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Updated: July 1, 2025
"But congratulations on your victory." "You don't look so very good yourself for a Winner," Brion snapped back. His exhaustion and sudden peevish anger at this man let the insulting words slip out. Ihjel ignored them. But it was true; Winner Ihjel looked very little like a Winner, or even an Anvharian.
The quiet words from the speaker in no way appeared to coincide with the picture on the screen. The spacer that had matched their orbit over Dis had recently been a freighter. A quick conversion had tacked the hulking shape of a primary weapons turret on top of her hull. The black disc of the immense muzzle pointed squarely at them. Ihjel switched open the ship-to-ship communication channel.
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.
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.
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."
The Professor-Commander was very old, with wispy grey hair and a network of wrinkles surrounding his eyes. His image shimmered, then cleared as the scrambler units aligned. "You must be Brion Brandd," he said. "I have to tell you how sorry we all are that your friend Ihjel and the two others had to die, after coming so far to help us. I'm sure you are very happy to have had a friend like that."
"You wouldn't listen to reason, you wouldn't listen to Hys, or me, or to any voice that suggested an alternative to complete destruction. You are going to destroy Dis, and it's not necessary! There were a lot of ways you could have stopped it. You didn't do any of them, and now it's too late. You'll destroy Dis, and in turn this will destroy Nyjord. Ihjel said that, and now I believe him.
There was very little chance this could be anyone but a Disan. He had a sudden memory of Mervv's severed head as it had been discovered outside the door. Ihjel had helped him train his empathetic sense and he reached out with it. It was difficult working in the dark; he could be sure of nothing. Was he getting a reaction or just wishing for one? Why did it have a ring of familiarity to it?
In fact ... well, it's almost impossible to tell you just how fascinating it all is! It was almost worth getting baked and parboiled for." She swung back to the microscope, centering the specimen with a turn of the stage adjustment screw. "Poor Ihjel was right when he said this planet was exobiologically fascinating.
"We're here first," Ihjel said, opaqueing the ports and turning on the cabin lights. They blinked at each other, faces damp with perspiration. "Must you have the ship this hot?" Lea asked, patting her forehead with an already sodden kerchief. Stripped of her heavier clothing, she looked even tinier to Brion. But the thin cloth tunic reaching barely halfway to her knees concealed very little.
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