“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 co-operation. 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 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 was raised 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. 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 those 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 world full 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.”
CHAPTER 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 disk of the immense muzzle pointing 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. He only snorted when it was finished 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 CO-ORDINATES 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 gray filled the infrared screen, radiation from the still-warm sand and stone. There were no moving blips on it, nor the characteristic shape of a shielded atomic generator.
“We’re here first,” Ihjel said, opaquing 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. In fact she was quite attractive.
“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 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 snapped.
“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—”