XVIII
One of the technicians was running and screaming. The magter knockedhim down and beat him into silence. Seeing this, the other two menreturned to work with shaking hands. Even if all life on the surfaceof the planet was dead, this would have no effect on the magter.They would go ahead as planned, without emotion or imaginationenough to alter their set course.
As the technicians worked, their attitude changed from shockednumbness to anger. Right and wrong were forgotten. They had beenkilled--the invisible death of radiation must already be penetratinginto the caves--but they also had the chance for vengeance. Swiftlythey brought their work to completion, with a speed and precisionthey had concealed before.
"What are those offworlders doing?" Ulv asked.
Brion stirred from his lethargy of defeat and looked across thecavern floor. The men had a wheeled handtruck and were rolling oneof the atomic warheads onto it. They pushed it over to thelatticework of the jump-field.
"They are going to bomb Nyjord now, just as Nyjord bombed Dis. Thatmachine will hurl the bombs in a special way to the other planet."
"Will you stop them?" Ulv asked. He had his deadly blowgun in hishand and his face was an expressionless mask.
Brion almost smiled at the irony of the situation. In spite ofeverything he had done to prevent it, Nyjord had dropped the bombs.And this act alone may have destroyed their own planet. Brion had itwithin his power now to stop the launching in the cavern. Should he?Should he save the lives of his killers? Or should he practice theancient blood-oath that had echoed and destroyed down through theages: _An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth._ It would be sosimple. He literally had to do nothing. The score would be even, andhis and the Disans' death avenged.
Did Ulv have his blowgun ready to kill Brion with, if he should tryto 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 hadthis feeling for his mate, then for his family. It grew until menfought and died for the abstract ideas of cities and nations, thenfor whole planets. Would the time ever come when men might realizethat the obligation should be to the largest and most encompassingreality of all--mankind? And beyond that to life of all kinds.
Brion saw this idea, not in words but as a reality. When he posedthe question to himself in this way he found that it stated clearlyits inherent answer. He pulled his gun out, and as he did hewondered what Ulv's answer might be.
"Nyjord is _medvirk_," Ulv said, raising his blowgun and sending adart across the cavern. It struck one of the technicians, who gaspedand fell to the floor.
Brion's shots crashed into the control board, shorting anddestroying it, removing the menace to Nyjord for all time.
_Medvirk_, Ulv had said. A life form that cooperates and aids otherlife forms. It may kill in self-defense, but it is essentially nota killer or destroyer. Ulv had a lifetime of knowledge about theinterdependency of life. He grasped the essence of the idea andignored all the verbal complications and confusions. He hadkilled the magter, who were his own people, because they were_umedvirk_--against life. And he had saved his enemies becausethey were _medvirk_.
With this realization came the painful knowledge that the planetand the people that had produced this understanding were dead.
In the cavern the magter saw the destruction of their plans, andthe cave mouth from which the bullets had come. Silently they rushedto kill their enemy--a concerted wave of emotionless fury.
Brion and Ulv fought back. Even the knowledge that he was doomed nomatter what happened could not resign Brion to death at the handsof the magter. To Ulv, the decision was much easier. He was simplykilling _umedvirk_. A believer in life, he destroyed the anti-life.
They retreated into the darkness, still firing. The magter hadlights and ion rifles, and were right behind them. Knowing thecaverns 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 spotwe can defend and settle into it."
"Back here"--Ulv gave a tug in the right direction--"there is a cavewith only one entrance, and that is very narrow."
"Let's go!"
Running as silently as they could in the darkness, they reachedthe deadend cavern without being seen. What noise they made was lostin other footsteps that sounded and echoed through the connectingcaves. 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 allthe places of concealment. The beam passed over the two hidden men,and at the same instant Brion fired. The shot boomed loudly as themagter fell--a shot that would surely have been heard by the others.
Before anyone else came into the cave, Brion ran over and grabbedthe still functioning light. Propping it on the rocks so it shone onthe entrance, he hurried back to shelter beside Ulv. They waited forthe attack.
It was not long in coming. Two magter rushed in, and died. More wereoutside, Brion knew, and he wondered how long it would be beforethey remembered the grenades and rolled one into their shelter.
An indistinct murmur sounded outside, and sharp explosions. In theirhiding place, Brion and Ulv crouched low and wondered why the attackdidn't come. Then one of the magter came in the entrance, but Brionhesitated before shooting.
The man had _backed_ in, firing behind him as he came.
Ulv had no compunctions about killing, only his darts couldn'tpenetrate the magter's thick clothing. As the magter turned, Ulv'sbreath 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 manstepped through the swirling dust and smoke to stand in the beamfrom the light.
Brion clutched wildly at Ulv's arm, dragging the blowgun fromthe Disan's mouth.
The man in the light wore a protective helmet, thick boots anda pouch-hung uniform.
He was a Nyjorder.
The realization was almost impossible to accept. Brion had heardthe bombs fall. Yet the Nyjord soldier was here. The two factscouldn't be accepted together.
"Would you keep a hold on his arm, sir, just in case," the soldiersaid, glancing warily at Ulv's blowpipe. "I know what those dartscan do." He pulled a microphone from one of his pockets and spokeinto it.
More soldiers crowded into the cave, and Professor-Commander Krafftcame in behind them. He looked strangely out of keeping in the dustycombat uniform. The gun was even more incongruous in his blue-veinedhand. After giving the pistol to the nearest soldier with an air ofrelief, 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. Hewas obsessed by the strange feeling that none of this could possiblybe 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. Thebent form of the leader of the rebel Nyjord army pushed through thecrowd of taller men until he stood next to Krafft. "Simply stated,Brion, your plan succeeded. Krafft relayed your message to me--andas soon as I heard it I turned back and met him on his ship. I'msorry that Telt's dead--but he found what we were looking for. Icouldn't ignore his report of radioactive traces. Your girl friendarrived with the hacked-up corpse at the same time I did, and we alltook a long look at the green leech in its skull. Her explanation ofwhat it is made significant sense. We were already carrying outlandings when we had your call about something having been storedin the magter tower. After that it was just a matter of followingtracks--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 magterin this cave. We figured they would be armed and the cave stronglydefended. So at midnight we dropped a few large chemical explosivebombs at the entrance. Enough to kill the guards without bringingthe roof down. We also hoped that the magter deeper in would leavetheir posts or retreat from the imagined radiation. And they did. Itworked 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 aimedat Nyjord, the two of you."
None of the Nyjorders there could add anything to his words, noteven the cynical Hys. But Brion could empathize their feelings, thewarmth of their intense relief and happiness. It was a sensation hewould never forget.
"There is no more war," Brion translated for Ulv, knowing that theDisan had understood nothing of the explanation. As he said it, herealized 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 stillexpected the magter to be sending their bombs to Nyjord--and youmade the landings in spite of this knowledge."
"Of course," Professor Krafft said, astonished at Brion's lackof understanding. "What else could we do? The magter are sick!"
Hys laughed aloud at Brion's baffled expression. "You have tounderstand Nyjord psychology," he said. "When it was a matter of warand killing, my planet could never agree on an intelligent course.War is so alien to our philosophy that it couldn't even beconsidered correctly. That's the trouble with being a vegetableeater in a galaxy of carnivores. You're easy prey for the first onethat lands on your back. Any other planet would have jumped on themagter with both feet and shaken the bombs out of them. We fumbledit so long it almost got both worlds killed. Your mind-parasite drewus back from the brink."
"I don't understand," Brion said.
"A simple matter of definition. Before you came we had no way todeal with the magter here on Dis. They really were alien to us.Nothing they did made sense--and nothing we did seemed to have theslightest effect on them. But you discovered that they were _sick_,and that's something we know how to handle. We're united again; myrebel army was instantly absorbed into the rest of the Nyjord forcesby mutual agreement. Doctors and nurses are on the way here now.Plans were put under way to evacuate what part of the population wecould until the bombs were found. The planet is united again, andworking 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 usto 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 consideredthe frailties of his people.
"Hys," Brion called out, "you translate all that into Disan andexplain to Ulv. I wouldn't dare."