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"There is no more war," Brion translated for Ulv, knowing that the Disan had understood nothing of the explanation. As he said it, he realized that there was one glaring error in the story. "You couldn't have done it," Brion said. "You landed on this planet before you had my message about the tower.
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.
"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 followed a deepening gulley that grew into a good-sized ravine. When they turned an angle of the ravine Brion saw a weak yellow light coming from an opening in the hard dirt wall. Ulv dropped on all fours and vanished through the shoulder-wide hole. Brion followed him, trying to ignore the growing tension and unease he felt. Crawling like this, head down, he was terribly vulnerable.
The score would be even, and his and the Disans' death avenged. Did Ulv have his blowgun ready to kill Brion with, if he should try to stop the launchings? Or had he misread the Disan entirely? "Will you stop them, Ulv?" he asked. How large was mankind's sense of obligation? The caveman first had this feeling for his mate, then for his family.
"Hys," Brion called out, "you translate all that into Disan and explain to Ulv. I wouldn't dare." 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.
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.
She was hurt, but not badly, when I brought her out." Guilty relief flooded through Brion. He shouldn't exult, not with the death of everyone in the Foundation still fresh in his mind. But at that instant he was happy. "Let me see her," he said to Ulv. He was seized by the sudden fear that there might be a mistake. Perhaps Ulv had saved a different woman.
"The magter are the ones who are responsible for causing the trouble, and I had to see them up close before I could make any decisions. It wasn't a very pleasant thing, but I found out what I wanted to know. They are different in every way from the normal Disans. I've compared them. I've talked to Ulv the native who saved us in the desert and I can understand him.
She turned back to the microscope, and he didn't try to question her. Ulv was still looking at the body of the magter and had understood nothing of what they had said. Brion went out into the loading bay. There was nothing he could use on the ground floor, so he took the stairs to the floor above. A corridor here passed by a number of rooms.
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