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 gelatine 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 swamp-crawling 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—tile 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. Non-violence 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 blow-up. 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 bunked 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
