brought their work to completion, with a speed and precision
they had concealed before.

"What are those offworlders doing?" Ulv asked.

Brion stirred from his lethargy of defeat and looked across the
cavern floor. The men had a wheeled handtruck and were rolling one
of the atomic warheads onto it. They pushed it over to the
latticework of the jump-field.

"They are going to bomb Nyjord now, just as Nyjord bombed Dis. That
machine will hurl the bombs in a special way to the other planet."

"Will you stop them?" Ulv asked. He had his deadly blowgun in his
hand and his face was an expressionless mask.

Brion almost smiled at the irony of the situation. In spite of
everything he had done to prevent it, Nyjord had dropped the bombs.
And this act alone may have destroyed their own planet. Brion had it
within his power now to stop the launching in the cavern. Should he?
Should he save the lives of his killers? Or should he practice the
ancient blood-oath that had echoed and destroyed down through the
ages: _An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth._ It would be so
simple. He literally had to do nothing. 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. It grew until men
fought and died for the abstract ideas of cities and nations, then
for whole planets. Would the time ever come when men might realize
that the obligation should be to the largest and most encompassing
reality of all--mankind? And beyond that to life of all kinds.

Brion saw this idea, not in words but as a reality. When he posed
the question to himself in this way he found that it stated clearly
its inherent answer. He pulled his gun out, and as he did he
wondered what Ulv's answer might be.

"Nyjord is _medvirk_," Ulv said, raising his blowgun and sending a
dart across the cavern. It struck one of the technicians, who gasped
and fell to the floor.

Brion's shots crashed into the control board, shorting and
destroying it, removing the menace to Nyjord for all time.

_Medvirk_, Ulv had said. A life form that cooperates and aids other
life forms. It may kill in self-defense, but it is essentially not
a killer or destroyer. Ulv had a lifetime of knowledge