Dis was a floating golden ball, looking like a schoolroom globe in
space. No clouds obscured its surface, and from this distance it
seemed warm and attractive set against the cold darkness. Brion
almost wished he were back there now, as he sat shivering inside the
heavy coat. He wondered how long it would be before his confused
body-temperature controls decided to turn off the summer adjustment.
He hoped it wouldn't be as sudden or as drastic as turning it on
had been.
Delicate as a dream, Lea's reflection swam in space next to the
planet. She had come up quietly behind him in the spaceship's
corridor, only her gentle breath and mirrored face telling him
she was there. He turned quickly and took her hands in his.
"You're looking infinitely better," he said.
"Well, I should," she said, pushing back her hair in an unconscious
gesture with her hand. "I've been doing nothing but lying in the
ship's hospital, while you were having such a fine time this last
week. Rushing around down there shooting all the magter."
"Just gassing them," he told her. "The Nyjorders can't bring
themselves to kill any more, even if it does raise their own
casualty rate. In fact, they are having difficulty restraining the
Disans led by Ulv, who are happily killing any magter they see as
being pure _umedvirk_."
"What will they do when they have all those frothing magter madmen?"
"They don't know yet," he said. "They won't really know until they
see what an adult magter is like with his brain-parasite dead and
gone. They're having better luck with the children. If they catch
them early enough, the parasite can be destroyed before it has done
too much damage."
Lea shuddered delicately and let herself lean against him. "I'm not
that sturdy yet; let's sit down while we talk." There was a couch
opposite the viewport where they could sit and still see Dis.
"I hate to think of a magter deprived of his symbiote," she said.
"If his system can stand the shock, I imagine there will be nothing
left except a brainless hulk. This is one series of experiments
I don't care to witness. I rest secure in the knowledge that
the Nyjorders will find the most humane solution."
"I'm sure they will," Brion said.
"Now what about us?" she said disconcertingly, leaning back in his
arms. "I must say you have the highest body temperature of any one
I have ever touched. It's positively exciting."
This jarred Brion even more. He didn't have her ability to put past
horrors out of the mind by substituting present pleasures. "Well,
just what about us?" he said with masterful inappropriateness.
She smiled as she leaned against him. "You weren't as vague as that,
the night in the hospital room. I seem to remember a few other
things you said. And did. You can't claim you're completely
indifferent to me, Brion Brandd. So I'm only asking you what any
outspoken Anvharian girl would. Where do we go from here? Get
married?"
There was a definite pleasure in holding her slight body in his arms
and feeling her hair against his cheek. They both sensed it, and
this awareness made his words sound that much more ugly.
"Lea--darling! You know how important you are to me--but you
certainly realize that we could never get married."
Her body stiffened and she tore herself away from him.
"Why, you great, fat, egotistical slab of meat! What do you mean by
that? I like you, Lea, we have plenty of fun and games together, but
surely you realize that you aren't the kind of girl one takes home
to mother!"
"Lea, hold on," he said. "You know better than to say a thing like
that. What I said has nothing to do with how I feel towards you.
But marriage means children, and you are biologist enough to know
about Earth's genes--"
"Intolerant yokel!" she cried, slapping his face. He didn't move or
attempt to stop her. "I expected better from you, with all your
pretensions of understanding. But all you can think of are the
horror stories about the worn-out genes of Earth. You're the same as
every other big, strapping bigot from the frontier planets. I know
how you look down on our small size, our allergies and haemophilia
and all the other weaknesses that have been bred back and preserved
by the race. You hate--"
"But that's not what I meant at all," he interrupted, shocked, his
voice drowning hers out. "Yours are the strong genes, the viable
strains--_mine_ are the deadly ones. A child of mine would kill
itself and you in a natural birth, if it managed to live to term.
You're forgetting that you are the original homo sapiens. I'm a
recent mutation."
Lea was frozen by his words. They revealed a truth she had known,
but would never permit herself to consider.
"Earth is home, the planet where mankind developed," he said. "The
last few thousand years you may have been breeding weaknesses back
into the genetic pool. But that's nothing compared to the hundred
millions of years that it took to develop man. How many newborn
babies live to be a year of age on Earth?"
"Why ... almost all of them. A fraction of one per cent die each
year--I can't recall exactly how many."
"Earth is home," he said again gently. "When men leave home they can
adapt to different planets, but a price must be paid. A terrible
price is in dead infants. The successful mutations live, the
failures die. Natural selection is a brutally simple affair. When
you look at me, you see a success. I have a sister--a success too.
Yet my mother had six other children who died when they were still
babies. And several others that never came to term. You know about
these things, don't you, Lea?"
"I know, I know ..." she said sobbing into her hands. He held her
now and she didn't pull away. "I know it all as a biologist--but
I am so awfully tired of being a biologist, and top of my class and
a mental match for any man. When I think about you, I do it as
a woman, and can't admit any of this. I need someone, Brion, and
I needed you so much because I loved you." She paused and wiped her
eyes. "You're going home, aren't you? Back to Anvhar. When?"
"I can't wait too long," he said, unhappily. "Aside from my personal
wants, I find myself remembering that I'm a part of Anvhar. When you
think of the number of people who suffered and died--or adapted--so
that I could be sitting here now ... well, it's a little
frightening. I suppose it doesn't make sense logically that I should
feel indebted to them. But I do. Anything I do now, or in the next
few years, won't be as important as getting back to Anvhar."
"And I won't be going back with you." It was a flat statement
the way she said it, not a question.
"No, you won't be," he said. "There is nothing on Anvhar for you."
Lea was looking out of the port at Dis and her eyes were dry now.
"Way back in my deeply buried unconscious I think I knew it would
end this way," she said. "If you think your little lecture on the
Origins of Man was a novelty, it wasn't. It just reminded me of a
number of things my glands had convinced me to forget. In a way, I
envy you your weightlifter wife-to-be, and your happy kiddies. But
not very much. Very early in life I resigned myself to the fact that
there was no one on Earth I would care to marry. I always had these
teen-age dreams of a hero from space who would carry me off, and I
guess I slipped you into the pattern without realizing it. I'm old
enough now to face the fact that I like my work more than a banal
marriage, and I'll probably end up a frigid and virtuous old maid,
with more degrees and titles than you have shot-putting records."
As they looked through the port Dis began slowly to contract. Their
ship drew away from it, heading towards Nyjord. They sat apart,
without touching now. Leaving Dis meant leaving behind something
they had shared. They had been strangers together there, on a
strange world. For a brief time their lifelines had touched. That
time was over now.
"Don't we look happy!" Hys said, shambling towards them.
"Fall dead and make me even happier then," Lea snapped bitterly.
Hys ignored the acid tone of her words and sat down on the couch next
to them. Since leaving command of his rebel Nyjord army he seemed much
mellower. "Going to keep on working for the Cultural Relationships
Foundation, Brion?" he asked. "You're the kind of man we need."
Brion's eyes widened as the meaning of the last words penetrated.
"Are you in the C.R.F.?"
"Field agent for Nyjord," he said. "I hope you don't think those
helpless office types like Faussel or Mervv really represented us
there? They just took notes and acted as a front and cover for the
organization. Nyjord is a fine planet, but a gentle guiding hand
behind the scenes is needed, to help them find their place in the
galaxy before they are pulverized."
"What's your dirty game, Hys?" Lea asked, scowling. "I've had enough
hints to suspect for a long time that there was more to the C.R.F.
than the sweetness-and-light part I have seen. Are you people
egomaniacs, power hungry or what?"
"That's the first charge that would be leveled at us if our
activities were publicly known," Hys told her. "That's why we do
most of our work under cover. The best fact I can give you to
counter the charge is _money_. Just where do you think we get the
funds for an operation this size?" He smiled at their blank looks.
"You'll see the records later so there won't be any doubt. The truth
is that all our funds are donated by planets we have helped. Even a
tiny percentage of a planetary income is large--add enough of them
together and you have enough money to help other planets. And
voluntary gratitude is a perfect test, if you stop to think about
it. You can't talk people into liking what you have done. They have
to be convinced. There have always been people on C.R.F. worlds who
knew about our work, and agreed with it enough to see that we are
kept in funds."
"Why are you telling me all this super-secret stuff," Lea asked.
"Isn't that obvious? We want you to keep on working for us. You can
name whatever salary you like--as I've said, there is no shortage of
ready cash."
Hys glanced quickly at them both and delivered the clinching
argument. "I hope Brion will go on working with us too. He is the
kind of field agent we desperately need, and it is almost impossible
to find."
"Just show me where to sign," Lea said, and there was life in her
voice once again.
"I wouldn't exactly call it blackmail," Brion smiled, "but I suppose
if you people can juggle planetary psychologies, you must find that
individuals can be pushed around like chessmen. Though you should
realize that very little pushing is required this time."
"Will you sign on?" Hys asked.
"I must go back to Anvhar," Brion said, "but there really is no
pressing hurry."
"Earth," said Lea, "is overpopulated enough as it is."
* * * * *
72
HOURS
IN HELL
Dis was a harsh, inhospitable,
dangerous place and the Magter made it worse.
They might have been human
once--but they were something else now.
The Magter had only one desire--Kill!
Kill everything, themselves, their planet,
the universe if they could--
Brion Brandd was sent in at the
eleventh hour. His mission was to save Dis, but
it looked as though he was going to
preside over its annihilation.