Deathworld (24 page)

"Go down and let the bug-doctor in," Ihjel said. "I'll stay and
monitor the board in case of trouble."

"What do I have to do?"

"Get into a suit and open the outer lock. Most of the drop sphere is
made of inflatable metallic foil, so don't bother to look for the
entrance. Just cut a hole in it with the oversize can-opener you'll
find in the tool box. After Dr. Morees gets aboard jettison the
thing. Only get the radio and locator unit out first—it gets used
again."

The tool did look like a giant can-opener. Brion carefully felt the
resilient metal skin that covered the lock entrance, until he was
sure there was nothing on the other side. Then he jabbed the point
through and cut a ragged hole in the thin foil. Dr. Morees boiled
out of the sphere, knocking Brion aside.

"What's the matter?" Brion asked.

There was no radio on the other's suit; he couldn't answer. But he
did shake his fist angrily. The helmet ports were opaque, so there
was no way to tell what expressions went with the gesture. Brion
shrugged and turned back to salvaging the equipment pack, pushing
the punctured balloon free and sealing the lock. When pressure was
pumped back to ship-normal, he cracked his helmet and motioned the
other to do the same.

"You're a pack of dirty lying dogs!" Dr. Morees said when the helmet
came off. Brion was completely baffled. Dr. Lea Morees had long dark
hair, large eyes, and a delicately shaped mouth now taut with anger.
Dr. Morees was a woman.

"Are you the filthy swine responsible for this atrocity?" Dr. Morees
asked menacingly.

"In the control room," Brion said quickly, knowing when cowardice
was preferable to valor. "A man named Ihjel. There's a lot of him
to hate, you can have a good time doing it. I just joined up
myself...." He was talking to her back as she stormed from the room.
Brion hurried after her, not wanting to miss the first human spark
of interest in the trip to date.

"Kidnapped! Lied to, and forced against my will! There is no court
in the galaxy that won't give you the maximum sentence, and I'll
scream with pleasure as they roll your fat body into solitary—"

"They shouldn't have sent a woman," Ihjel said, completely ignoring
her words. "I asked for a highly qualified exobiologist for a
difficult assignment. Someone young and tough enough to do field
work under severe conditions. So the recruiting office sends me the
smallest female they can find, one who'll melt in the first rain."

"I will not!" Lea shouted. "Female resiliency is a well-known fact,
and I'm in far better condition than the average woman. Which has
nothing to do with what I'm telling you. I was hired for a job in
the university on Moller's World and signed a contract to that
effect. Then this bully of an agent tells me the contract has been
changed—read subparagraph 189-C or some such nonsense—and I'll be
transhipping. He stuffed me into that suffocating basketball without
a by-your-leave and they threw me overboard. If that is not a
violation of personal privacy—"

"Cut a new course, Brion," Ihjel broke in. "Find the nearest settled
planet and head us there. We have to drop this woman and find a man
for this job. We are going to what is undoubtedly the most
interesting planet an exobiologist ever conceived of, but we need
a man who can take orders and not faint when it gets too hot."

Brion was lost. Ihjel had done all the navigating and Brion had no
idea how to begin a search like this.

"Oh, no you don't," Lea said. "You don't get rid of me that easily.
I placed first in my class, and most of the five hundred other
students were male. This is only a man's universe because the men
say so. What is the name of this garden planet where we are going?"

"Dis. I'll give you a briefing as soon as I get this ship on
course." He turned to the controls and Lea slipped out of her suit
and went into the lavatory to comb her hair. Brion closed his mouth,
aware suddenly it had been open for a long time. "Is that what you
call applied psychology?" he asked.

"Not really. She was going to go along with the job in the
end—since she did sign the contract even if she didn't read the
fine print—but not until she had exhausted her feelings. I just
shortened the process by switching her onto the male-superiority
hate. Most women who succeed in normally masculine fields have a
reflexive antipathy there; they have been hit on the head with it
so much."

He fed the course tape into the console and scowled. "But there was
a good chunk of truth in what I said. I wanted a young, fit and
highly qualified biologist from recruiting. I never thought they
would find a female one—and it's too late to send her back now.
Dis is no place for a woman."

"Why?" Brion asked, as Lea appeared in the doorway.

"Come inside, and I'll show you both," Ihjel said.

"Dis," Ihjel said, consulting a thick file, "third planet out from
its primary, Epsilon Eridani. The fourth planet is Nyjord—remember
that, because it is going to be very important. Dis is a place you
need a good reason to visit and no reason at all to leave. Too hot,
too dry; the temperature in the temperate zones rarely drops below
a hundred Fahrenheit. The planet is nothing but scorched rock and
burning sand. Most of the water is underground and normally
inaccessible. The surface water is all in the form of briny,
chemically saturated swamps—undrinkable without extensive
processing. All the facts and figures are here in the folder and
you can study them later. Right now I want you just to get the idea
that this planet is as loathsome and inhospitable as they come. So
are the people. This is a solido of a Disan."

Lea gasped at the three-dimensional representation on the screen.
Not at the physical aspects of the man; as a biologist trained in
the specialty of alien life she had seen a lot stranger sights.
It was the man's pose, the expression on his face—tensed to leap,
his lips drawn back to show all of this teeth.

"He looks as if he wanted to kill the photographer," she said.

"He almost did—just after the picture was taken. Like all Disans,
he has an overwhelming hatred and loathing of offworlders. Not
without good reason, though. His planet was settled completely by
chance during the Breakdown. I'm not sure of the details, but the
overall picture is clear, since the story of their desertion forms
the basis of all the myths and animistic religions on Dis.

"Apparently there were large-scale mining operations carried on
there once; the world is rich enough in minerals and mining them
is very simple. But water came only from expensive extraction
processes and I imagine most of the food came from offworld. Which
was good enough until the settlement was forgotten, the way a lot
of other planets were during the Breakdown. All the records were
destroyed in the fighting, and the ore carriers were pressed into
military service. Dis was on its own. What happened to the people
there is a tribute to the adaptation possibilities of homo sapiens.
Individuals died, usually in enormous pain, but the race lived.
Changed a good deal, but still human. As the water and food ran out
and the extraction machinery broke down, they must have made heroic
efforts to survive. They couldn't do it mechanically, but by the
time the last machine collapsed, enough people were adjusted to
the environment to keep the race going.

"Their descendants are still there, completely adapted to the
environment. Their body temperatures are around a hundred and thirty
degrees. They have specialized tissue in the gluteal area for
storing water. These are minor changes, compared to the major ones
they have done in fitting themselves for this planet. I don't know
the exact details, but the reports are very enthusiastic about
symbiotic relationships. They assure us that this is the first time
homo sapiens has been an active part of either commensalism or
inquilinism other than in the role of host."

"Wonderful!" Lea exclaimed.

"Is it?" Ihjel scowled. "Perhaps from the abstract scientific point
of view. If you can keep notes perhaps you might write a book about
it some time. But I'm not interested. I'm sure all these
morphological changes and disgusting intimacies will fascinate you,
Dr. Morees. But while you are counting blood types and admiring your
thermometers, I hope you will be able to devote a little time to a
study of the Disans' obnoxious personalities. We must either find
out what makes these people tick—or we are going to have to stand
by and watch the whole lot blown up!"

"Going to do what!" Lea gasped. "Destroy them? Wipe out this
fascinating genetic pool? Why?

"Because they are so incredibly loathsome, that's why!" Ihjel said.
"These aboriginal hotheads have managed to lay their hands on some
primitive cobalt bombs. They want to light the fuse and drop these
bombs on Nyjord, the next planet. Nothing said or done can convince
them differently. They demand unconditional surrender, or else. This
is impossible for a lot of reasons—most important, because the
Nyjorders would like to keep their planet for their very own. They
have tried every kind of compromise but none of them works. The
Disans are out to commit racial suicide. A Nyjord fleet is now over
Dis and the deadline has almost expired for the surrender of the
cobalt bombs. The Nyjord ships carry enough H-bombs to turn the
entire planet into an atomic pile. That is what we must stop."

Brion looked at the solido on the screen, trying to make some
judgment of the man. Bare, horny feet. A bulky, ragged length of
cloth around the waist was the only garment. What looked like a
piece of green vine was hooked over one shoulder. From a plaited
belt were suspended a number of odd devices made of hand-beaten
metal, drilled stone and looped leather. The only recognizable item
was a thin knife of unusual design. Loops of piping, flared bells,
carved stones tied in senseless patterns of thonging gave the rest
of the collection a bizarre appearance. Perhaps they had some
religious significance. But the well-worn and handled look of most
of them gave Brion an uneasy sensation. If they were used—what in
the universe could they be used
for
?

"I can't believe it," he finally concluded. "Except for the exotic
hardware, this lowbrow looks as if he has sunk back into the Stone
Age. I don't see how his kind can be any real threat to another
planet."

"The Nyjorders believe it, and that's good enough for me," Ihjel
said. "They are paying our Cultural Relationships Foundation a good
sum to try and prevent this war. Since they are our employers, we
must do what they ask." Brion ignored this large lie, since it was
obviously designed as an explanation for Lea. But he made a mental
note to query Ihjel later about the real situation.

"Here are the tech reports." Ihjel dropped them on the table. "Dis
has some spacers as well as the cobalt bombs—though these aren't
the real threat. A tramp trader was picked up
leaving
Dis. It had
delivered a jump-space launcher that can drop those bombs on Nyjord
while anchored to the bedrock of Dis. While essentially a peaceful
and happy people, the Nyjorders were justifiably annoyed at this and
convinced the tramp's captain to give them some more information.
It's all here. Boiled down, it gives a minimum deadline by which
time the launcher can be set up and start throwing bombs."

"When is that deadline?" Lea asked.

"In ten more days. If the situation hasn't been changed drastically
by then, the Nyjorders are going to wipe all life from the face of
Dis. I assure you they don't want to do it. But they will drop the
bombs in order to assure their own survival."

"What am I supposed to do?" Lea asked, flipping the pages of the
report. "I don't know a thing about nucleonics or jump-space. I'm
an exobiologist, with a supplementary degree in anthropology. What
help could I possibly be?"

Ihjel looked down at her, stroking his jaw, fingers sunk deep into
the rolls of flesh. "My faith in our recruiters is restored," he
said. "That's a combination that is probably rare—even on Earth.
You're as scrawny as an underfed chicken, but young enough to
survive if we keep a close eye on you." He cut off Lea's angry
protest with a raised hand. "No more bickering. There isn't time.
The Nyjorders must have lost over thirty agents trying to find the
bombs. Our foundation has had six people killed—including my late
predecessor in charge of the project. He was a good man, but I think
he went at this problem the wrong way. I think it is a cultural one,
not a physical one."

"Run it through again with the power turned up," Lea said, frowning.
"All I hear is static."

"It's the old problem of genesis. Like Newton and the falling apple,
Levy and the hysteresis in the warp field. Everything has a
beginning. If we can find out why these people are so hell-bent on
suicide we might be able to change the reasons. Not that I intend
to stop looking for the bombs or the jump-space generator either.
We are going to try anything that will avert this planetary murder."

"You're a lot brighter than you look," Lea said, rising and
carefully stacking the sheets of the report. "You can count on me
for complete cooperation. Now I'll study all this in bed if one of
you overweight gentlemen will show me to a room with a strong lock
on the inside of the door. Don't call me; I'll call you when I want
breakfast."

Brion wasn't sure how much of her barbed speech was humor and how
much was serious, so he said nothing. He showed her to an empty
cabin—she did lock the door—then looked for Ihjel. The Winner was
in the galley adding to his girth with an immense gelatin dessert
that filled a good-sized tureen.

"Is she short for a native Terran?" Brion asked. "The top of her
head is below my chin."

"That's the norm. Earth is a reservoir of tired genes. Weak backs,
vermiform appendixes, bad eyes. If they didn't have the universities
and the trained people we need I would never use them."