Planet Of The Damned by Harry Harrison

Author:Harry Harrison [Harrison, Harry]
Format: epub
Published: 2010-05-14T12:45:49.931000+00:00

XVIII

One of the technicians was running and screaming. The magter knocked

him down and beat him into silence. Seeing this, the other two men re-they also had the chance for vengeance. Swiftly they brought their work to

completion, with a speed and precision they had concealed before.

"What are those oflFworlders doing?" Ulv asked.

Brion stirred from his lethargy of defeat and looked across the cavern

floor. The men had a wheeled handtruck and were rolling one of the atomic

warheads onto it. They pushed it over to the latticework of the jump-field.

"They are going to bomb Nyjord now, just as Ny-jord bombed Dis. That

machine will hurl the bombs in a special way to the other planet."

"Will you stop them?" Ulv asked. He had his deadly blowgun in his

hand and his face was an expressionless mask.

Brion almost smiled at the irony of the situation. In spite of everything

he had done to prevent it, Nyjord had dropped the bombs. And this act

alone may have destroyed their own planet. Brion had it within his power

now to stop the launching in the cavern. Should he? Should he save the

lives of his killers? Or should he practice the ancient blood-oath that had

echoed and destroyed down through the ages: An eye for an eye, a tooth

for a tooth. It would be so simple. He literally had to do nothing. The score

would be even, and his and the Disans' death avenged.

Did Ulv have his blowgun ready to toll Brion with, if he should try to

stop the launchings? Or had he misread the Disan entirely?

Brion saw this idea, not in words but as a reality. When he posed the

question to himself in this way he found that it stated clearly its inherent

answer. He pulled his gun out, and as he did he wondered what Ulv's answer might be.

"Nyjord is medtnrk" Ulv said, raising his blowgun and sending a dart

across the cavern. It struck one of the technicians, who gasped and fell to

the floor.

Brion's shots crashed into the control board, shorting and destroying it,

removing the menace to Nyjord for all time.

Medvirk, Ulv had said. A life form that cooperates and aids other Me

forms. It may kill in self-defense, but it is essentially not a killer or destroyer. Ulv had a lifetime of knowledge about the interdependency of life.

He grasped the essence of the idea and ignored all the verbal complications

and confusions. He had tolled the magter, who were his own people, because they were umedvirk--against Me. And he had saved his enemies because they were medvirk.

With this realization came the painful knowledge that the planet and the

people that had produced this understanding were dead.

In the cavern the magter saw the destruction of their plans, and the cave

mouth from which the bul-ion rifles, and were right behind them. Knowing the caverns 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 spot we can defend and

settle into

it.

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