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 semiautomatic 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 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. 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 shaping 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, unusual 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 an 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 ashamed of having driven her from her sick bed. “Don’t be sorry!” Lea said, apparently reading his mind, but really seeing only his sudden drooped 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—”
“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 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 be surely 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 overlooked 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 decision. 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 would certainly have to 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, anger, fear—nothing. Each of them is a chilling bundle of thought processes and reactions, with all the emotions removed.”