1 files changed, 6902 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/21873-8.txt b/21873-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..05acd07
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21873-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,6902 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Planet of the Damned, by Harry Harrison
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Planet of the Damned
+
+Author: Harry Harrison
+
+Release Date: June 20, 2007 [EBook #21873]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PLANET OF THE DAMNED ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, William Woods and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+[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.]
+
+
+
+
+                      EVIL
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Brion entered the temple and stood as if rooted to the
+ground. There was a horror in this place--it clung to
+everything. Muffled and hooded men stood silent and
+unmoving about the room, their attention rigidly focused
+on a figure in the center. Brion wondered how he knew they
+were men--only their eyes showed, eyes completely empty
+of expression yet somehow reminding him of a bird of prey.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then suddenly the figure in the center moved. It was a
+weird, crazily menacing action--and in an instant Brion
+knew he had found the enemy, the source of the evil that
+infected the PLANET OF THE DAMNED.
+
+
+Bantam Books by Harry Harrison
+
+Ask your bookseller for the books you have missed.
+
+     DEATHWORLD
+     DEATHWORLD II
+     PLANET OF THE DAMNED
+     TWO TALES AND EIGHT TOMORROWS
+     THE JUPITER LEGACY (PLAGUE FROM SPACE)
+
+
+
+               PLANET OF
+               THE DAMNED
+
+     BY HARRY HARRISON
+
+[Illustration: BANTAM BOOKS
+TORONTO NEW YORK LONDON]
+
+A NATIONAL GENERAL COMPANY
+
+
+PLANET OF THE DAMNED
+
+_A Bantam Book / published January 1962_
+_New Bantam edition published February 1971_
+
+_All rights reserved._
+_Copyright © 1962, by Harry Harrison._
+
+_This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by
+mimeograph or any other means, without permission._
+
+_For information address: Bantam Books, Inc._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada_
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, Inc., a National
+General company. Its trade-mark, consisting of the words "Bantam
+Books" and the portrayal of a bantam, is registered in the United
+States Patent Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada.
+Bantam Books, Inc., 666 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10019._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+
+                    For my Mother and Father--
+
+                      RIA AND LEO HARRISON
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+     _A man said to the universe:
+     "Sir, I exist!"
+     "However" replied the universe,
+     "The fact has not created in me
+      A sense of obligation."_
+
+                         STEPHEN CRANE
+
+
+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 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. 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 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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+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 Winner," 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 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."
+
+"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?"
+
+
+
+
+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 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 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 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 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
+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?"
+
+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 doctor 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 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-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 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 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, 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
+
+  crude barbaric            DIS         hot burning scorching
+    backward miserable                wasteland of sands
+      dirty beneath                 and sands and sands and
+        consideration             sands that burned had
+          planet                 burned will burn forever
+                                 the people of this planet so
+                                   crude dirty miserable barbaric
+                                     sub-human in-human
+                                       less-than-human
+                      but
+                          they
+                               were
+                                    going
+                                          to
+                                              be
+                              DEAD
+
+  and DEAD they would be seven million blackened corpses
+      that would blacken your dreams all dreams dreams
+                  forever because those
+                H Y D R O G E N   B O M B S
+                        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..................................
+
+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."
+
+
+
+
+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 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 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 we'll 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.
+
+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.
+
+"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 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 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.
+
+
+
+
+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 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 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.
+
+"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 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."
+
+"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."
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+     IHJEL IHJEL IHJEL SPACEPORT LANDING DANGER NIGHT
+     LANDING PREFERABLE COORDINATES MAP 46 J92 MN75
+     REMOTE YOUR SHIP VION WILL MEET END END END
+
+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 interrupted. "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 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 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 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
+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."
+
+
+
+
+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
+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, looking 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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.
+
+"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.
+
+
+
+
+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."
+
+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
+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 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.
+
+     _Ihjel:_
+
+     _I've had the official word that you are on the way
+     to relieve me and I am forced to admit I feel only
+     an intense satisfaction. You've had the experience on
+     these outlaw planets and can get along with the odd
+     types. I have been specializing in research for the
+     last twenty years, and the only reason I was appointed
+     planetary supervisor on Nyjord was because of the
+     observation and application facilities. I'm the
+     research type, not the office type; no one has ever
+     denied that._
+
+     _You're going to have trouble with the staff, so you
+     had better realize that they are all compulsory
+     volunteers. Half are clerical people from my staff.
+     The others a mixed bag of whoever was close enough to
+     be pulled in on this crash assignment. It developed so
+     fast we never saw it coming. And I'm afraid we've done
+     little or nothing to stop it. We can't get access to
+     the natives here, not in the slightest. It's
+     frightening! They don't fit! I've done Poisson
+     Distributions on a dozen different factors and none of
+     them can be equated. The Pareto Extrapolations don't
+     work. Our field men can't even talk to the natives and
+     two have been killed trying. The ruling class is
+     unapproachable and the rest just keep their mouths shut
+     and walk away._
+
+     _I'm going to take a chance and try to talk to
+     Lig-magte, perhaps I can make him see sense. I doubt
+     if it will work and there is a chance he will try
+     violence with me. The nobility here are very prone to
+     violence. If I get back all right you won't see this
+     note. Otherwise--good-by, Ihjel. Try to do a better job
+     than I did._
+                                          _Aston Mervv_
+
+     _P.S. There is a problem with the staff. They are
+     supposed to be saviors, but without exception they all
+     loathe the Disans. I'm afraid I do too._
+
+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 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
+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 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, 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. 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 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 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."
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+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 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 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 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 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 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 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.
+
+"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
+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.
+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 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."
+
+
+
+
+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 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 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 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 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.
+
+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 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 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, precise 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.
+
+
+
+
+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 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 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 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.
+
+"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 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 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 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 thoughtfully 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?
+
+"_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.
+
+
+
+
+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 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 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 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 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 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."
+
+"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...."
+
+
+
+
+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 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 compass 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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?"
+
+"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 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!
+
+
+
+
+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 people 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 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."
+
+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.
+
+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."
+
+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 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-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 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 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.
+
+
+
+
+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 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 transportation 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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."
+
+
+
+
+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?"
+
+"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 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 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 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."
+
+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 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 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.
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+"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 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 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 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 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.
+
+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 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 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 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.
+
+
+
+
+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 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 bullets 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.
+
+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 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 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--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."
+
+
+
+
+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_."
+
+"What will they do when they have all those frothing magter madmen?"
+
+"They don't know yet," he said. "They won't really know until they
+see what an adult magter is like with his brain-parasite dead and
+gone. They're having better luck with the children. If they catch
+them early enough, the parasite can be destroyed before it has done
+too much damage."
+
+Lea shuddered delicately and let herself lean against him. "I'm not
+that sturdy yet; let's sit down while we talk." There was a couch
+opposite the viewport where they could sit and still see Dis.
+
+"I hate to think of a magter deprived of his symbiote," she said.
+"If his system can stand the shock, I imagine there will be nothing
+left except a brainless hulk. This is one series of experiments
+I don't care to witness. I rest secure in the knowledge that
+the Nyjorders will find the most humane solution."
+
+"I'm sure they will," Brion said.
+
+"Now what about us?" she said disconcertingly, leaning back in his
+arms. "I must say you have the highest body temperature of any one
+I have ever touched. It's positively exciting."
+
+This jarred Brion even more. He didn't have her ability to put past
+horrors out of the mind by substituting present pleasures. "Well,
+just what about us?" he said with masterful inappropriateness.
+
+She smiled as she leaned against him. "You weren't as vague as that,
+the night in the hospital room. I seem to remember a few other
+things you said. And did. You can't claim you're completely
+indifferent to me, Brion Brandd. So I'm only asking you what any
+outspoken Anvharian girl would. Where do we go from here? Get
+married?"
+
+There was a definite pleasure in holding her slight body in his arms
+and feeling her hair against his cheek. They both sensed it, and
+this awareness made his words sound that much more ugly.
+
+"Lea--darling! You know how important you are to me--but you
+certainly realize that we could never get married."
+
+Her body stiffened and she tore herself away from him.
+
+"Why, you great, fat, egotistical slab of meat! What do you mean by
+that? I like you, Lea, we have plenty of fun and games together, but
+surely you realize that you aren't the kind of girl one takes home
+to mother!"
+
+"Lea, hold on," he said. "You know better than to say a thing like
+that. What I said has nothing to do with how I feel towards you.
+But marriage means children, and you are biologist enough to know
+about Earth's genes--"
+
+"Intolerant yokel!" she cried, slapping his face. He didn't move or
+attempt to stop her. "I expected better from you, with all your
+pretensions of understanding. But all you can think of are the
+horror stories about the worn-out genes of Earth. You're the same as
+every other big, strapping bigot from the frontier planets. I know
+how you look down on our small size, our allergies and haemophilia
+and all the other weaknesses that have been bred back and preserved
+by the race. You hate--"
+
+"But that's not what I meant at all," he interrupted, shocked, his
+voice drowning hers out. "Yours are the strong genes, the viable
+strains--_mine_ are the deadly ones. A child of mine would kill
+itself and you in a natural birth, if it managed to live to term.
+You're forgetting that you are the original homo sapiens. I'm a
+recent mutation."
+
+Lea was frozen by his words. They revealed a truth she had known,
+but would never permit herself to consider.
+
+"Earth is home, the planet where mankind developed," he said. "The
+last few thousand years you may have been breeding weaknesses back
+into the genetic pool. But that's nothing compared to the hundred
+millions of years that it took to develop man. How many newborn
+babies live to be a year of age on Earth?"
+
+"Why ... almost all of them. A fraction of one per cent die each
+year--I can't recall exactly how many."
+
+"Earth is home," he said again gently. "When men leave home they can
+adapt to different planets, but a price must be paid. A terrible
+price is in dead infants. The successful mutations live, the
+failures die. Natural selection is a brutally simple affair. When
+you look at me, you see a success. I have a sister--a success too.
+Yet my mother had six other children who died when they were still
+babies. And several others that never came to term. You know about
+these things, don't you, Lea?"
+
+"I know, I know ..." she said sobbing into her hands. He held her
+now and she didn't pull away. "I know it all as a biologist--but
+I am so awfully tired of being a biologist, and top of my class and
+a mental match for any man. When I think about you, I do it as
+a woman, and can't admit any of this. I need someone, Brion, and
+I needed you so much because I loved you." She paused and wiped her
+eyes. "You're going home, aren't you? Back to Anvhar. When?"
+
+"I can't wait too long," he said, unhappily. "Aside from my personal
+wants, I find myself remembering that I'm a part of Anvhar. When you
+think of the number of people who suffered and died--or adapted--so
+that I could be sitting here now ... well, it's a little
+frightening. I suppose it doesn't make sense logically that I should
+feel indebted to them. But I do. Anything I do now, or in the next
+few years, won't be as important as getting back to Anvhar."
+
+"And I won't be going back with you." It was a flat statement
+the way she said it, not a question.
+
+"No, you won't be," he said. "There is nothing on Anvhar for you."
+
+Lea was looking out of the port at Dis and her eyes were dry now.
+"Way back in my deeply buried unconscious I think I knew it would
+end this way," she said. "If you think your little lecture on the
+Origins of Man was a novelty, it wasn't. It just reminded me of a
+number of things my glands had convinced me to forget. In a way, I
+envy you your weightlifter wife-to-be, and your happy kiddies. But
+not very much. Very early in life I resigned myself to the fact that
+there was no one on Earth I would care to marry. I always had these
+teen-age dreams of a hero from space who would carry me off, and I
+guess I slipped you into the pattern without realizing it. I'm old
+enough now to face the fact that I like my work more than a banal
+marriage, and I'll probably end up a frigid and virtuous old maid,
+with more degrees and titles than you have shot-putting records."
+
+As they looked through the port Dis began slowly to contract. Their
+ship drew away from it, heading towards Nyjord. They sat apart,
+without touching now. Leaving Dis meant leaving behind something
+they had shared. They had been strangers together there, on a
+strange world. For a brief time their lifelines had touched. That
+time was over now.
+
+"Don't we look happy!" Hys said, shambling towards them.
+
+"Fall dead and make me even happier then," Lea snapped bitterly.
+
+Hys ignored the acid tone of her words and sat down on the couch next
+to them. Since leaving command of his rebel Nyjord army he seemed much
+mellower. "Going to keep on working for the Cultural Relationships
+Foundation, Brion?" he asked. "You're the kind of man we need."
+
+Brion's eyes widened as the meaning of the last words penetrated.
+"Are you in the C.R.F.?"
+
+"Field agent for Nyjord," he said. "I hope you don't think those
+helpless office types like Faussel or Mervv really represented us
+there? They just took notes and acted as a front and cover for the
+organization. Nyjord is a fine planet, but a gentle guiding hand
+behind the scenes is needed, to help them find their place in the
+galaxy before they are pulverized."
+
+"What's your dirty game, Hys?" Lea asked, scowling. "I've had enough
+hints to suspect for a long time that there was more to the C.R.F.
+than the sweetness-and-light part I have seen. Are you people
+egomaniacs, power hungry or what?"
+
+"That's the first charge that would be leveled at us if our
+activities were publicly known," Hys told her. "That's why we do
+most of our work under cover. The best fact I can give you to
+counter the charge is _money_. Just where do you think we get the
+funds for an operation this size?" He smiled at their blank looks.
+"You'll see the records later so there won't be any doubt. The truth
+is that all our funds are donated by planets we have helped. Even a
+tiny percentage of a planetary income is large--add enough of them
+together and you have enough money to help other planets. And
+voluntary gratitude is a perfect test, if you stop to think about
+it. You can't talk people into liking what you have done. They have
+to be convinced. There have always been people on C.R.F. worlds who
+knew about our work, and agreed with it enough to see that we are
+kept in funds."
+
+"Why are you telling me all this super-secret stuff," Lea asked.
+
+"Isn't that obvious? We want you to keep on working for us. You can
+name whatever salary you like--as I've said, there is no shortage of
+ready cash."
+
+Hys glanced quickly at them both and delivered the clinching
+argument. "I hope Brion will go on working with us too. He is the
+kind of field agent we desperately need, and it is almost impossible
+to find."
+
+"Just show me where to sign," Lea said, and there was life in her
+voice once again.
+
+"I wouldn't exactly call it blackmail," Brion smiled, "but I suppose
+if you people can juggle planetary psychologies, you must find that
+individuals can be pushed around like chessmen. Though you should
+realize that very little pushing is required this time."
+
+"Will you sign on?" Hys asked.
+
+"I must go back to Anvhar," Brion said, "but there really is no
+pressing hurry."
+
+"Earth," said Lea, "is overpopulated enough as it is."
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                        72
+                       HOURS
+                      IN HELL
+
+          Dis was a harsh, inhospitable,
+   dangerous place and the Magter made it worse.
+            They might have been human
+      once--but they were something else now.
+       The Magter had only one desire--Kill!
+     Kill everything, themselves, their planet,
+            the universe if they could--
+          Brion Brandd was sent in at the
+  eleventh hour. His mission was to save Dis, but
+        it looked as though he was going to
+          preside over its annihilation.
+
+               PLANET OF THE DAMNED
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                 HARRY HARRISON
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Planet of the Damned, by Harry Harrison
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PLANET OF THE DAMNED ***
+
+***** This file should be named 21873-8.txt or 21873-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/2/1/8/7/21873/
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, William Woods and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.