"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.