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"After all, you can't be sure. It might just be part of their training not to reveal any emotional state. Everyone must experience emotional states, whether they like it or not." "That's my main point. Everyone does except the magter. I can't go into all the details now, so you'll just have to take my word for it. Even at the point of death they have no fear or hatred.
In exchange for food, oxygen and comfort, the brain-symbiote must generate hormones and enzymes that enable the magter to survive. Some of these might aid digestion, enabling the magter to eat any plant or animal life they can lay their hands on. The symbiote might produce sugars, scavenge the blood of toxins there are so many things it could do.
Now that he knew more about the magter, he shuddered at his innocence in walking alone and unarmed into the tower. Skill had helped him survive but better than average luck had been necessary. Curiosity had gotten him in, brashness and speed had taken him out. He was exhausted, battered and bloody but cheerfully happy.
Telt was scrambling back towards the crumbled entrance as he talked. His back was turned when Brion fired. The magter had appeared silently as the shadow of death. They charged without a sound, running with expressionless faces into the bullets. Two died at once, curling and folding; the third one fell at Brion's feet. Shot, pierced, dying, but not yet dead.
That means you still expected the magter to be sending their bombs to Nyjord and you made the landings in spite of this knowledge." "Of course," Professor Krafft said, astonished at Brion's lack of understanding. "What else could we do? The magter are sick!" Hys laughed aloud at Brion's baffled expression. "You have to understand Nyjord psychology," he said.
He could not face the accusation in the Disan's eyes. One of the technicians was running and screaming. The magter knocked him down and beat him into silence. Seeing this, the other two men returned to work with shaking hands. Even if all life on the surface of the planet was dead, this would have no effect on the magter.
What noise they made was lost in other footsteps that sounded and echoed through the connecting caves. Once inside, they found cover behind a ridge and waited. The end was certain. The magter ran swiftly into their cave, flashing his light into all the places of concealment. The beam passed over the two hidden men, and at the same instant Brion fired.
Any one thing might be explained away, but not the collection of them. What about their complete lack of emotion? Or their manner of dress and their secrecy in general? The ordinary Disan wears a cloth kilt, while the magter cover themselves as completely as possible. They stay in their black towers and never go out except in groups. Their dead are always removed so they can't be examined.
Their clothes, habits, dwellings, manners everything about them differs from that of the normal Disan. More important, the magter are as coldly efficient and inhuman as a reptile. They have no emotions, no love, no hate, no anger, no fear nothing. Each of them is a chilling bundle of thought processes and reactions, with all the emotions removed." "Aren't you exaggerating?" Lea asked.
"They won't really know until they see what an adult magter is like with his brain-parasite dead and gone. They're having better luck with the children. If they catch them early enough, the parasite can be destroyed before it has done too much damage." Lea shuddered delicately and let herself lean against him. "I'm not that sturdy yet; let's sit down while we talk."
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