... hydrogen bombs ... Brion Brandd." These were just key words, landmarks of association. With each one Brion felt the rushing wave of the other man's emotions.There could be no lies here--Ihjel was right in that. This was the raw stuff that feelings are made of,[Pg 27] the basic reactions to the things and symbols of memory.
DIS ... DIS ... DIS ... it was a word it was a planet and the word thundered like a drum a drum the sound
of its thunder surrounded and was a wasteland a planet
of death a planet where living was dying and dying was very
better than living
crude barbaric backward miserable dirty beneath consideration
planet
hot burning scorching wasteland of sands
and sands and sands and sands that burned had burned will burn forever
the people of this planet so crude dirty miserable barbaric sub-human inhuman
9
less-than-human
DIS
but they were going to
be
DEAD
and DEAD they would be seven million blackened corpses that would blacken your dreams all dreams dreams
forever because those HYDROGEN BOMBS were waiting
to kill
them unless .. unless .. unless ..
you Ihjel stopped it you Ihjel (DEATH) you (DEATH)
you (DEATH) alone couldn't do it you (DEATH)
must have
BRION BRANDD wet-behind-the-ears-raw-untrained- Brion-Brandd-to-help-you he was the only one in the galaxy who could finish the job.................................. [Pg 28]
As the flow of sensation died away, Brion realized he was sprawled back weakly on his pillows, soaked with sweat, washed with the memory of the raw emotion. Across from him Ihjel sat with his face bowed in his hands. When he lifted his head Brion saw within his eyes a shadow of the blackness he had just experienced.
"Death," Brion said. "That terrible feeling of death. It wasn't just the people of Dis who would die. It was something more personal."
"Myself," Ihjel said, and behind this simple word were the repeated echoes of night that Brion had been made aware of with his newly recognized ability. "My own death, not too far away. This is the wonderfully terrible price you must pay for your talent. Angst is an inescapable part of empathy. It is a part of the whole unknown field of psi phenomena that seems to be independent of time. Death is so traumatic and final that it reverberates back along the time line. The closer I get, the more aware of it I am. There is no
exact feeling of date, just a rough location in time. That is the horror of it. I know I will die soon after I get to Dis--and long before the work there is finished. I know the job to be done there, and I know the men who have already failed at it. I also know you are the only person who can possibly complete the work I have started. Do you agree now? Will you come with me?"
"Yes, of course," Brion said. "I'll go with you."[Pg 29] IV
"I've never seen anyone quite as angry as that doctor," Brion said.
"Can't blame him." Ihjel shifted his immense weight and grunted from the console, where he was having a coded conversation with the ship's brain. He hit the keys quickly, and read the answer from the screen. "You took away his medical moment of glory. How many times in his life will he have a chance to nurse back to rugged smiling health the triumphantly exhausted Winner of the Twenties?"
"Not many, I imagine. The wonder of it is how you managed to convince him that you and the ship here could take care of me as well as his hospital could."
"I could never convince him of that," Ihjel said. "But I and the Cultural Relationships Foundation have some powerful friends on Anvhar. I'm forced to admit I brought a little pressure to bear." He leaned back and read the course tape as it streamed out of the printer. "We have a little time to spare, but I would rather spend it waiting at the other end. We'll blast as soon as I have you tied down in a stasis field."
10
The completeness of the stasis field leaves no impressions on the body or mind. In it there is no weight, no pressure, no pain--no sensation of any kind. Except for a stasis of very long duration, there is no sensation of time. To Brion's consciousness, Ihjel flipped the switch off with a continuation of the same motion that had turned it on. The ship was unchanged, only outside of the port was the red-shot blankness of jump-space.
"How do you feel?" Ihjel asked.
Apparently the ship was wondering the same thing. Its detector unit, hovering impatiently just outside of Brion's stasis field, darted down and settled[Pg 30] on his bare forearm. The doctor back on Anvhar had given the medical section of the ship's brain a complete briefing. A quick check of a dozen factors of Brion's metabolism was compared to the expected norm. Apparently everything was going well, because the only reaction was the expected injection of vitamins and glucose.
"I can't say I'm feeling wonderful yet," Brion answered, levering himself higher on the pillows. "But every day it's a bit better--
steady progress."
"I hope so, because we have about two weeks before we get to Dis. Do you think you'll be back in shape by that time?"
"No promises," Brion said, giving a tentative squeeze to one bicep. "It should be enough time, though. Tomorrow I start mild exercise and that will tighten me up again. Now--tell me more about Dis and what you have to do there."
"I'm not going to do it twice, so just save your curiosity awhile. We're heading for a rendezvous point now to pick up another operator. This is going to be a three-man team, you, me and an exobiologist. As soon as he is aboard I'll do a complete briefing for you both at the same time. What you can do now is get your head into the language box and start working on your Disan. You'll want to speak it perfectly by the time we touchdown."
With an autohypno for complete recall, Brion had no difficulty in mastering the grammar and vocabulary of Disan. Pronunciation was a different matter altogether. Almost all the word endings were swallowed, muffled or gargled. The language was rich in glottal stops, clicks and guttural strangling sounds. Ihjel stayed in a different part of the ship when Brion used the voice mirror and analysis scope, claiming that the awful noises interfered with his digestion.
Their ship angled through jump-space along its calculated course. It kept its fragile human cargo warm, fed them and supplied breathable air. It had orders to worry about Brion's health, so it did, checking constantly against its recorded instructions and[Pg 31] noting his steady progress. Another part of the ship's brain counted microseconds with moronic fixation, finally closing a relay when a predetermined number had expired in its heart. A light flashed and a buzzer hummed gently but insistently.
Ihjel yawned, put away the report he had been reading, and started for the control room. He shuddered when he passed the room where Brion was listening to a playback of his Disan efforts.
"Turn off that dying brontosaurus and get strapped
