Deathworld

“I’m not being insulting when I say ‘confused,’ Meta. With your background you couldn’t be any other way. You have an insular personality. Admittedly, Pyrrus is an unusual island with a lot of high-power problems that you are an expert at solving. That doesn’t make it any less of an island. When you face a cosmopolitan problem you are confused. Or even worse, when your island problems are put into a bigger context. That’s like playing your own game, only having the rules change constantly as you go along.”

“You’re talking nonsense,” she snapped at him. “Pyrrus isn’t an island and battling for survival is definitely not a game.”

“I’m sorry,” he smiled. “I was using a figure of speech, and a badly chosen one at that. Let’s put the problem on more concrete terms. Take an example. Suppose I were to tell you that over there, hanging from the doorframe, was a stingwing — “

Meta’s gun was pointing at the door before he finished the last word. There was a crash as the guard’s chair went over. He had jumped from a half-doze to full alertness in an instant, his gun also searching the doorframe.

“That was just an example,” Jason said. “There’s really nothing there.” The guard’s gun vanished and he scowled a look of contempt at Jason, as he righted the chair and dropped into it.

“You both have proved yourself capable of handling a Pyrran problem.” Jason continued. “But what if I said that there is a thing hanging from the doorframe that lookslike a stingwing, but is really a kind of large insect that spins a fine silk that can be used to weave clothes?”

The guard glared from under his thick eyebrows at the empty doorframe, his gun whined part way out, then snapped back into the holster. He growled something inaudible at Jason, then stamped into the outer room, slamming the door behind him. Meta frowned in concentration and looked puzzled.

“It couldn’t be anything except a stingwing,” she finally said. “Nothing else could possibly look like that. And even if it didn’t spin silk, it would bite if you got near, so you would have to kill it.” She smiled with satisfaction at the indestructible logic of her answer.

“Wrong again,” Jason said. “I just described the mimic-spi

“But they are not here now,” Meta insisted.

“Yet they could be quite easily. And if they were, all the rules of your game would change. Getting the idea now? There are some fixed laws and rules in the galaxy — but they’re not the ones you live by. Your rule is war unending with the local life. I want to step outside your rule book and end that war. Wouldn’t you like that? Wouldn’t you like an existence that was more than just an endless battle for survival? A life with a chance for happiness, love, music, art — all the enjoyable things you have never had the time for.”

All the Pyrran ster

Meta suddenly became conscious of his hand and snapped hers away, rising to her feet at the same time. As she started blindly towards the door, Jason’s voice snapped after her.

“The guard, Skop, ran out because he didn’t want to lose his precious two-value logic. It’s all he has. But you’ve seen other parts of the galaxy, Meta, you know there is a lot more to life than kill-and-be-killed on Pyrrus. You feel it is true, even if you won’t admit it.”

She turned and ran out the door.

Jason looked after her, his hand scraping the bristle on his chin thoughtfully. “Meta, I have the faint hope that the woman is wi

XXI

“Drop that equipment and Kerk will undoubtedly pull both your arms off,” Jason said. “He’s over there now, looking as sorry as possible that I ever talked him into this.”

Skop cursed under the bulky mass of the psi detector, passing it up to Meta who waited in the open port of the spaceship. Jason supervised the loading, and blasted all the local life that came to investigate. Horndevils were thick this morning and he shot four of them. He was last aboard and closed the lock behind him.

“Where are you going to install it?” Meta asked.

“You tell me,” Jason said. “I need a spot for the ante

“You may have to,” she said. “The hull is an unbroken unit, we do all viewing by screen and instruments. I don’t think… wait… there is one place that might do.”

She led the way to a bulge in the hull that marked one of the lifeboats. They went in through the always-open lock, Skop struggling after them with the apparatus.

“These lifeboats are half buried in the ship,” Meta explained. “They have transparent front ports covered by friction shields that withdraw automatically when the boat is launched.”

“Can we pull back the shields now?”

“I think so,” she said. She traced the launching circuits to a junction box and opened the lid. When she closed the shield relay manually, the heavy plates slipped back into the hull. There was a clear view, since most of the viewport projected beyond the parent ship.

“Perfect,” Jason said. “I’ll set up here. Now how do I talk to you in the ship?”

“Right here,” she said. “There’s a pre-tuned setting on this communicator. Don’t touch anything else — and particularly not this switch.” She pointed to a large pull-handle set square into the center of the control board. “Emergency launching. Two seconds after that is pulled the lifeboat is shot free. And it so happens this boat has no fuel.”

“Hands off for sure,” Jason said. “Now have Husky there run me in a line with ship’s power and I’ll get this stuff set up.”

The detector was simple, though the tuning had to be precise. A dish-shaped ante

When everything was ready and clamped into place, Jason nodded to Meta’s image on the screen. “Take her up — and easy please. None of your nine-G specials. Go into a slow circle around the perimeter, until I tell you differently.”

Under steady power the ship lifted and grabbed for altitude, then eased into its circular course. They made five circuits of the city before Jason shook his head.

“The thing seems to be working fine, but we’re getting too much noise from all the local life. Get thirty kilometers out from the city and start a new circuit.”

The results were better this time. A powerful signal came from the direction of the city, confined to less than a degree of arc. With the ante