inside of the door. Don't call me; I'll call you when I want
breakfast."

Brion wasn't sure how much of her barbed speech was humor and how
much was serious, so he said nothing. He showed her to an empty
cabin--she did lock the door--then looked for Ihjel. The Winner was
in the galley adding to his girth with an immense gelatin dessert
that filled a good-sized tureen.

"Is she short for a native Terran?" Brion asked. "The top of her
head is below my chin."

"That's the norm. Earth is a reservoir of tired genes. Weak backs,
vermiform appendixes, bad eyes. If they didn't have the universities
and the trained people we need I would never use them."

"Why did you lie to her about the Foundation?"

"Because it's a secret--isn't that reason enough?" Ihjel rumbled
angrily, scraping the last dregs from the bowl. "Better eat
something. Build up the strength. The Foundation has to maintain its
undercover status if it is going to accomplish anything. If she
returns to Earth after this it's better that she should know nothing
of our real work. If she joins up, there'll be time enough to tell
her. But I doubt if she will like the way we operate. Particularly
since I plan to drop some H-bombs on Dis myself--if we can't turn
off the war."

"I don't believe it!"

"You heard me correctly. Don't bulge your eyes and look moronic.
As a last resort I'll drop the bombs myself rather than let the
Nyjorders do it. That might save them."

"Save them--they'd all be radiated and dead!" Brion's voice rose
in anger.

"Not the Disans. I want to save the Nyjorders. Stop clenching your
fists and sit down and have some of this cake. It's delicious. The
Nyjorders are all that counts here. They have a planet blessed by
the laws of chance. When Dis was cut off from outside contact, the
survivors turned into a gang of swampcrawling homicidals. It did the
opposite for Nyjord. You can survive there just by pulling fruit off
a tree. The population was small, educated, intelligent. Instead of
sinking into an eternal siesta they matured into a vitally different
society. Not mechanical--they weren't even using the wheel when they
were rediscovered. They became sort of cultural specialists, digging
deep into the philosophical aspects of interrelationship--the thing
that machine societies never have had time for. Of course this was
ready-made for the Cultural Relationships Foundation, and we have
been working with them ever since. Not guiding so much