brion in the
doorway and he jumped into a flurry of action.

"Hold the pose," Brion told him; "it doesn't bother
me. And if you make any sudden moves you are
liable to break a phone, electrocute yourself, or choke
to death. Just see if you can set the transceiver on
this frequency for me." Brion wrote the number on a
scratch pad and slid it over to the operator. It was
the frequency Professor-Commander Krafft had given
him for the radio of the illegal terrorists—the Nyjord
army.

The operator plugged in a handset and gave it to
Brion. "Circuit open," he mumbled around a mouthful
of still unswallowed sandwich.

"This is Brandd, director of the C.R.F. Come in,
please." He went on repeating this for more than ten
minutes before he got an answer.

"What do you want?"

"I have a message of vital urgency for you—and I
would also like your help. Do you want any more
information on the radio?[Pg 103]

"No. Wait there—we'll get in touch with you after
dark." The carrier wave went dead.

Thirty-five hours to the end of the world—and all
he could do was wait.[Pg 104]

XII

On Brion's desk when he came in, were two neat
piles of paper. As he sat down and reached for them
he was conscious of an arctic coldness in the air, a
frigid blast. It was coming from the air-conditioner
grill, which was now covered by welded steel bars.
The control unit was sealed shut. Someone was either
being very funny or very efficient. Either way, it
was cold. Brion kicked at the cover plate until it
buckled, then bent it aside. After a careful look into
the interior he disconnected one wire and shorted it
to another. He was rewarded by a number of sputtering
cracks and a quantity of smoke. The compressor
moaned and expired.

Faussel was standing in the door with more papers,
a shocked expression on his face. "What do you
have there?" Brion asked.

Faussel managed to straighten out his face and
brought the folders to the desk, arranging them on
the piles already there. "These are the progress reports
you asked for, from all units. Details to date,
conclusions, suggestions, et cetera."

"And the other pile?" Brion pointed.

"Offplanet correspondence, commissary invoices,
requisitions." He straightened the edges of the stack
while he answered. "Daily reports, hospital log...."
His voice died away and stopped as Brion carefully
pushed the stack off the edge of the desk into the
wastebasket.

"In other words, red tape," Brion said. "Well, it's all
filed."

One by one the progress reports followed the first
stack into the basket, until the desk was clear. Nothing.
It was just what he had expected. But there had
always been the off chance that one of the specialists[Pg 105]
could come up with a new approach. They hadn't;
they were all too busy specializing.

Outside the sky was darkening. The front entrance
guard had been told to let in anyone who came
asking for the director. There was nothing else Brion
could do until the Nyjord rebels made contact. Irritation
bit at him. At least Lea was doing something
constructive; he could look in on her.

He opened the door to the lab with a feeling of
pleasant anticipation. It froze and shattered instantly.
Her microscope was hooded and she was gone.
She's having dinner, he thought, or—she's in the hospital.
The hospital was on the floor below, and he
went there first.

"Of course she's here!" Dr. Stine grumbled. "Where
else should a girl in her condition be? She was out of
bed long enough today. Tomorrow's the last day, and
if you want to get any more work out of her before
the deadline, you had better let her rest tonight.
Better let the whole staff rest. I've been handing out
tranquilizers like aspirin all day. They're falling
apart."

"The world's falling apart. How is Lea doing?"

"Considering her shape, she's fine. Go in and see
for yourself if you won't take my word for it. I have
other patients to look at."

"Are you that worried, Doctor?"

"Of course I am! I'm just as prone to the weakness
of the flesh as the rest of you. We're sitting on a
ticking bomb and I don't like it. I'll do my job as long
as it is necessary, but I'll also be damned glad to see
the ships land to pull us out. The only skin that I
really feel emotionally concerned about right now is
my own. And if you want to be let in on a public
secret—the rest of your staff feels the same way. So
don't look forward to too much efficiency."

"I never did," Brion said to the retreating back.

Lea's room was dark, illuminated only by the light
of Dis's moon slanting in through the window. Brion
let himself in and closed the door behind him. Walking
quietly, he went over to the bed. Lea was sleeping
soundly, her breathing gentle and regular. A[Pg 106]
night's sleep now would do as much good as all the
medication.

He should have gone then; instead, he sat down in
the chair placed next to the head of the bed. The
guards knew where he was—he could wait here just
as well as any place else.

It was a stolen moment of peace on a world at the
brink of destruction. He was grateful for it. Everything
looked less harsh in the moonlight, and he
rubbed some of the tension from his eyes. Lea's face
was ironed smooth by the light, beautiful and young,
a direct contrast to everything else on this poisonous
world. Her hand was outside of the covers and he
took it in his own, obeying a sudden impulse. Looking
out of the window at the desert in the distance,
he let the peace wash over him, forcing himself to
forget for the moment that in one more day life
would be stripped from this planet.

Later, when he looked back at Lea he saw that her
eyes were open, though she hadn't moved. How long
had she been awake? He jerked his hand away from
hers, feeling suddenly guilty.

"Is the boss-man looking after the serfs, to see if
they're fit for the treadmills in the morning?" she
asked. It was the kind of remark she had used with
such frequency in the ship, though it didn't sound
quite as harsh now. And she was smiling. Yet it
reminded him too well of her superior attitude
towards rubes from the stellar sticks. Here he might
be the director, but on ancient Earth he would be
only one more gaping, lead-footed yokel.

"How do you feel?" he asked, realizing and hating
the triteness of the words, even as he said them.

"Terrible. I'll be dead by morning. Reach me a
piece of fruit from that bowl, will you? My mouth
tastes like an old boot heel. I wonder how fresh fruit
ever got here. Probably a gift to the working classes
from the smiling planetary murderers on Nyjord."

She took the apple Brion gave her and bit into it.
"Did you ever think of going to Earth?"

Brion was startled. This was too close to his own
thoughts about planetary backgrounds. There[Pg 107]
couldn't possibly be a connection though. "Never," he
told her. "Up until a few months ago I never even
considered leaving Anvhar. The Twenties are such a
big thing at home that it is hard to imagine that
anything else exists while you are still taking part in
them."

"Spare me the Twenties," she pleaded. "After listening
to you and Ihjel, I know far more about them
than I shall ever care to know. But what about
Anvhar itself? Do you have big city-states as Earth
does?"

"Nothing like that. For its size, it has a very small
population. No big cities at all. I guess the largest
centers of population are around the schools, packing
plants, things like that."

"Any exobiologists there?" Lea asked, with a woman's
eternal ability to make any general topic personal.

"At the universities, I suppose, though I wouldn't
know for sure. And you must realize that when I say
no big cities, I also mean no little cities. We aren't
organized that way at all. I imagine the basic physical
unit is the family and the circle of friends. Friends
get important quickly, since the family breaks up
when children are still relatively young. Something in
the genes, I suppose—we all enjoy being alone. I
suppose you might call it an inbred survival trait."

"Up to a point," she said, biting delicately into the
apple. "Carry that sort of thing too far and you end
up with no population at all. A certain amount of
proximity is necessary for that."

"Of course it is. And there must be some form of
recognized relationship or control—that or complete
promiscuity. On Anvhar the emphasis is on personal
responsibility, and that seems to take care of the
problem. If we didn't have an adult way of looking at
... things, our kind of life would be impossible. Individuals
are brought together either by accident or
design, and with this proximity must be some certainty
of relations...."

"You're losing me," Lea protested. "Either I'm still
foggy from the dope, or you are suddenly unable to[Pg 108]
speak a word of less than four syllables. You know—whenever
this happens with you, I get the distinct
impression that you are trying to cover up something.
For Occam's sake, be specific! Bring me together two
of these hypothetical individuals and tell me what
happens."

Brion took a deep breath. He was in over his head
and far from shore. "Well—take a bachelor like myself.
Since I like cross-country skiing I make my
home in this big house our family has, right at the
edge of the Broken Hills. In summer I looked after a
drumtum herd, but after slaughtering my time was
my own all winter. I did a lot of skiing, and used to
work for the Twenties. Sometimes I would go visiting.
Then again, people would drop in on me—houses are
few and far between on Anvhar. We don't even have
locks on our doors. You accept and give hospitality
without qualification. Whoever comes. Male ... female
... in groups or just traveling alone...."

"I get the drift. Life must be dull for a single girl
on your iceberg planet. She must surely have to stay
home a lot."

"Only if she wants to. Otherwise she can go wherever
she wishes and be welcomed as another individual.
I suppose it is out of fashion in the rest of the
galaxy—and would probably raise a big laugh on
Earth—but a platonic, disinterested friendship between
man and woman is an accepted thing on
Anvhar."

"Sounds exceedingly dull. If you are all such cool
and distant friends, how do babies get made?"

Brion felt his ears reddening, not sure if he was
being teased or not. "The same damn way they get
made any place else! But it's not just a reflexive
process like a couple of rabbits that happen to meet
under the same bush. It's the woman's choice to
indicate if she is interested in marriage."

"Is marriage the only thing your women are interested
in?"

"Marriage or ... anything else. That's up to the
girl. We have a special problem on Anvhar—probably
the same thing occurs on every planet[Pg 109]
where the human race has made a massive adaptation.
Not all unions are fertile and there is always a
large percentage of miscarriages. A large number of
births are conceived by artificial insemination. Which
is all right when you can't have babies normally. But
most women have an emotional bias towards having
their husband's children. And there is only one way
to find out if this is possible."

Lea's eyes widened. "Are you suggesting that your
girls see if a man can father children before considering
marriage?"

"Of course. Otherwise Anvhar would have been
depopulated centuries ago. Therefore the woman
does the choosing. If she is interested in a man, she
says so. If she is not interested, the man would never
think of suggesting anything. It's a lot different from
other planets, but so is our planet Anvhar. It works
well for us, which is the only test that applies."

"Just about the opposite of Earth," Lea told him,
dropping the apple core into a dish and carefully
licking the tips of her fingers. "I guess you Anvharians
would describe Earth as a planetary hotbed of
sexuality. The reverse of your system, and going full
blast all the time. There are far too many people
there for comfort. Birth control came late and is still
being fought—if you can possibly imagine that.
There are just too many of the archaic religions still
around, as well as crackbrained ideas that have been
long entrenched in custom. The world's overcrowded.
Men, women, children, a boiling mob
wherever you look. And all of the physically mature
ones seem to be involved in the Great Game of Love.
The male is always the aggressor. Not physically—at
least not often—and women take the most outrageous
kinds of flattery for granted. At parties there are
always a couple of hot breaths of passion fanning
your neck. A girl has to keep her spike heels filed
sharp."

"She has to what?"

"A figure of speech, Brion. Meaning you fight back
all the time, if you don't want to be washed under by
the flood."[Pg 110]

"Sounds rather"—Brion weighed the word before
he said it, but could find none other suitable—"repellent."

"From your point of view, it would be. I'm afraid
we get so used to it that we even take it for granted.
Sociologically speaking...." She stopped and looked
at Brion's straight back and almost rigid posture. Her
eyes widened and her mouth opened in an unspoken
oh of sudden realization.

"I'm being a fool," she said. "You weren't speaking
generally at all! You had a very specific subject in
mind. Namely me!"

"Please, Lea, you must understand...."

"But I do!" She laughed. "All the time I thought
you were being a frigid and hard-hearted lump of
ice, you were really being very sweet. Just playing
the game in good old Anvharian style. Waiting for a
sign from me. We'd still be playing by different rules
if you hadn't had more sense than I, and finally
realized that somewhere along the line we must have
got our signals mixed. And I thought you were some
kind of frosty offworld celibate." She let her hand go
out and her fingers rustled through his hair. Something
she had been wanting to do for a long time.

"I had to," he said, trying to ignore the light touch
of her fingers. "Because I thought so much of you, I
couldn't have done anything to insult you. Such as
forcing my attentions on you. Until I began to worry
where the insult would lie, since I knew nothing
about your planet's mores."

"Well, you know now," she said very softly. "The
men aggress. Now that I understand, I think I like
your way better. But I'm still not sure of all the rules.
Do I explain that yes, Brion, I like you so very much?
You are more man, in one great big wide-shouldered
lump, than I have ever met before. It's not quite the
time or the place to discuss marriage, but I would
certainly like—"

His arms were around her, holding her to him. Her
hands clasped him and their lips sought each other's
in the darkness.

"Gently ..." she whispered. "I bruise easily...."[Pg 111]

XIII

"He wouldn't come in, sir. Just hammered on the
door and said, 'I'm here, tell Brandd.'"

"Good enough," Brion said, fitting his gun in the
holster and sliding the extra clips into his pocket. "I'm
going out now, and I should return before dawn. Get
one of the wheeled stretchers down here from the
hospital. I'll want it waiting when I get back."

Outside, the street was darker than he remembered.
Brion frowned and his hand moved towards
his gun. Someone had put all the nearby lights out of
commission. There was just enough illumination from
the stars to enable him to make out the dark bulk of
a sand car.

"Brion Brandd?" a voice spoke harshly from the
car. "Get in."

The motor roared as soon as he had closed the
door. Without lights the sand car churned a path
through the city and out into the desert. Though the
speed picked up, the driver still drove in the dark,
feeling his way with a light touch on the controls.
The ground rose, and when they reached the top of a
mesa he killed the engine. Neither the driver nor
Brion had spoken a word since they left.

A switch snapped and the instrument lights came
on. In their dim glow Brion could just make out the
other man's hawklike profile. When he moved, Brion
saw that his figure was cruelly shortened. Either accident
or a mutated gene had warped his spine,
hunching him forward in eternally bent supplication.
Warped bodies were rare—his was the first Brion had
ever seen. He wondered what series of events had
kept him from medical attention all his life. This
might explain the bitterness and pain in the man's
voice.

"Did the mighty brains on Nyjord bother to tell you[Pg 112]
that they have chopped another day off the deadline?"
the man asked. "That this world is about to
come to an end?"

"Yes, I know," Brion said. "That's why I'm asking
your group for help. Our time is running out too
fast."

The man didn't answer; he merely grunted and
gave his full attention to the radar pings and glowing
screen. The electronic senses reached out as he made
a check on all the search frequencies to see if they
were being followed.

"Where are we going?" Brion asked.

"Out into the desert." The driver made a vague
wave of his hand. "Headquarters of the army. Since
the whole thing will be blown up in another day, I
guess I can tell you it's the only camp we have. All
the cars, men and weapons are based there. And Hys.
He's the man in charge. Tomorrow it will be all
gone—along with this cursed planet. What's your
business with us?"

"Shouldn't I be telling Hys that?"

"Suit yourself." Satisfied with the instrument
search, the driver kicked the car to life again and
churned on across the desert. "But we're a volunteer
army and we have no secrets from each other. Just
from the fools at home who are going to kill this
world." There was a bitterness in his words that he
made no attempt to conceal. "They fought among
themselves and put off a firm decision so long that
now they are forced to commit murder."

"From what I had heard, I thought that it was the
other way around. They call your Nyjord army terrorists."

"We are. Because we are an army and we're at
war. The idealists at home only understood that
when it was too late. If they had backed us in the
beginning we would have blown open every black
castle on Dis, searched until we found those bombs.
But that would have meant wanton destruction and
death. They wouldn't consider that. Now they are
going to kill everyone, destroy everything." He flicked
on the panel lights just long enough to take a com[Pg 113]pass
bearing, and Brion saw the tortured unhappiness
in his twisted body.

"It's not over yet," Brion said. "There is more than
a day left, and I think I'm onto something that might
stop the war—without any bombs being dropped."

"You're in charge of the Cultural Relationships
Free Bread and Blankets Foundation, aren't you?
What good can your bunch do when the shooting
starts?"

"None. But maybe we can put off the shooting. If
you are trying to insult me—don't bother. My irritation
quotient is very high."

The driver merely grunted at this, slowing down as
they ran through a field of broken rock. "What is it
you want?" he asked.

"We want to make a detailed examination of one of
the magter. Alive or dead, it doesn't make any difference.
You wouldn't happen to have one around?"

"No. We've fought with them often enough, but
always on their home grounds. They keep all their
casualties, and a good number of ours. What good
will it do you anyway? A dead one won't tell you
where the bombs or the jump-space projector is."

"I don't see why I should explain that to you—unless
you are in charge. You are Hys, aren't you?"

The driver gave an angry sound, and then was
silent while he drove. Finally he asked, "What makes
you think that?"

"Call it a hunch. You don't act very much like a
sand-car driver, for one thing. Of course your army
may be all generals and no privates—but I doubt it. I
also know that time has almost run out for all of us.
This is a long ride and it would be a complete waste
of time if you just sat out in the desert and waited for
me. By driving me yourself you could make your
mind up before we arrived. Could have a decision
ready as to whether you are going to help me or not.
Are you?"

"Yes—I'm Hys. But you still haven't answered my
question. What do you want the body for?"

"We're going to cut it open and take a good long
look. I don't think the magter are human. They are[Pg 114]
something living among men and disguised as men—but
still not human."

"Secret aliens?" Hys exploded the words in a mixture
of surprise and disgust.

"Perhaps. The examination will tell us that."

"You're either stupid or incompetent," Hys said bitterly.
"The heat of Dis has cooked your brains in your
head. I'll be no part of this kind of absurd plan."

"You must," Brion said, surprised at his own
calmness. He could sense the other man's interest
hidden behind his insulting manner. "I don't even
have to give you my reasons. In another day this
world ends and you have no way to stop it. I just
might have an idea that could work, and you can't
afford to take any chances—not if you are really
sincere. Either you are a murderer, killing Disans for
pleasure, or you honestly want to stop the war.
Which is it?"

"You'll have your body all right," Hys grated, hurling
the car viciously around a spire of rock. "Not that
it will accomplish anything—but I can find no fault
with killing another magter. We can fit your operation
into our plans without any trouble. This is the
last night and I have sent every one of my teams out
on raids. We're breaking into as many magter towers
as possible before dawn. There is a slim chance that
we might uncover something. It's really just shooting
in the dark, but it's all we can do now. My own team
is waiting and you can ride along with us. The others
left earlier. We're going to hit a small tower on this
side of the city. We raided it once before and captured
a lot of small arms they had stored there. There
is a good chance that they may have been stupid
enough to store something there again. Sometimes
the magter seem to suffer from a complete lack of
imagination."

"You have no idea just how right you are," Brion
told him.

The sand car slowed down now, as they approached
a slab-sided mesa that rose vertically from
the desert. They crunched across broken rocks, leaving
no tracks. A light blinked on the dashboard, and[Pg 115]
Hys stopped instantly and killed the engine. They
climbed out, stretching and shivering in the cold
desert night.

It was dark walking in the shadow of the cliff and
they had to feel their way along a path through the
tumbled boulders. A sudden blaze of light made
Brion wince and shield his eyes. Near him, on the
ground, was the humming shape of a cancellation
projector, sending out a fan-shaped curtain of vibration
that absorbed all the light rays falling upon it.
This incredible blackness made a lightproof wall for
the recessed hollow at the foot of the cliff. In this
shelter, under the overhang of rock, were three open
sand cars. They were large and armor-plated, warlike
in their scarred grey paint. Men sprawled, talked,
and polished their weapons. Everything stopped
when Hys and Brion appeared.

"Load up," Hys called out. "We're going to attack
now, same plan I outlined earlier. Get Telt over
here." In talking to his own men some of the harshness
was gone from his voice. The tall soldiers of
Nyjord moved in ready obeyance of their commander.
They loomed over his bent figure, most of them
twice as tall as he, but there was no hesitation in
jumping when he commanded. They were the body
of the Nyjord striking force—he was the brains.

A square-cut, compact man rolled up to Hys and
saluted with a leisurely flick of his hand. He was
weighted and slung about with packs and electronic
instruments. His pockets bulged with small tools and
spare parts.

"This is Telt," Hys said to Brion. "He'll take care of
you. Telt's my personal technical squad. He goes
along on all my operations with his meters to test the
interiors of the Disan forts. So far he's found no trace
of a jump-space generator, or excess radioactivity
that might indicate a bomb. Since he's useless and
you're useless, you both take care of each other. Use
the car we came in."

Telt's wide face split in a froglike grin; his voice
was hoarse and throaty. "Wait. Just wait! Someday[Pg 116]
those needles gonna flicker and all our troubles be
over. What you want me to do with the stranger?"

"Supply him with a corpse—one of the magter,"
Hys said. "Take it wherever he wants and then report
back here." Hys scowled at Telt. "Someday your needles
will flicker! Poor fool—this is the last day." He
turned away and waved the men into their sand cars.

"He likes me," Telt said, attaching a final piece of
equipment. "You can tell because he calls me names
like that. He's a great man, Hys is, but they never
found out until it was too late. Hand me that meter,
will you?"

Brion followed the technician out to the car and
helped him load his equipment aboard. When the
larger cars appeared out of the darkness, Telt swung
around after them. They snaked forward in a single
line through the rocks, until they came to the desert
of rolling sand dunes. Then they spread out in line
abreast and rushed towards their goal.

Telt hummed to himself hoarsely as he drove. He
broke off suddenly and looked at Brion. "What you
want the dead Dis for?"

"A theory," Brion answered sluggishly. He had been
half napping in the chair, taking the opportunity for
some rest before the attack. "I'm still looking for a
way to avert the end."

"You and Hys," Telt said with satisfaction. "Couple
of idealists. Trying to stop a war you didn't start.
They never would listen to Hys. He told them in the
beginning exactly what would happen, and he was
right. They always thought his ideas were crooked,
like him. Growing up alone in the hill camp, with his
back too twisted and too old to be fixed when he
finally did come out. Ideas twisted the same way.
Made himself an authority on war. Hah! War on
Nyjord—that's like being an ice-cube specialist in
hell. But he knew all about it, though they never
would let him use what he knew. Put granddaddy
Krafft in charge instead."

"But Hys is in charge of an army now?"

"All volunteers, too few of them and too little
money. Too little and too damned late to do any[Pg 117]
good. I'll tell you we did our best, but it could never
be good enough. And for this we get called butchers."
There was a catch in Telt's voice now, an undercurrent
of emotion he couldn't suppress. "At home
they think we like to kill. Think we're insane. They
can't understand we're doing the only thing that has
to be done—"

He broke off as he quickly locked on the brakes and
killed the engine. The line of sand cars had come to a
stop. Ahead, just visible over the dunes, was the
summit of a dark tower.

"We walk from here," Telt said, standing and
stretching. "We can take our time, because the other
boys go in first, soften things up. Then you and I head
for the sub-cellar for a radiation check and find you
a handsome corpse."

Walking at first, then crawling when the dunes no
longer shielded them, they crept up on the Disan
keep. Dark figures moved ahead of them, stopping
only when they reached the crumbling black walls.
They didn't use the ascending ramp, but made their
way up the sheer outside face of the ramparts.

"Line-throwers," Telt whispered. "Anchor themselves
when the missile hits, have some kind of quick-setting
goo. Then we go up the filament with a
line-climbing motor. Hys invented them."

"Is that the way you and I are going in?" Brion
asked.

"No, we get out of the climbing. I told you we hit
this rock once before. I know the layout inside." He
was moving while he talked, carefully pacing the
distance around the base of the tower. "Should be
right about here."

High-pitched keening sliced the air and the top of
the magter building burst into flame. Automatic
weapons hammered above them. Something fell
silently through the night and hit heavily on the
ground near them.

"Attack's started," Telt shouted. "We have to get
through now, while all the creepies are fighting it out
on top." He pulled a plate-shaped object from one of
his bags and slapped it hard against the wall. It hung[Pg 118]
there. He twisted the back of it, pulled something and
waved Brion to the ground. "Shaped charge. Should
blow straight in, but you never can tell."

The ground jumped under them and the ringing
thud was a giant fist punching through the wall. A
cloud of dust and smoke rolled clear and they could
see the dark opening in the rock, a tunnel driven into
the wall by the directional force of the explosion.
Telt shone a light through the hole at the crumbled
chamber inside.

"Nothing to worry about from anybody who was
leaning against this wall. But let's get in and out of
this black beehive before the ones upstairs come down
to investigate."

Shattered rock was thick on the floor, and they
skidded and tumbled over it. Telt pointed the way
with his light, down a sharply angled ramp. "Underground
chambers in the rock. They always store their
stuff down there—"

A smoking, black sphere arced out of the tunnel's
mouth, hitting at their feet. Telt just gaped, but even
as it hit the floor Brion was jumping forward. He
caught it with the side of his foot, kicking it back into
the dark opening of the tunnel. Telt hit the ground
next to him as the orange flame of an explosion burst
below. Bits of shrapnel rattled from the ceiling and
wall behind them.

"Grenades!" Telt gasped. "They've only used them
once before—can't have many. Gotta warn Hys." He
plugged a throat mike into the transmitter on his
tack and spoke quickly into it. There was a stirring
below and Brion poured a rain of fire into the tunnel.

"They're catching it bad on top, too! We gotta pull
out. Go first and I'll cover you."

"I came for my Disan—I'm not leaving until I get
one."

"You're crazy! You're dead if you stay!"

Telt was scrambling back towards the crumbled
entrance as he talked. His back was turned when
Brion fired. The magter had appeared silently as the
shadow of death. They charged without a sound,
running with expressionless faces into the bullets.[Pg 119]
Two died at once, curling and folding; the third one
fell at Brion's feet. Shot, pierced, dying, but not yet
dead. Leaving a crimson track, it hunched closer,
lifting its knife to Brion. He didn't move. How many
times must you murder a man? Or was it a man? His
mind and body rebelled against the killing, and he
was almost ready to accept death himself, rather than
kill again.

Telt's bullets tore through the body and it dropped
with grim finality.

"There's your corpse—now get it out of here!" Telt
screeched.

Between them they worked the sodden weight of
the dead magter through the hole, their exposed backs
crawling with the expectation of instant death. No
further attack came as they ran from the tower, other
than a grenade that exploded too far behind them to
do any harm.

One of the armored sand cars circled the keep,
headlights blazing, keeping up a steady fire from its
heavy weapons. The attackers climbed into it as they
beat a retreat. Telt and Brion dragged the Disan
behind them, struggling through the loose sand
towards the circling car. Telt glanced over his shoulder
and broke into a shambling run.

"They're following us!" he gasped. "The first time
they ever chased us after a raid!"

"They must know we have the body," Brion said.

"Leave it behind ..." Telt choked. "Too heavy to
carry ... anyway!"

"I'd rather leave you," Brion said sharply. "Let me
have it." He pulled the corpse away from the unresisting
Telt and heaved it across his own shoulders.
"Now use your gun to cover us!"

Telt threw a rain of slugs back towards the dark
figures following them. The driver of the sand car
must have seen the flare of their fire, because the
truck turned and started towards them. It braked in
a choking cloud of dust and ready hands reached to
pull them up. Brion pushed the body in ahead of
himself and scrambled after it. The truck engine[Pg 120]
throbbed and they churned away into the blackness,
away from the gutted tower.

"You know, that was more like kind of a joke,
when I said I'd leave the corpse behind," Telt told
Brion. "You didn't believe me, did you?"

"Yes," Brion said, holding the dead weight of the
magter against the truck's side. "I thought you meant
it."

"Ahhh," Telt protested, "you're as bad as Hys. You
take things too seriously."

Brion suddenly realized that he was wet with
blood, his clothing sodden. His stomach rose at the
thought and he clutched the edge of the sand car.
Killing like this was too personal. Talking abstractedly
about a body was one thing, but murdering a man,
then lifting his dead flesh and feeling his blood warm
upon you is an entirely different matter. But the
magter weren't human, he knew that. The thought
was only mildly comforting.

After they had reached the other waiting sand
cars, the raiding party split up. "Each one goes in a
different direction," Telt said, "so they can't track us
to the base." He clipped a piece of paper next to the
compass and kicked the motor into life. "We'll make
a big U in the desert and end up in Hovedstad. I got
the course here. Then I'll dump you and your friends
and beat it back to our camp. You're not still burned
at me for what I said, are you? Are you?"

Brion didn't answer. He was staring fixedly out of
the side window.

"What's doing?" Telt asked. Brion pointed out at
the rushing darkness.

"Over there," he said, pointing to the growing light
on the horizon.

"Dawn," Telt said. "Lotta rain on your planet?
Didn't you ever see the sun come up before?"

"Not on the last day of a world."

"Lock it up," Telt grumbled. "You give me the
crawls. I know they're going to be blasted. But at
least I know I did everything I could to stop it. How
do you think they are going to be feeling at home—on
Nyjord—from tomorrow on?"[Pg 121]

"Maybe we can still stop it," Brion said, shrugging
off the feeling of gloom. Telt's only answer was a
wordless sound of disgust.

By the time they had cut a large loop in the desert
the sun was well up in the sky, the daily heat begun.
Their course took them through a chain of low, flinty
hills that cut their speed almost to zero. They ground
ahead in low gear while Telt sweated and cursed,
struggling with the controls. Then they were on firm
sand and picking up speed towards the city.

As soon as Brion saw Hovedstad clearly he felt a
clutch of fear. From somewhere in the city a black
plume of smoke was rising. It could have been one of
the deserted buildings aflame, a minor blaze. Yet the
closer they came, the greater his tension grew. Brion
didn't dare put it into words himself; it was Telt who
vocalized the thought.

"A fire or something. Coming from your area,
somewhere close to your building."

Within the city they saw the first signs of destruction.
Broken rubble on the streets. The smell of
greasy smoke in their nostrils. More and more people
appeared, going in the same direction they were. The
normally deserted streets of Hovedstad were now
almost crowded. Disans, obvious by their bare shoulders,
mixed with the few offworlders who still remained.

Brion made sure the tarpaulin was well wrapped
around the body before they pushed the sand car
slowly through the growing crowd.

"I don't like all this publicity," Telt complained,
looking at the people. "It's the last day, or I'd be
turning back. They know our cars; we've raided them
often enough." Turning a corner, he braked suddenly,
mouth agape.

Ahead was destruction. Black, broken rubble had
been churned into desolation. It was still smoking,
pink tongues of flame licking over the ruins. A fragment
of wall fell with a rumbling crash.

"It's your building—the Foundation building!" Telt
shouted. "They've been here ahead of us—must have[Pg 122]
used the radio to call a raid. They did a job, explosive
of some kind."

Hope was dead. Dis was dead. In the ruin ahead,
mixed and broken with other rubble, were the bodies
of all the people who had trusted him. Lea ... beautiful
and cruelly dead Lea. Doctor Stine, his patients,
Faussel, all of them. He had kept them on this planet,
and now they were dead. Every one of them. Dead.

Murderer![Pg 123]

XIV

Life was ended. Brion's mind contained nothing
but despair and the pain of irretrievable loss. If his
brain had been completely the master of his body he
would have died there, for at that moment there was
no will to live. Unaware of this, his heart continued
to beat and the regular motion of his lungs drew in
the dreadful sweetness of the smoke-tainted air. With
automatic directness his body lived on.

"What you gonna do?" Telt asked, even his natural
exuberation stilled by this. Brion only shook his head
as the words penetrated. What could he do? What
could possibly be done?

"Follow me," a voice said in guttural Disan through
the opening of a rear window. The speaker was lost
in the crowd before they could turn. Aware now,
Brion saw a native move away from the edge of the
crowd and turn to look in their direction. It was Ulv.

"Turn the car—that way!" He punched Telt's arm
and pointed. "Do it slowly and don't draw any attention
to us." For a moment there was hope, which he
kept himself from considering. The building was
gone, and the people in it all dead. That fact had to
be faced.

"What's going on?" Telt asked. "Who was that
talked in the window?"

"A native—that one up ahead. He saved my life in
the desert, and I think he is on our side. Even though
he's a native Disan, he can understand facts that the
magter can't. He knows what will happen to this
planet." Brion was talking to fill his brain with words
so he wouldn't begin to have hope. There was no
hope possible.

Ulv moved slowly and naturally through the streets,
never looking back. They followed, as far behind as
they dared, yet still keeping him in sight. Fewer peo[Pg 124]ple
were about here among the deserted offworld
storehouses. Ulv vanished into one of these; LIGHT
METALS TRUST LTD., the sign read above the door.
Telt slowed the car.

"Don't stop here," Brion said. "Drive around the
corner, and pull up."

Brion climbed out of the car with an ease he did
not feel. No one was in sight now, in either direction.
Walking slowly back to the corner, he checked the
street they had just left. Hot, silent and empty.

A sudden blackness appeared where the door of
the warehouse had been, and the sudden flickering
motion of a hand. Brion signaled Telt to start, and
jumped into the already moving sand car.

"Into that open door—quickly, before anyone sees
us!" The car rumbled down a ramp into the dark
interior and the door slid shut behind them.

"Ulv! What is it? Where are you?" Brion called,
blinking in the murky interior. A grey form appeared
beside him.

"I am here."

"Did you—" There was no way to finish the sentence.

"I heard of the raid. The magter called together all
of us they could to help them carry explosive. I went
along. I could not stop them, and there was no time
to warn anyone in the building."

"Then they are all dead?"

"Yes," Ulv nodded. "All except one. I knew I could
perhaps save one; I was not sure who. So I took the
woman you were with in the desert—she is here
now. She was hurt, but not badly, when I brought
her out."

Guilty relief flooded through Brion. He shouldn't
exult, not with the death of everyone in the Foundation
still fresh in his mind. But at that instant he was
happy.

"Let me see her," he said to Ulv. He was seized by
the sudden fear that there might be a mistake. Perhaps
Ulv had saved a different woman.

Ulv led the way across the empty loading bay.
Brion followed closely, fighting down the temptation[Pg 125]
to tell him to hurry. When he saw that Ulv was
heading towards an office in the far wall, he could
control himself no longer and ran on ahead.

It was Lea, lying unconscious on a couch. Sweat
beaded her face and she moaned and stirred without
opening her eyes.

"I gave her sover, then wrapped her in cloth so no
one would know," Ulv said.

Telt was close behind them, looking in through the
open door.

"Sover is a drug they take from one of their
plants," he said. "We got a lot of experience with it.
A little makes a good knock-out drug, but it's deadly
poison in large doses. I got the antidote in the car;
wait and I'll get it." He went out.

Brion sat next to Lea and wiped her face clean of
dirt and perspiration. The dark shadows under her
eyes were almost black now and her elfin face
seemed even thinner. But she was alive—that was
the important thing.

Some of the tension drained away from Brion and
he could think again. There was still the job to do.
After this last experience Lea should be in a hospital
bed. But this was impossible. He would have to drag
her to her feet and put her back to work. The answer
might still be found. Each second ticked away another
fraction of the planet's life.

"Good as new in a minute," Telt said, banging
down the heavy med box. He watched intently as Ulv
left the room. "Hys should know about this renegade.
Might be useful as a spy, or for information—though
of course it's too late now to do anything, so the hell
with it." He pulled a pistol-shaped hypodermic gun
from the box and dialed a number on the side. "Now,
if you'll roll her sleeve up I'll bring her back to life."
He pressed the bell-shaped sterilizing muzzle against
her skin and pulled the trigger. The hypo gun
hummed briefly, ending its cycle with a loud click.

"Does it work fast?" Brion asked.

"Couple of minutes. Just let her be and she'll come
to by herself."[Pg 126]

Ulv was in the doorway. "Killer!" he hissed. His
blowgun was in his hand, half raised to his mouth.

"He's been in the car—he's seen it!" Telt shouted
and grabbed for his gun.

Brion sprang between them, raising his hands. "Stop
it! No more killing!" he shouted in Disan. Then he
shook his fist at Telt. "Fire that gun and I'll stuff it
down your throat. I'll handle this." He turned to face
Ulv, who hadn't brought the blowgun any closer to
his lips. This was a good sign—the Disan was still
uncertain.

"You have seen the body in the car, Ulv. So you
must have seen that it is that of a magter. I killed
him myself, because I would rather kill one, or ten, or
even a hundred men than have everyone on this
planet destroyed. I killed him in a fair fight and now
I am going to examine his body. There is something
very strange and different about the magter, you
know that yourself. If I can find out what it is, perhaps
we can make them stop this war, and not bomb
Nyjord."

Ulv was still angry, but he lowered the blowgun a
little. "I wish there were no offworlders," he said. "I
wish that none of you had ever come. Nothing was
wrong until you started coming. The magter were the
strongest, and they killed; but they also helped. Now
they want to fight a war with your weapons, and for
this you are going to kill my world. And you want me
to help you!"

"Not me—yourself!" Brion said wearily. "There's no
going back, that's the one thing we can't do. Maybe
Dis would have been better off without offplanet
contact. Maybe not. In any case, you have to forget
about that. You have contact now with the rest of the
galaxy, for better or for worse. You've got a problem
to solve, and I'm here to help you solve it."

Seconds ticked by as Ulv, unmoving, fought with
questions that were novel to his life. Could killing stop
death? Could he help his people by helping strangers
to fight and kill them? His world had changed and he
didn't like it. He must make a giant effort to change
with it.[Pg 127]

Abruptly, he pushed the blowgun into a thong at
his waist, turned and strode out.

"Too much for my nerves," Telt said, settling his
gun back in the holster. "You don't know how happy
I'm gonna be when this whole damn thing is over.
Even if the planet goes bang, I don't care. I'm
finished." He walked out to the sand car, keeping a
careful eye on the Disan crouched against the wall.

Brion turned back to Lea, whose eyes were open,
staring at the ceiling. He went to her.

"Running," she said, and her voice had a toneless
emptiness that screamed louder than any emotion.
"They ran by the open door of my room and I could
see them when they killed Dr. Stine. Just butchered
him like an animal, chopping him down. Then one
came into the room and that's all I remember." She
turned her head slowly and looked at Brion. "What
happened? Why am I here?"

"They're ... dead," he told her. "All of them. After
the raid the Disans blew up the building. You're the
only one that survived. That was Ulv who came into
your room, the Disan we met in the desert. He
brought you away and hid you here in the city."

"When do we leave?" she asked in the same empty
tones, turning her face to the wall. "When do we get
off this planet?"

"Today is the last day. The deadline is midnight.
Krafft will have a ship pick us up when we are
ready. But we still have our job to do. I've got that
body. You're going to have to examine it. We must
find out about the magter...."

"Nothing can be done now except leave." Her voice
was a dull monotone. "There is only so much that a
person can do, and I've done it. Please have the ship
come; I want to leave now."

Brion bit his lip in helpless frustration. Nothing
seemed to penetrate the apathy into which she had
sunk. Too much shock, too much terror, in too short a
time. He took her chin in his hand and turned her
head to face him. She didn't resist, but her eyes were
shining with tears; tears trickled down her cheeks.

"Take me home, Brion, please take me home."[Pg 128]

He could only brush her sodden hair back from her
face, and force himself to smile at her. The moments
of time were running out, faster and faster, and he no
longer knew what to do. The examination had to be
made—yet he couldn't force her. He looked for the
med box and saw that Telt had taken it back to the
sand car. There might be something in it that could
help—a tranquilizer perhaps.

Telt had some of his instruments open on the chart
table and was examining a tape with a pocket magnifier
when Brion entered. He jumped nervously and
put the tape behind his back, then relaxed when he
saw who it was.

"I thought you were the creepie out there, coming
for a look," he whispered. "Maybe you trust him—but
I can't afford to. Can't even use the radio. I'm getting
out of here now. I have to tell Hys!"

"Tell him what?" Brion asked sharply. "What is all
the mystery about?"

Telt handed him the magnifier and tape. "Look at
that—recording tape from my scintillation counter.
Red verticals are five-minute intervals, the wiggly
black horizontal line is the radioactivity level. All this
where the line goes up and down, that's when we
were driving out to the attack. Varying hot level of
the rock and ground."

"What's the big peak in the middle?"

"That coincides exactly with our visit to the house
of horrors! When we went through the hole in the
bottom of the tower!" He couldn't keep the excitement
out of his voice.

"Does it mean that...."

"I don't know. I'm not sure. I have to compare it
with the other tapes back at base. It could be the
stone of the tower—some of these heavy rocks have
got a high natural count. There maybe could be a
box of instruments there with fluorescent dials. Or it
might be one of those tactical atom bombs they threw
at us already. Some arms runner sold them a few."

"Or it could be the cobalt bombs?"

"It could be," Telt said, packing his instruments
swiftly. "A badly shielded bomb, or an old one with a[Pg 129]
crack in the skin, could give a trace like that. Just a
little radon leaking out would do it."

"Why don't you call Hys on the radio and let him
know?"

"I don't want Granddaddy Krafft's listening posts
to hear about it. This is our job—if I'm right. And I
have to check my old tapes to make sure. But it's
gonna be worth a raid, I can feel that in my bones.
Let's unload your corpse." He helped Brion with the
clumsy, wrapped bundle, then slipped into the driver's
seat.

"Hold it," Brion said. "Do you have anything in the
med box I can use for Lea? She seems to have
cracked. Not hysterical, but withdrawn. Won't listen
to reason, won't do anything but lie there and ask to
go home."

"Got the potion here," Telt said, cracking the med
box. "Slaughter-syndrome is what our medic calls it.
Hit a lot of our boys. Grow up all your life hating the
idea of violence, and it goes rough when you have to
start killing people. Guys break up, break down, go
to pieces lots of different ways. The medic mixed up
this stuff. Don't know how it works, probably tranquilizers
and some of the cortex drugs. But it peels
off recent memories. Maybe for the last ten, twelve
hours. You can't get upset about what you don't
remember." He pulled out a sealed package. "Directions
on the box. Good luck."

"Luck," Brion said, and shook the technician's calloused
hand. "Let me know if the traces are strong
enough to be bombs." He checked the street to make
sure it was clear, then pressed the door button. The
sand car churned out into the brilliant sunshine and
was gone, the throb of its motor dying in the distance.
Brion closed the door and went back to Lea.
Ulv was still crouched against the wall.

There was a one-shot disposable hypodermic in the
box. Lea made no protest when he broke the seal and
pressed the needle against her arm. She sighed and
her eyes closed again.

When he saw she was resting easily, he dragged in
the tarpaulin-wrapped body of the magter. A work-[Pg 130]bench
ran along one wall and he struggled the corpse
up onto it. He unwrapped the tarpaulin and the sightless
eyes stared accusingly up into his.

Using his knife, Brion cut away the loose, blood-soaked
clothing. Strapped under the clothes, around
the man's waist, was the familiar collection of Disan
artifacts. This could have significance either way.
Human or humanoid, the creature would still have to
live on Dis. Brion threw it aside, along with the
clothing. Nude, pierced, bloody, the corpse lay before
him.

In every external physical detail the man was human.

Brion's theory was becoming more preposterous
with each discovery. If the magter weren't alien, how
could he explain their complete lack of emotions? A
mutation of some kind? He didn't see how it was
possible. There had to be something alien about the
dead man before him. The future of a world rested
on this flimsy hope. If Telt's lead to the bombs
proved to be false, there would be no hope left at all.

Lea was still unconscious when he looked at her
again. There was no way of telling how long the
coma would last. He would probably have to waken
her out of it, but he didn't want to do it too early.
It took an effort to control his impatience, even though
he knew the drug needed time in which to work. He
finally decided on at least a minimum of an hour before
he should try to disturb her. That would be noon—twelve
hours before destruction.

One thing he should do was to get in touch with
Professor-Commander Krafft. Maybe it was being
defeatist, but he had to make sure that they had a
way off this planet if the mission failed. Krafft had
installed a relay radio that would forward calls from
his personal set. If this relay had been in the Foundation
building, contact was broken. This had to be
found out before it was too late. Brion thumbed on
his radio and sent the call. The reply came back
instantly.

"This is fleet communications. Will you please keep
this circuit open? Commander Krafft is waiting for[Pg 131]
this call and it is being put directly through to him
now." Krafft's voice broke in while the operator was
still talking.

"Who is making this call—is it anyone from the
Foundation?" The old man's voice was shaky with
emotion.

"Brandd here. I have Lea Morees with me...."

"No more? Are there no other survivors from the
disaster that destroyed your building?"

"That's it, other than us it's a ... complete loss.
With the building and all the instruments gone, I
have no way to contact our ship in orbit. Can you
arrange to get us out of here if necessary?"

"Give me your location. A ship is coming now—"

"I don't need a ship now," Brion interrupted.
"Don't send it until I call. If there is a way to stop
your destruction I'll find it. So I'm staying—to the
last minute if necessary."

Krafft was silent. There was only the crackle of an
open mike and the sound of breathing. "That is your
decision," he said finally. "I'll have a ship standing
by. But won't you let us take Miss Morees out now?"

"No. I need her here. We are still working, looking
for—"

"What answer can you find that could possibly
avert destruction now?" His tone was between hope
and despair. Brion couldn't help him.

"If I succeed—you'll know. Otherwise, that will be
the end of it. End of Transmission." He switched the
radio off.

Lea was sleeping easily when he looked at her,
and there was still a good part of the hour left before
he could wake her. How could he put it to use? She
would need tools, instruments to examine the corpse,
and there were certainly none here. Perhaps he could
find some in the ruins of the Foundation building.
With this thought he had the sudden desire to see
the wreckage up close. There might be other survivors.
He had to find out. If he could talk to the men
he had seen working there....

Ulv was still crouched against the wall in the outer[Pg 132]
room. He looked up angrily when Brion came over,
but said nothing.

"Will you help me again?" Brion asked. "Stay and
watch the girl while I go out. I'll be back at noon."
Ulv didn't answer. "I am still looking for the way to
save Dis," Brion added.

"Go—I'll watch the girl!" Ulv spat words in impotent
fury. "I do not know what to do. You may be
right. Go. She will be safe with me."

Brion slipped out into the deserted street and, half
running, half walking, made his way towards the
rubble that had been the Cultural Relationships
Foundation. He used a different course from the one
they had come by, striking first towards the outer
edge of the city. Once there, he could swing and
approach from the other side, so there would be no indication
where he had come from. The magter might
be watching and he didn't want to lead them to Lea
and the stolen body.

Turning a corner, he saw a sand car stopped in the
street ahead. There was something familiar about the
lines of it. It could be the one he and Telt had used,
but he wasn't sure. He looked around, but the dusty,
packed-dirt street was white and empty, shimmering
in silence under the sun. Staying close to the wall
and watching carefully, Brion slipped towards the
car. When he came close behind it he was positive it
was the one he had been in the night before. What
was it doing here?

Silence and heat filled the street. Windows and
doors were empty, and there was no motion in their
shadows. Putting his foot on a bogey wheel, he
reached up and grabbed the searing metal rim of the
open window. He pulled himself up and stared at
Telt's smiling face.

Smiling in death. The lips pulled back to reveal
the grinning teeth, the eyes bursting from the head,
the features swollen and contorted from the deadly
poison. A tiny, tufted dart of wood stuck in the brown
flesh on the side of his neck.[Pg 133]

XV

Brion hurled himself backward and sprawled flat
in the dust and filth of the road. No poison dart
sought him out; the empty silence still reigned. Telt's
murderers had come and gone. Moving quickly,
using the bulk of the car as a shield, he opened the
door and slipped inside.

They had done a thorough job of destruction. All of
the controls had been battered into uselessness, the
floor was a junk heap of crushed equipment, intertwined
with loops of recording tape bulging like
mechanical intestines. A gutted machine, destroyed
like its driver.

It was easy enough to reconstruct what had happened.
The car had been seen when they entered the
city—probably by some of the magter who had destroyed
the Foundation building. They had not seen
where it had gone, or Brion would surely be dead by
now. But they must have spotted it when Telt tried
to leave the city—and stopped it in the most effective
way possible, a dart through the open window
into the unsuspecting driver's neck.

Telt dead! The brutal impact of the man's death
had driven all thought of its consequences from
Brion's mind. Now he began to realize. Telt had
never sent word of his discovery of the radioactive
trace to the Nyjord army. He had been afraid to use
the radio, and had wanted to tell Hys in person, and
to show him the tape. Only now the tape was torn
and mixed with all the others, the brain that could
have analyzed it dead.

Brion looked at the dangling entrails of the radio
and spun for the door. Running swiftly and erratically,
he fled from the sand car. His own survival and
the possible survival of Dis depended on his not
being seen near it. He must contact Hys and pass on[Pg 134]
the information. Until he did that, he was the only
offworlder on Dis who knew which magter tower
might contain the world-destroying bombs.

Once out of sight of the sand car he went more
slowly, wiping the sweat from his streaming face. He
hadn't been seen leaving the car, and he wasn't being
followed. The streets here weren't familiar, but he
checked his direction by the sun and walked at a
steady fast pace towards the destroyed building.
More of the native Disans were in the streets now.
They all noticed him, some even stopped and scowled
fiercely at him. With his emphatic awareness he felt
their anger and hatred. A knot of men radiated
death, and he put his hand on his gun as he passed
them. Two of them had their blowguns ready, but
didn't use them. By the time he had turned the next
corner he was soaked with nervous perspiration.

Ahead was the rubble of the destroyed building.
Grounded next to it was the tapered form of a
spacer's pinnace. Two men had come from the open
lock and were standing at the edge of the burnt area.

Brion's boots grated loudly on the broken wreckage.
The men turned quickly towards him, guns
raised. Both of them carried ion rifles. They relaxed
when they saw his offworld clothes.

"Bloody damned savages!" one of them growled. He
was a heavy-planet man, a squashed-down column of
muscle and gristle, whose head barely reached
Brion's chest. A pushed-back cap had the crossed
slide-rule symbol of ship's computer man.

"Can't blame them, I guess," the second man said.
He wore purser's insignia. His features were different,
but with the same compacted body the two men
were as physically alike as twins. Probably from the
same home planet. "They're gonna get their whole
world blown out from under them at midnight. Looks
as if the poor slob in the streets finally realized what
is happening. Hope we're in jump-space by then. I
saw Estrada's World get it, and I don't want to see
that again, not twice in one lifetime!"

The computer man was looking closely at Brion,
head tilted sideways to see his face. "You need trans[Pg 135]portation
offworld?" he asked. "We're the last ship at
the port, and we're going to boil out of here as soon
as the rest of our cargo is aboard. We'll give you a lift
if you need it."

Only by a tremendous effort at control did Brion
conceal the destroying sorrow that overwhelmed him
when he looked at that shattered wasteland, the
graveyard of so many. "No," he said. "That won't be
necessary. I'm in touch with the blockading fleet and
they'll pick me up before midnight."

"You from Nyjord?" the purser growled.

"No," Brion said, still only half aware of the men.
"But there is trouble with my own ship." He realized
that they were looking intently at him, that he owed
them some kind of explanation. "I thought I could
find a way to stop the war. Now ... I'm not so sure."
He hadn't intended to be so frank with the spacemen,
but the words had been uppermost in his thoughts
and had simply slipped out.

The computer man started to say something, but
his shipmate speared him in the side with his elbow.
"We blast soon—and I don't like the way these
Disans are looking at us. The captain said to find out
what caused the fire, then get the hell back. So let's
go."

"Don't miss your ship," the computer man said to
Brion, and he started for the pinnace. Then he hesitated
and turned. "Sure there's nothing we can do for
you?"

Sorrow would accomplish nothing. Brion fought to
sweep the dregs of emotion from his mind and to
think clearly. "You can help me," he said. "I could use
a scalpel or any other surgical instrument you might
have." Lea would need those. Then he remembered
Telt's undelivered message. "Do you have a portable
radio transceiver? I can pay you for it."

The computer man vanished inside the rocket and
reappeared a minute later with a small package.
"There's a scalpel and a magnetized tweezers in here—all
I could find in the med kit. Hope they'll do." He
reached inside and swung out the metal case of a[Pg 136]
self-contained transceiver. "Take this, it's got plenty
of range, even on the longer frequencies."

He raised his hand at Brion's offer to pay. "My donation,"
he said. "If you can save this planet I'll
give you the whole pinnace as well. We'll tell the
captain we lost the radio in some trouble with the
natives. Isn't that right, Moneybags?" He prodded the
purser in the chest with a finger that would have
punched a hole through a weaker man.

"I read you loud and clear," the purser said. "I'll
make out an invoice so stating, back in the ship."
They were both in the pinnace then, and Brion had
to move fast to get clear of the takeoff blast.

A sense of obligation—the spacemen had felt it
too. The realization of this raised Brion's spirits a bit
as he searched through the rubble for anything useful.
He recognized part of a wall still standing as a
corner of the laboratory. Poking through the ruins, he
unearthed broken instruments and a single, battered
case that had barely missed destruction. Inside was
the binocular microscope, the right tube bent, its
lenses cracked and obscured. The left eyepiece still
seemed to be functioning. Brion carefully put it back
in the case.

He looked at his watch. It was almost noon. These
few pieces of equipment would have to do for the
dissection. Watched suspiciously by the onlooking
Disans, he started back to the warehouse. It was a
long, circuitous walk, since he didn't dare give any
clues to his destination. Only when he was positive
he had not been observed or followed did he slip
through the building's entrance, locking the door behind
him.

Lea's frightened eyes met his when he went into
the office. "A friendly smile here among the cannibals,"
she called. Her strained expression gave the lie
to the cheeriness of her words. "What has happened?
Since I woke up, the great stone face over there"—she
pointed to Ulv—"has been telling me exactly
nothing."

"What's the last thing you can remember?" Brion
asked carefully. He didn't want to tell her too much,[Pg 137]
lest this bring on the shock again. Ulv had shown
great presence of mind in not talking to her.

"If you must know," Lea said, "I remember quite a
lot, Brion Brandd. I shan't go into details, since this
sort of thing is best kept from the natives. For the
record then, I can recall going to sleep after you left.
And nothing since then. It's weird. I went to sleep in
that lumpy hospital bed and woke up on this couch,
feeling simply terrible. With him just sitting there
and scowling at me. Won't you please tell me what is
going on?"

A partial truth was best, saving all of the details
that he could for later. "The magter attacked the
Foundation building," he said. "They are getting angry
at all offworlders now. You were still knocked out
by a sleeping drug, so Ulv helped bring you here. It's
afternoon now—"

"Of the last day?" She sounded horrified. "While
I'm playing Sleeping Beauty the world is coming to
an end! Was anyone hurt in the attack? Or killed?"

"There were a number of casualties—and plenty of
trouble," Brion said. He had to get her off the subject.
Walking over to the corpse, he threw back the cover
from its face. "But this is more important right now.
It's one of the magter. I have a scalpel and some
other things here—will you perform an autopsy?"

Lea huddled back on the couch, her arms around
herself, looking chilled in spite of the heat of the day.
"What happened to the people at the building?" she
asked in a thin voice. The injection had removed her
memories of the tragedy, but echoes of the strain and
shock still reverberated in her mind and body. "I feel
so ... exhausted. Please tell me what happened. I
have the feeling you're hiding something."

Brion sat next to her and took her hands in his, not
surprised to find them cold. Looking into her eyes, he
tried to give her some of his strength. "It wasn't very
nice," he said. "You were shaken up by it, I imagine
that's why you feel the way you do now. But—Lea,
you'll have to take my word for this. Don't ask any
more questions. There's nothing we can do now[Pg 138]
about it. But we can still find out about the magter.
Will you examine the corpse?"

She started to ask something, then changed her
mind. When she dropped her eyes Brion felt the thin
shiver that went through her body. "There's something
terribly wrong," she said. "I know that. I guess
I'll have to take your word that it's best not to ask
questions. Help me up, will you, darling? My legs are
absolutely liquid."

Leaning on him, with his arm around her supporting
most of her weight, she went slowly across to the
corpse. She looked down and shuddered. "Not what
you would call a natural death," she said. Ulv watched
intently as she took the scalpel out of its holder. "You
don't have to look at this," she told him in halting Disan.
"Not if you don't want to."

"I want to," he told her, not taking his eyes from
the body. "I have never seen a magter dead before,
or without covering, like an ordinary person." He
continued to stare fixedly.

"Find me some drinking water, will you, Brion?"
Lea said. "And spread the tarp under the body.
These things are quite messy."

After drinking the water she seemed stronger, and
could stand without holding onto the table with both
hands. Placing the tip of the scalpel just below the
magter's breast bone, she made the long post-mortem
incision down to the pubic symphysis. The great,
body-length wound gaped open like a red mouth.
Across the table Ulv shuddered but didn't avert his
eyes.

One by one she removed the internal organs. Once
she looked up at Brion, then quickly returned to
work. The silence stretched on and on until Brion
had to break it.

"Tell me, can't you? Have you found out anything?"

His words snapped the thin strand of her strength,
and she staggered back to the couch and collapsed
onto it. Her bloodstained hands hung over the side,
making a strangely terrible contrast to the whiteness
of her skin.

"I'm sorry, Brion," she said. "But there's nothing,[Pg 139]
nothing at all. There are minor differences, organic
changes I've never seen before—his liver is tremendous,
for one thing. But changes like this are certainly
consistent within the pattern of homo sapiens as
adapted to a different planet. He's a man. Changed,
adapted, modified—but still just as human as you or
I."

"How can you be sure?" Brion broke in. "You
haven't examined him completely, have you?" She
shook her head. "Then go on. The other organs. His
brain. A microscopic examination. Here!" he said,
pushing the microscope case towards her with both
hands.

She dropped her head onto her forearms and
sobbed. "Leave me alone, can't you! I'm tired and
sick and fed up with this awful planet. Let them die.
I don't care! Your theory is false, useless. Admit that!
And let me wash the filth from my hands...." Sobbing
drowned out her words.

Brion stood over her and drew a shuddering
breath. Was he wrong? He didn't dare think about
that. He had to go on. Looking down at the thinness
of her bent back, with the tiny projections of her
spine showing through the thin cloth, he felt an immense
pity—a pity he couldn't surrender to. This
thin, helpless, frightened woman was his only
resource. She had to work. He had to make her work.

Ihjel had done it—used projective empathy to impress
his emotions upon Brion. Now Brion must do it
with Lea. He had had some sessions in the art, but
not nearly enough to make him proficient. Nevertheless
he had to try.

Strength was what Lea needed. Aloud he said
simply, "You can do it. You have the will and the
strength to finish." And silently his mind cried out the
order to obey, to share his power now that hers was
drained and finished.

Only when she lifted her face and he saw the
dried tears did he realize that he had succeeded.
"You will go on?" he asked quietly.

Lea merely nodded and rose to her feet. She
shuffled like a sleepwalker jerked along by invisible[Pg 140]
strings. Her strength wasn't her own, and the situation
reminded him unhappily of that last event of the
Twenties when he had experienced the same kind of
draining activity. She wiped her hands roughly on
her clothes and opened the microscope case.

"The slides are all broken," she said.

"This will do," Brion told her, crashing his heel
through the glass partition. Shards tinkled and
crashed to the floor. He took some of the bigger
pieces and broke them to rough squares that would
fit under the clips on the stage. Lea accepted them
without a word. Putting a drop of the magter's blood
on the slide, she bent over the eyepiece.

Her hands shook when she tried to adjust the focusing.
Using low power, she examined the specimen,
squinting through the angled tube. Once she
turned the sub-stage mirror a bit to catch the light
streaming in the window. Brion stood behind her,
fists clenched, forceably controlling his anxiety.
"What do you see?" he finally blurted out.

"Phagocytes, platelets ... leucocytes ... everything
seems normal." Her voice was dull, exhausted, her
eyes blinking with fatigue as she stared into the tube.

Anger at defeat burned through Brion. Even faced
with failure, he refused to accept it. He reached over
her shoulder and savagely twisted the turret of microscope
until the longest lens was in position. "If you
can't see anything—try the high power! It's there—I
know it's there! I'll get you a tissue specimen." He
turned back to the disemboweled cadaver.

His back was turned and he did not see that sudden
stiffening of her shoulders, or the sudden eagerness
that seized her fingers as they adjusted the
focus. But he did feel the wave of emotion that
welled from her, impinging directly on his empathetic
sense. "What is it?" he called to her, as if she had
spoken aloud.

"Something ... something here," she said, "in this
leucocyte. It's not normal structure, but it's familiar.
I've seen something like it before, but I just can't
remember." She turned away from the microscope[Pg 141]
and unthinkingly pressed her gory knuckles to her
forehead. "I know I've seen it before."

Brion squinted into the deserted microscope and
made out a dim shape in the center of the field. It
stood out sharply when he focused—the white, jellyfish
shape of a single-celled leucocyte. To his untrained
eye there was nothing unusual about it. He
couldn't know what was strange, when he had no
idea of what was normal.

"Do you see those spherical green shapes grouped
together?" Lea asked. Before Brion could answer she
gasped, "I remember now!" Her fatigue was forgotten
in her excitement. "Icerya purchasi, that was the
name, something like that. It's a coccid, a little scale
insect. It had those same shapes collected together
within its individual cells."

"What do they mean? What is the connection with
Dis?"

"I don't know," she said; "it's just that they look so
similar. And I never saw anything like this in a
human cell before. In the coccids, the green particles
grow into a kind of yeast that lives within the insect.
Not a parasite, but a real symbiote...."

Her eyes opened wide as she caught the significance
of her own words. A symbiote—and Dis was
the world where symbiosis and parasitism had become
more advanced and complex than on any other
planet. Lea's thoughts spun around this fact and
chewed at the fringes of the logic. Brion could sense
her concentration and absorption. He did nothing to
break the mood. Her hands were clenched, her eyes
staring unseeingly at the wall as her mind raced.

Brion and Ulv were quiet, watching her, waiting
for her conclusions. The pieces were falling into
shape at last.

Lea opened her clenched hands and smoothed
them on her sodden skirt. She blinked and turned to
Brion. "Is there a tool box here?" she asked.

Her words were so unexpected that Brion could not
answer for a moment. Before he could say anything
she spoke again.

"Not hand tools; that would take too long. Could[Pg 142]
you find anything like a power saw? That would be
ideal." She turned back to the microscope, and he
didn't try to question her. Ulv was still looking at the
body of the magter and had understood nothing of
what they had said.

Brion went out into the loading bay. There was
nothing he could use on the ground floor, so he took
the stairs to the floor above. A corridor here passed
by a number of rooms. All of the doors were locked,
including one with the hopeful sign TOOL ROOM
on it. He battered at the metal door with his shoulder
without budging it. As he stepped back to look for
another way in, he glanced at his watch.

Two o'clock! In ten hours the bombs would fall on
Dis.

The need for haste tore at him. Yet there could be
no noise—someone in the street might hear it. He
quickly stripped off his shirt and wrapped it in a
loose roll around the barrel of his gun, extending it in
a loose tube in front of the barrel. Holding the rolled
cloth in his left hand, he jammed the gun up tight
against the door, the muzzle against the lock. The
single shot was only a dull thud, inaudible outside of
the building. Pieces of broken mechanism jarred and
rattled inside the lock and the door swung open.

When he came back Lea was standing by the
body. He held the small power saw with a rotary
blade. "Will this do?" he asked. "Runs on its own
battery; almost fully charged too."

"Perfect," she answered. "You're both going to have
to help me." She switched into the Disan language.
"Ulv, would you find some place where you can
watch the street without being seen? Signal me when
it is empty. I'm afraid this saw is going to make a lot
of noise."

Ulv nodded and went out into the bay, where he
climbed a heap of empty crates so he could peer
through the small windows set high in the wall. He
looked carefully in both directions, then waved to her
to go ahead.

"Stand to one side and hold the cadaver's chin,
Brion," she said. "Hold it firmly so the head doesn't[Pg 143]
shake around when I cut. This is going to be a little
gruesome. I'm sorry. But it'll be the fastest way to cut
the bone." The saw bit into the skull.

Once Ulv waved them into silence, and shrank
back himself into the shadows next to the window.
They waited impatiently until he gave them the sign
to continue again. Brion held steady while the saw
cut a circle completely around the skull.

"Finished," Lea said and the saw dropped from her
limp fingers to the floor. She massaged life back into
her hands before she finished the job. Carefully and
delicately she removed the cap of bone from the
magter's head, exposing his brain to the shaft of light
from the window.

"You were right all the time, Brion," she said.
"There is your alien."[Pg 144]

XVI

Ulv joined them as they looked down at the exposed
brain of the magter. The thing was so clearly
evident that even Ulv noticed it.

"I have seen dead animals and my people dead
with their heads open, but I have never seen anything
like that before," he said.

"What is it?" Brion asked.

"The invader, the alien you were looking for," Lea
told him.

The magter's brain was only two-thirds of what
would have been its normal size. Instead of filling the
skull completely, it shared the space with a green,
amorphous shape. This was ridged somewhat like a
brain, but the green shape had still darker nodules
and extensions. Lea took her scalpel and gently
prodded the dark moist mass.

"It reminds me very much of something that I've
seen before on Earth," she said. "The green-fly—Drepanosiphum
platanoides—and an unusual organ
it has, called the pseudova. Now that I have seen this
growth in the magter's skull, I can think of a positive
parallel. The fly Drepanosiphum also had a large
green organ, only it fills half of the body cavity
instead of the head. Its identity puzzled biologists for
years, and they had a number of complex theories to
explain it. Finally someone managed to dissect and
examine it. The pseudova turned out to be a living
plant, a yeastlike growth that helps with the green-fly's
digestion. It produces enzymes that enable the
fly to digest the great amounts of sugar it gets from
plant juice."

"That's not unusual," Brion said, puzzled. "Termites
and human beings are a couple of other creatures
whose digestion is helped by internal flora. What's
the difference in the green-fly?"[Pg 145]

"Reproduction, mainly. All the other gut-living
plants have to enter the host and establish themselves
as outsiders, permitted to remain as long as
they are useful. The green-fly and its yeast plant
have a permanent symbiotic relationship that is essential
to the existence of both. The plant spores appear
in many places throughout the fly's body—but
they are always in the germ cells. Every egg cell
has some, and every egg that grows to maturity is
infected with the plant spores. The continuation of
the symbiosis is unbroken and guaranteed."

"Do you think those green spheres in the magter's
blood cells could be the same kind of thing?" Brion
asked.

"I'm sure of it," Lea said. "It must be the same
process. There are probably green spheres throughout
the magters' bodies, spores or offspring of those
things in their brains. Enough will find their way to
the germ cells to make sure that every young magter
is infected at birth. While the child is growing, so is
the symbiote. Probably a lot faster, since it seems to
be a simpler organism. I imagine it is well established
in the brain pan within the first six months of the
infant's life."

"But why?" Brion asked. "What does it do?"

"I'm only guessing now, but there is plenty of
evidence that gives us an idea of its function. I'm
willing to bet that the symbiote itself is not a simple
organism, it's probably an amalgam of plant and animal
like most of the other creatures on Dis. The thing
is just too complex to have developed since mankind
has been on this planet. The magter must have caught
the symbiotic infection eating some Disan animal. The
symbiote lived and flourished in its new environment,
well protected by a bony skull in a long-lived host. In
exchange for food, oxygen and comfort, the brain-symbiote
must generate hormones and enzymes that
enable the magter to survive. Some of these might
aid digestion, enabling the magter to eat any plant or
animal life they can lay their hands on. The symbiote
might produce sugars, scavenge the blood of toxins—there
are so many things it could do. Things it must[Pg 146]
have done, since the magter are obviously the dominant
life form on this planet. They paid a high price
for the symbiote, but it didn't matter to race survival
until now. Did you notice that the magter's brain is
no smaller than normal?"

"It must be—or how else could that brain-symbiote
fit in inside the skull with it?" Brion said.

"If the magter's total brain were smaller in volume
than normal it could fit into the remaining space in
the cranial hollow. But the brain is full-sized—it is
just that part of it is missing, absorbed by the symbiote."

"The frontal lobes," Brion said with sudden realization.
"This hellish growth has performed a prefrontal
lobotomy!"

"It's done even more than that," Lea said, separating
the convolutions of the gray matter with her scalpel
to uncover a green filament beneath. "These tendrils
penetrate further back into the brain, but always remain
in the cerebrum. The cerebellum appears to be
untouched. Apparently just the higher functions of
mankind have been interfered with, selectively. Destruction
of the frontal lobes made the magter creatures
without emotions or ability for really abstract thought.
Apparently they survived better without these. There
must have been some horrible failures before the right
balance was struck. The final product is a man-plant-animal
symbiote that is admirably adapted for survival
on this disaster world. No emotions to cause
complications or desires that might interfere with
pure survival. Complete ruthlessness—mankind has always
been strong on this anyway, so it didn't take
much of a push."

"The other Disans, like Ulv here, managed to survive
without turning into such a creature. So why
was it necessary for the magter to go so far?"

"Nothing is necessary in evolution, you know that,"
Lea said. "Many variations are possible, and all the
better ones continue. You might say that Ulv's people
survive, but the magter survive better. If offworld
contact hadn't been re-established, I imagine that the
magter would slowly have become the dominant[Pg 147]
race. Only they won't have the chance now. It looks
as though they have succeeded in destroying both
races with their suicidal urge."

"That's the part that doesn't make sense," Brion
said. "The magter have survived and climbed right to
the top of the evolutionary heap here. Yet they are
suicidal. How does it happen they haven't been
wiped out before this?"

"Individually, they have been aggressive to the
point of suicide. They will attack anything and everything
with the same savage lack of emotion. Luckily
there are no bigger animals on this planet. So
where they have died as individuals, their utter ruthlessness
has guaranteed their survival as a group.
Now they are faced with a problem that is too big for
their half-destroyed minds to handle. Their personal
policy has become their planetary policy—and that's
never a very smart thing. They are like men with
knives who have killed all the men who were only
armed with stones. Now they are facing men with
guns, and they are going to keep charging and
fighting until they are all dead.

"It's a perfect case of the utter impartiality of the
forces of evolution. Men infected by this Disan life
form were the dominant creatures on this planet. The
creature in the magters' brains was a true symbiote
then, giving something and receiving something,
making a union of symbiotes where all were stronger
together than any could be separately. Now this is
changed. The magter brain cannot understand the
concept of racial death, in a situation where it must
understand to be able to survive. Therefore the brain-creature
is no longer a symbiote but a parasite."

"And as a parasite it must be destroyed!" Brion
broke in. "We're not fighting shadows any more," he
exulted. "We've found the enemy—and it's not the
magter at all. Just a sort of glorified tapeworm that is
too stupid to know when it is killing itself off. Does it
have a brain—can it think?"

"I doubt it very much," Lea said. "A brain would
be of absolutely no use to it. So even if it originally
possessed reasoning powers they would be gone by[Pg 148]
now. Symbiotes or parasites that live internally like
this always degenerate to an absolute minimum of
functions."

"Tell me about it. What is this thing?" Ulv broke
in, prodding the soft form of the brain-symbiote. He
had heard all their excited talk but had not understood
a word.

"Explain it to him, will you, Lea, as best you can,"
Brion said, looking at her, and he realized how exhausted
she was. "And sit down while you do it;
you're long overdue for a rest. I'm going to try—" He
broke off when he looked at his watch.

It was after four in the afternoon—less than eight
hours to go. What was he to do? Enthusiasm faded as
he realized that only half of the problem was solved.
The bombs would drop on schedule unless the Nyjorders
could understand the significance of this discovery.
Even if they understood, would it make any
difference to them? The threat of the hidden cobalt
bombs would not be changed.

With this thought came the guilty realization that
he had forgotten completely about Telt's death. Even
before he contacted the Nyjord fleet he must tell Hys
and his rebel army what had happened to Telt and
his sand car. Also about the radioactive traces. They
couldn't be checked against the records now to see
how important they might be, but Hys might make
another raid on the strength of the suspicion. This
call wouldn't take long, then he would be free to
tackle Professor-Commander Krafft.

Carefully setting the transmitter on the frequency
of the rebel army, he sent out a call to Hys. There
was no answer. When he switched to receive all he
heard was static.

There was always a chance the set was broken. He
quickly twisted the transmitter to the frequency of
his personal radio, then whistled in the microphone.
The received signal was so loud that it hurt his ears.
He tried to call Hys again, and was relieved to get a
response this time.

"Brion Brandd here. Can you read me? I want to
talk to Hys at once."[Pg 149]

It came as a shock that it was Professor-Commander
Krafft who answered.

"I'm sorry, Brion, but it's impossible to talk to Hys.
We are monitoring his frequency and your call was
relayed to me. Hys and his rebels lifted ship about
half an hour ago, and are already on the way back to
Nyjord. Are you ready to leave now? It will soon
become dangerous to make any landings. Even now I
will have to ask for volunteers to get you out of
there."

Hys and the rebel army gone! Brion assimilated the
thought. He had been thrown off balance when he
realized he was talking to Krafft.

"If they're gone—well, then there's nothing I can
do about it," he said. "I was going to call you, so I
can talk to you now. Listen and try to understand.
You must cancel the bombing. I've found out about
the magter, found what causes their mental aberration.
If we can correct that, we can stop them from
attacking Nyjord—"

"Can they be corrected by midnight tonight?"
Krafft broke in. He was abrupt and sounded almost
angry. Even saints get tired.

"No, of course not." Brion frowned at the microphone,
realizing the talk was going all wrong, but not
knowing how to remedy it. "But it won't take too
long. I have evidence here that will convince you
that what I say is the truth."

"I believe you without seeing it, Brion." The trace
of anger was gone from Krafft's voice now, and it was
heavy with fatigue and defeat. "I'll admit you are
probably right. A little while ago I admitted to Hys
too that he was probably right in his original estimation
of the correct way to tackle the problem of Dis.
We have made a lot of mistakes, and in making them
we have run out of time. I'm afraid that is the only
fact that is relevant now. The bombs fall at twelve,
and even then they may drop too late. A ship is already
on its way from Nyjord with my replacement. I
exceeded my authority by running a day past the
maximum the technicians gave me. I realize now I was
gambling the life of my own world in the vain hope[Pg 150]
I could save Dis. They can't be saved. They're dead.
I won't hear any more about it."

"You must listen—"

"I must destroy the planet below me, that is what I
must do. That fact will not be changed by anything
you say. All the offworlders—other than your party—are
gone. I'm sending a ship down now to pick you
up. As soon as that ship lifts I am going to drop the
first bombs. Now—tell me where you are so they can
come for you."

"Don't threaten me, Krafft!" Brion shook his fist at
the radio in an excess of anger. "You're a killer and a
world destroyer—don't try to make yourself out as
anything else. I have the knowledge to avert this
slaughter and you won't listen to me. And I know
where the cobalt bombs are—in the magter tower
that Hys raided last night. Get those bombs and there
is no need to drop any of your own!"

"I'm sorry, Brion. I appreciate what you're trying to
do, but at the same time I know the futility of it. I'm
not going to accuse you of lying, but do you realize
how thin your evidence sounds from this end? First,
a dramatic discovery of the cause of the magters' intransigency.
Then, when that had no results, you
suddenly remember that you know where the bombs
are. The best-kept magter secret."

"I don't know for sure, but there is a very good
chance it is so," Brion said, trying to repair his defenses.
"Telt made readings, he had other records of
radioactivity in this same magter keep—proof that
something is there. But Telt is dead now, the records
destroyed. Don't you see—" He broke off, realizing
how vague and unprovable his case was. This was
defeat.

The radio was silent, with just the hum of the
carrier wave as Krafft waited for him to continue.
When Brion did speak his voice was empty of all
hope.

"Send your ship down," he said tiredly. "We're in a
building that belonged to the Light Metals Trust,
Ltd., a big warehouse of some kind. I don't know the[Pg 151]
address here, but I'm sure you have someone there
who can find it. We'll be waiting for you. You win,
Krafft."

He turned off the radio.[Pg 152]

XVII

"Do you mean what you said, about giving up?"
Lea asked. Brion realized that she had stopped talking
to Ulv some time ago, and had been listening to
his conversation with Krafft. He shrugged, trying to
put his feeling into words.

"We've tried—and almost succeeded. But if they
won't listen, what can we do? What can one man
possibly do against a fleet loaded with H-bombs?"

As if in answer to the question, Ulv's voice drowned
him out, the harsh Disan words slashing the silence
of the room.

"Kill you, the enemy!" he said. "Kill you
umedvirk!"

He shouted the last word and his hand flashed to
his belt. In a single swift motion he lifted his
blowgun and placed it to his lips. A tiny dart quivered
in the already dead flesh of the creature in the
magter's skull. The action had all the symbolism of a
broken lance, the declaration of war.

"Ulv understands it a lot better than you might
think," Lea said. "He knows things about symbiosis
and mutualism that would get him a job as a lecturer
in any university on Earth. He knows just what the
brain-symbiote is and what it does. They even have a
word for it, one that never appeared in our Disan
language lessons. A life form that you can live with
or cooperate with is called medvirk. One that works
to destroy you is umedvirk. He also understands that
life forms can change, and be medvirk or umedvirk
at different times. He has just decided that the brain
symbiote is umedvirk and he is out to kill it. So will
the rest of the Disans as soon as he can show them
the evidence and explain."

"You're sure of this?" Brion asked, interested in
spite of himself.[Pg 153]

"Positive. The Disans have an absolute attitude
towards survival; you should realize that. Not the
same as the magter, but not much different in the
results. They will kill the brain-symbiotes, even if it
means killing every magter who harbors one."

"If that is the case we can't leave now," Brion said.
With these words it suddenly became clear what he
had to do. "The ship is coming down now from the
fleet. Get in it and take the body of the magter. I
won't go."

"Where will you be?" she asked, shocked.

"Fighting the magter. My presence on the planet
means that Krafft won't keep his threat to drop the
bombs any earlier than the midnight deadline. That
would be deliberately murdering me. I doubt if my
presence past midnight will stop him, but it should
keep the bombs away at least until then."

"What will you accomplish besides committing
suicide?" Lea pleaded. "You just told me how a single
man can't stop the bombs. What will happen to you
at midnight?"

"I'll be dead—but in spite of that I can't run away.
Not now. I must do everything possible right up until
the last instant. Ulv and I will go to the magter
tower, try to find out if the bombs are there. He will
fight on our side now. He may even know more about
the bombs, things that he didn't want to tell me
before. We can get help from his people. Some of
them must know where the bombs are, being native
to this planet."

Lea started to say something, but he rushed on,
drowning out her words.

"You have just as big a job. Show the magter to
Krafft, explain the significance of the brain-parasite
to him. Try to get him to talk to Hys about the last
raid. Try to get him to hold off the attack. I'll keep
the radio with me and as soon as I know anything I'll
call in. This is all last resort, finger in the dike kind of
stuff, but it is all we can do. Because if we do
nothing, it means the end of Dis."

Lea tried to argue with him, but he wouldn't listen
to her. He only kissed her, and with a lightness he did[Pg 154]
not feel tried to convince her that everything would
be all right. In their hearts they both knew it
wouldn't be but they left it that way because it was
the least painful solution.

A sudden rumbling shook the building and the
windows darkened as a ship settled in the street
outside. The Nyjord crew came in with guns pointed,
alert for anything.

After a little convincing they took the cadaver, as
well as Lea, when they lifted ship. Brion watched the
spacer become a pinpoint in the sky and vanish. He
tried to shake off the feeling that this was the last
time he would see any of them.

"Let's get out of here fast," he told Ulv, picking up
the radio, "before anyone comes around to see why
the ship landed."

"What will you do?" Ulv asked as they went down
the street towards the desert. "What can we do in the
few hours we have left?" He pointed at the sun,
nearing the horizon. Brion shifted the weight of the
radio to his other hand before replying.

"Get to the magter tower we raided last night,
that's the best chance. The bombs might be there....
Unless you know where the bombs are?"

Ulv shook his head. "I do not know, but some of
my people may. We will capture a magter, then kill
him, so they can all see the umedvirk. Then they will
tell us everything they know."

"The tower first then, for bombs or a sample magter.
What's the fastest way we can get there?"

Ulv frowned in thought. "If you can drive one of
the cars the offworlders use, I know where there are
some locked in buildings in this city. None of my
people know how they are made to move."

"I can work them—let's go."

Chance was with them this time. The first sand car
they found still had the keys in the lock. It was
battery-powered, but contained a full charge. Much
quieter than the heavy atomic cars, it sped smoothly
out of the city and across the sand. Ahead of them
the sun sank in a red wave of color. It was six o'clock.
By the time they reached the tower it was seven, and[Pg 155]
Brion's nerves felt as if they were writhing under his
skin.

Even though it looked like suicide, attacking the
tower brought blessed relief. It was movement and
action, and for moments at a time he forgot the
bombs hanging over his head.

The attack was nerve-rackingly anticlimactic. They
used the main entrance, Ulv ranging soundlessly
ahead. There was no one in sight. Once inside, they
crept down towards the lower rooms where the radiation
had been detected. Only gradually did they
realize that the magter tower was completely empty.

"Everyone gone," Ulv grunted, sniffing the air in
every room that they passed. "Many magter were
here earlier, but they are gone now."

"Do they often desert their towers?" Brion asked.

"Never. I have never heard of it happening before.
I can think of no reason why they should do a thing
like this."

"Well, I can," Brion told him. "They would leave
their home if they took something with them of
greater value. The bombs. If the bombs were hidden
here, they might move them after the attack." Sudden
fear hit him. "Or they might move them because
it is time to take them—to the launcher! Let's get out
of here, the quickest way we can."

"I smell air from outside," Ulv said, "coming from
down there. This cannot be, because the magter have
no entrances this low in their towers."

"We blasted one in earlier—that could be it. Can
you find it?"

Moonlight shone ahead as they turned an angle of
the corridor, and stars were visible through the
gaping opening in the wall.

"It looks bigger than it was," Brion said, "as if the
magter had enlarged it." He looked through and saw
the tracks on the sand outside. "As if they had enlarged
it to bring something bulky up from below—and
carried it away in whatever made those tracks!"

Using the opening themselves, they ran back to the
sand car. Brion ground it fiercely around and turned
the headlights on the tracks. There were the marks of[Pg 156]
a sand car's treads, half obscured by thin, unmarked
wheel tracks. He turned off the lights and forced
himself to move slowly and to do an accurate job. A
quick glimpse at his watch showed him there were
four hours left to go. The moonlight was bright
enough to illuminate the tracks. Driving with one
hand, he turned on the radio transmitter, already set
for Krafft's wave length.

When the operator acknowledged his signal Brion
reported what they had discovered and his conclusions.
"Get that message to Commander Krafft now. I
can't wait to talk to him—I'm following the tracks."
He killed the transmission and stamped on the accelerator.
The sand car churned and bounced down the
track.

"They are going to the mountains," Ulv said some
time later, as the tracks still pointed straight ahead.
"There are caves there and many magter have been
seen near them; that is what I have heard."

The guess was correct. Before nine o'clock the
ground humped into a range of foothills, and the
darker masses of mountains could be seen behind
them, rising up to obscure the stars.

"Stop the car here," Ulv said, "The caves begin not
too far ahead. There may be magter watching or
listening, so we must go quietly."

Brion followed the deep-cut grooves, carrying the
radio. Ulv came and went on both sides, silently as a
shadow, scouting for hidden watchers. As far as he
could discover there were none.

By nine-thirty Brion realized they had deserted the
sand car too soon. The tracks wound on and on, and
seemed to have no end. They passed some caves
which Ulv pointed out to him, but the tracks never
stopped. Time was running out and the nightmare
stumbling through the darkness continued.

"More caves ahead," Ulv said, "Go quietly."

They came cautiously to the crest of a hill, as they
had done so many times already, and looked into the
shallow valley beyond. Sand covered the valley floor,
and the light of the setting moon shone over the
tracks at a flat angle, marking them off sharply as[Pg 157]
lines of shadow. They ran straight across the sandy
valley and disappeared into the dark mouth of a cave
on the far side.

Sinking back behind the hilltop, Brion covered the
pilot light with his hand and turned on the transmitter.
Ulv stayed above him, staring at the opening of
the cave.

"This is an important message," Brion whispered
into the mike. "Please record." He repeated this for
thirty seconds, glancing at his watch to make sure of
the time, since the seconds of waiting stretched to
minutes in his brain. Then, as clearly as possible
without raising his voice above a whisper, he told of
the discovery of the tracks and the cave.

"... The bombs may or may not be in here, but we
are going in to find out. I'll leave my personal transmitter
here with the broadcast power turned on, so
you can home on its signal. That will give you a
directional beacon to find the cave. I'm taking the
other radio in—it has more power. If we can't get
back to the entrance I'll try a signal from inside. I
doubt if you will hear it because of the rock, but I'll
try. End of transmission. Don't try to answer me
because I have the receiver turned off. There are no
earphones on this set and the speaker would be too
loud here."

He switched off, held his thumb on the button for
an instant, then flicked it back on.

"Good-by Lea," he said, and killed the power for
good.

They circled and reached the rocky wall of the
cliff. Creeping silently in the shadows, they slipped
up on the dark entrance of the cave. Nothing moved
ahead and there was no sound from the entrance of
the cave. Brion glanced at his watch and was instantly
sorry.

Ten-thirty.

The last shelter concealing them was five metres
from the cave. They started to rise, to rush the final
distance, when Ulv suddenly waved Brion down. He
pointed to his nose, then to the cave. He could smell
the magter there.[Pg 158]

A dark figure separated itself from the greater
darkness of the cave mouth. Ulv acted instantly. He
stood up and his hand went to his mouth; air hissed
faintly through the tube in his hand. Without a sound
the magter folded and fell to the ground. Before the
body hit, Ulv crouched low and rushed in. There was
the sudden scuffling of feet on the floor, then silence.

Brion walked in, gun ready and alert, not knowing
what he would find. His toe pushed against a body on
the ground and from the darkness Ulv whispered,
"There were only two. We can go on now."

Finding their way through the cave was a maddening
torture. They had no light, nor would they dare
use one if they had. There were no wheel marks to
follow on the stone floor. Without Ulv's sensitive nose
they would have been completely lost. The cave
branched and rejoined and they soon lost all sense of
direction.

Walking was almost impossible. They had to grope
with their hands before them like blind men. Stumbling
and falling against the rock, their fingers were
soon throbbing and raw from brushing against the
rough walls. Ulv followed the scent of the magter
that hung in the air where they had passed. When it
grew thin he knew they had left the frequently used
tunnels and entered deserted ones. They could only
retrace their steps and start again in a different direction.

More maddening than the walking was the way
time was running out. Inexorably the glowing hands
crept around the face of Brion's watch until they
stood at fifteen minutes before twelve.

"There is a light ahead," Ulv whispered, and Brion
almost gasped with relief. They moved slowly and
silently until they stood, concealed by the darkness,
looking out into a domed chamber brightly lit by
glowing tubes.

"What is it?" Ulv asked, blinking in the painful
wash of illumination after the long darkness.

Brion had to fight to control his voice, to stop from
shouting.

"The cage with the metal webbing is a jump-space[Pg 159]
generator. The pointed, silver shapes next to it are
bombs of some kind, probably the cobalt bombs.
We've found it!"

His first impulse was to instantly send the radio call
that would stop the waiting fleet of H-bombers. But
an unconvincing message would be worse than no
message at all. He had to describe exactly what he
saw here so the Nyjorders would know he wasn't
lying. What he told them had to fit exactly with the
information they already had about the launcher and
the bombs.

The launcher had been jury-rigged from a ship's
jump-space generator; that was obvious. The generator
and its controls were neatly cased and mounted.
Cables ran from them to a roughly constructed cage
of woven metal straps, hammered and bent into
shape by hand. Three technicians were working on
the equipment. Brion wondered what sort of blood-thirsty
war-lovers the magter had found to handle
the bombing for them. Then he saw the chains
around their necks and the bloody wounds on their
backs.

He still found it difficult to have any pity for them.
They had obviously been willing to accept money to
destroy another planet—or they wouldn't have been
working here. They had probably rebelled only when
they had discovered how suicidal the attack would
be.

Thirteen minutes to midnight.

Cradling the radio against his chest, Brion rose to
his feet. He had a better view of the bombs now.
There were twelve of them, alike as eggs from the
same deadly clutch. Pointed like the bow of a spacer,
each one swept smoothly back for its two metres of
length, to a sharply chopped-off end. They were
obviously incomplete, the war heads of rockets. One
had its base turned towards him, and he saw six
projecting studs that could be used to attach it to the
missing rocket. A circular inspection port was open in
the flat base of the bomb.

This was enough. With this description, the Nyjorders
would know he couldn't be lying about finding[Pg 160]
the bombs. Once they realized this, they couldn't
destroy Dis without first trying to neutralize them.

Brion carefully counted fifty paces before he
stopped. He was far enough from the cavern so he
couldn't be heard, and an angle of the cave cut off
all light from behind him. With carefully controlled
movements he turned on the power, switched the
set to transmit, and checked the broadcast frequency.
All correct. Then slowly and clearly, he described
what he had seen in the cavern behind him.
He kept his voice emotionless, recounting facts, leaving
out anything that might be considered an opinion.

It was six minutes before midnight when he
finished. He thumbed the switch to receive and waited.

There was only silence.

Slowly, the empty quality of the silence penetrated
his numbed mind. There were no crackling atmospherics
nor hiss of static, even when he turned the
power full on. The mass of rock and earth of the
mountain above was acting as a perfect grounding
screen, absorbing his signal even at maximum output.

They hadn't heard him. The Nyjord fleet didn't
know that the cobalt bombs had been discovered
before their launching. The attack would go ahead as
planned. Even now, the bomb-bay doors were opening;
armed H-bombs hung above the planet, held in
place only by their shackles. In a few minutes the
signal would be given and the shackles would spring
open, the bombs drop clear....

"Killers!" Brion shouted into the microphone. "You
wouldn't listen to reason, you wouldn't listen to Hys,
or me, or to any voice that suggested an alternative
to complete destruction. You are going to destroy
Dis, and it's not necessary! There were a lot of ways
you could have stopped it. You didn't do any of
them, and now it's too late. You'll destroy Dis, and in
turn this will destroy Nyjord. Ihjel said that, and now
I believe him. You're just another damned failure in a
galaxy full of failures!"

He raised the radio above his head and sent it[Pg 161]
crashing into the rock floor. Then he was running
back to Ulv, trying to run away from the realization
that he too had tried and failed. The people on the
surface of Dis had less than two minutes left to live.

"They didn't get my message," Brion said to Ulv.
"The radio won't work this far underground."

"Then the bombs will fall?" Ulv asked, looking
searchingly at Brion's face in the dim reflected light
from the cavern.

"Unless something happens that we know nothing
about, the bombs will fall."

They said nothing after that—they simply waited.
The three technicians in the cavern were also aware
of the time. They were calling to each other and
trying to talk to the magter. The emotionless, parasite-ridden
brains of the magter saw no reason to stop
work, and they attempted to beat the men back to
their tasks. In spite of the blows, they didn't go; they
only gaped in horror as the clock hands moved remorselessly
towards twelve. Even the magter dimly
felt some of the significance of the occasion. They
stopped too and waited.

The hour hand touched twelve on Brion's watch,
then the minute hand. The second hand closed the
gap and for a tenth of a second the three hands were
one. Then the second hand moved on.

Brion's immediate sensation of relief was washed
away by the chilling realization that he was deep
underground. Sound and seismic waves were slow,
and the flare of atomic explosions couldn't be seen
here. If the bombs had been dropped at twelve they
wouldn't know it at once.

A distant rumble filled the air. A moment later the
ground heaved under them and the lights in the
cavern flickered. Fine dust drifted down from the
roof above.

Ulv turned to him, but Brion looked away. He
could not face the accusation in the Disan's eyes.[Pg 162]

XVIII

One of the technicians was running and screaming.
The magter knocked him down and beat him into
silence. Seeing this, the other two men returned to
work with shaking hands. Even if all life on the
surface of the planet was dead, this would have no
effect on the magter. They would go ahead as
planned, without emotion or imagination enough to
alter their set course.

As the technicians worked, their attitude changed
from shocked numbness to anger. Right and wrong
were forgotten. They had been killed—the invisible
death of radiation must already be penetrating into
the caves—but they also had the chance for vengeance.
Swiftly they brought their work to completion,
with a speed and precision they had concealed before.

"What are those offworlders doing?" Ulv asked.

Brion stirred from his lethargy of defeat and
looked across the cavern floor. The men had a
wheeled handtruck and were rolling one of the atomic
warheads onto it. They pushed it over to the
latticework of the jump-field.

"They are going to bomb Nyjord now, just as Nyjord
bombed Dis. That machine will hurl the bombs
in a special way to the other planet."

"Will you stop them?" Ulv asked. He had his deadly
blowgun in his hand and his face was an expressionless
mask.

Brion almost smiled at the irony of the situation. In
spite of everything he had done to prevent it, Nyjord
had dropped the bombs. And this act alone may have
destroyed their own planet. Brion had it within his
power now to stop the launching in the cavern.
Should he? Should he save the lives of his killers? Or
should he practice the ancient blood-oath that had[Pg 163]
echoed and destroyed down through the ages: An
eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. It would be so
simple. He literally had to do nothing. The score
would be even, and his and the Disans' death
avenged.

Did Ulv have his blowgun ready to kill Brion with,
if he should try to stop the launchings? Or had he
misread the Disan entirely?

"Will you stop them, Ulv?" he asked.

How large was mankind's sense of obligation? The
caveman first had this feeling for his mate, then for
his family. It grew until men fought and died for the
abstract ideas of cities and nations, then for whole
planets. Would the time ever come when men might
realize that the obligation should be to the largest
and most encompassing reality of all—mankind? And
beyond that to life of all kinds.

Brion saw this idea, not in words but as a reality.
When he posed the question to himself in this way
he found that it stated clearly its inherent answer. He
pulled his gun out, and as he did he wondered what
Ulv's answer might be.

"Nyjord is medvirk," Ulv said, raising his blowgun
and sending a dart across the cavern. It struck one of
the technicians, who gasped and fell to the floor.

Brion's shots crashed into the control board, shorting
and destroying it, removing the menace to Nyjord
for all time.

Medvirk, Ulv had said. A life form that cooperates
and aids other life forms. It may kill in self-defense,
but it is essentially not a killer or destroyer. Ulv had
a lifetime of knowledge about the interdependency
of life. He grasped the essence of the idea and ignored
all the verbal complications and confusions. He
had killed the magter, who were his own people,
because they were umedvirk—against life. And he
had saved his enemies because they were medvirk.

With this realization came the painful knowledge
that the planet and the people that had produced
this understanding were dead.

In the cavern the magter saw the destruction of
their plans, and the cave mouth from which the bul[Pg 164]lets
had come. Silently they rushed to kill their enemy—a
concerted wave of emotionless fury.

Brion and Ulv fought back. Even the knowledge
that he was doomed no matter what happened could
not resign Brion to death at the hands of the magter.
To Ulv, the decision was much easier. He was simply
killing umedvirk. A believer in life, he destroyed the
anti-life.

They retreated into the darkness, still firing. The
magter had lights and ion rifles, and were right behind
them. Knowing the caverns better than the men
they chased, the pursuers circled. Brion saw lights
ahead and dragged Ulv to a stop.

"They know their way through these caves, and we
don't," he said. "If we try to run they'll just shoot us
down. Let's find a spot we can defend and settle into
it."

"Back here"—Ulv gave a tug in the right direction—"there
is a cave with only one entrance, and that is
very narrow."

"Let's go!"

Running as silently as they could in the darkness,
they reached the deadend cavern without being
seen. What noise they made was lost in other footsteps
that sounded and echoed through the connecting
caves. Once inside, they found cover behind
a ridge and waited. The end was certain.

The magter ran swiftly into their cave, flashing his
light into all the places of concealment. The beam
passed over the two hidden men, and at the same
instant Brion fired. The shot boomed loudly as the
magter fell—a shot that would surely have been
heard by the others.

Before anyone else came into the cave, Brion ran
over and grabbed the still functioning light. Propping
it on the rocks so it shone on the entrance, he hurried
back to shelter beside Ulv. They waited for the attack.

It was not long in coming. Two magter rushed in,
and died. More were outside, Brion knew, and he
wondered how long it would be before they remembered
the grenades and rolled one into their shelter.[Pg 165]

An indistinct murmur sounded outside, and sharp
explosions. In their hiding place, Brion and Ulv
crouched low and wondered why the attack didn't
come. Then one of the magter came in the entrance,
but Brion hesitated before shooting.

The man had backed in, firing behind him as he
came.

Ulv had no compunctions about killing, only his
darts couldn't penetrate the magter's thick clothing.
As the magter turned, Ulv's breath pulsed once and
death stung the back of the other man's hand. He
collapsed into a crumpled heap.

"Don't shoot," a voice called from outside the cave,
and a man stepped through the swirling dust and
smoke to stand in the beam from the light.

Brion clutched wildly at Ulv's arm, dragging the
blowgun from the Disan's mouth.

The man in the light wore a protective helmet,
thick boots and a pouch-hung uniform.

He was a Nyjorder.

The realization was almost impossible to accept.
Brion had heard the bombs fall. Yet the Nyjord soldier
was here. The two facts couldn't be accepted
together.

"Would you keep a hold on his arm, sir, just in
case," the soldier said, glancing warily at Ulv's blowpipe.
"I know what those darts can do." He pulled a
microphone from one of his pockets and spoke into
it.

More soldiers crowded into the cave, and Professor-Commander
Krafft came in behind them. He
looked strangely out of keeping in the dusty combat
uniform. The gun was even more incongruous in his
blue-veined hand. After giving the pistol to the nearest
soldier with an air of relief, he stumbled quickly
over to Brion and took his hand.

"It is a profound and sincere pleasure to meet you
in person," he said. "And your friend Ulv as well."

"Would you kindly explain what is going on?"
Brion said thickly. He was obsessed by the strange
feeling that none of this could possibly be happening.

"We will always remember you as the man who[Pg 166]
saved us from ourselves," Krafft said, once again the
professor instead of the commander.

"What Brion wants are facts, Grandpa, not
speeches," Hys said. The bent form of the leader of
the rebel Nyjord army pushed through the crowd of
taller men until he stood next to Krafft. "Simply
stated, Brion, your plan succeeded. Krafft relayed
your message to me—and as soon as I heard it I
turned back and met him on his ship. I'm sorry that
Telt's dead—but he found what we were looking for.
I couldn't ignore his report of radioactive traces. Your
girl friend arrived with the hacked-up corpse at the
same time I did, and we all took a long look at the
green leech in its skull. Her explanation of what it is
made significant sense. We were already carrying out
landings when we had your call about something
having been stored in the magter tower. After that
it was just a matter of following tracks—and the
transmitter you planted."

"But the explosions at midnight?" Brion broke in. "I
heard them!"

"You were supposed to," Hys laughed. "Not only
you, but the magter in this cave. We figured they
would be armed and the cave strongly defended. So
at midnight we dropped a few large chemical explosive
bombs at the entrance. Enough to kill the
guards without bringing the roof down. We also
hoped that the magter deeper in would leave their
posts or retreat from the imagined radiation. And
they did. It worked like a charm. We came in quietly
and took them by surprise. Made a clean sweep—killed
the ones we couldn't capture."

"One of the renegade jump-space technicians was
still alive," Krafft said. "He told us about your stopping
the bombs aimed at Nyjord, the two of you."

None of the Nyjorders there could add anything to
his words, not even the cynical Hys. But Brion could
empathize their feelings, the warmth of their intense
relief and happiness. It was a sensation he would
never forget.

"There is no more war," Brion translated for Ulv,
knowing that the Disan had understood nothing of[Pg 167]
the explanation. As he said it, he realized that there
was one glaring error in the story.

"You couldn't have done it," Brion said. "You landed
on this planet before you had my message about
the tower. That means you still expected the magter
to be sending their bombs to Nyjord—and you made
the landings in spite of this knowledge."

"Of course," Professor Krafft said, astonished at
Brion's lack of understanding. "What else could we
do? The magter are sick!"

Hys laughed aloud at Brion's baffled expression.
"You have to understand Nyjord psychology," he
said. "When it was a matter of war and killing, my
planet could never agree on an intelligent course.
War is so alien to our philosophy that it couldn't even
be considered correctly. That's the trouble with being
a vegetable eater in a galaxy of carnivores. You're
easy prey for the first one that lands on your back.
Any other planet would have jumped on the magter
with both feet and shaken the bombs out of them.
We fumbled it so long it almost got both worlds
killed. Your mind-parasite drew us back from the
brink."

"I don't understand," Brion said.

"A simple matter of definition. Before you came we
had no way to deal with the magter here on Dis.
They really were alien to us. Nothing they did made
sense—and nothing we did seemed to have the
slightest effect on them. But you discovered that they
were sick, and that's something we know how to
handle. We're united again; my rebel army was instantly
absorbed into the rest of the Nyjord forces by
mutual agreement. Doctors and nurses are on the
way here now. Plans were put under way to evacuate
what part of the population we could until the bombs
were found. The planet is united again, and working
hard."

"Because the magter are sick, infected by a destructive
life form?" Brion asked.

"Exactly so," Professor Krafft said. "We are civilized,
after all. You can't expect us to fight a war[Pg 168]—and
you surely can't expect us to ignore the plight of
sick neighbors?"

"No ... you surely can't," Brion said, sitting down
heavily. He looked at Ulv, to whom the speech had
been incomprehensible. Beyond him, Hys wore his
most cynical expression as he considered the frailties
of his people.

"Hys," Brion called out, "you translate all that into
Disan and explain to Ulv. I wouldn't dare."[Pg 169]

XIX

Dis was a floating golden ball, looking like a
schoolroom globe in space. No clouds obscured its
surface, and from this distance it seemed warm and
attractive set against the cold darkness. Brion almost
wished he were back there now, as he sat shivering
inside the heavy coat. He wondered how long it
would be before his confused body-temperature controls
decided to turn off the summer adjustment. He
hoped it wouldn't be as sudden or as drastic as
turning it on had been.

Delicate as a dream, Lea's reflection swam in space
next to the planet. She had come up quietly behind
him in the spaceship's corridor, only her gentle
breath and mirrored face telling him she was there.
He turned quickly and took her hands in his.

"You're looking infinitely better," he said.

"Well, I should," she said, pushing back her hair in
an unconscious gesture with her hand. "I've been
doing nothing but lying in the ship's hospital, while
you were having such a fine time this last week. Rushing
around down there shooting all the magter."

"Just gassing them," he told her. "The Nyjorders
can't bring themselves to kill any more, even if it
does raise their own casualty rate. In fact, they are
having difficulty restraining the Disans led by Ulv,
who are happily killing any magter they see as being
pure umedvirk."