September 25, 2025 • 20 mins
In a world where extraordinary individuals emerge only once in a generation, Brion Brandd possesses a remarkable gift an enhanced sense of empathy. This unique ability propels him to victory in the Twenties, a prestigious competition showcasing the most brilliant minds on Anvhar. However, his triumph is short-lived as he is thrust into the chaotic realm of Dis, a planet on the brink of nuclear devastation. To save both worlds, Brandd must navigate treacherous negotiations with a menacing blockade, delve into the dark underbelly of Dis, and unravel the enigma of the merciless magter. Summary by Great Plains
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter ten of Planet of the Damned. This is a
LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
Recording by November eighth, Echo Victor Victor, Planet of the
(00:20):
Damned by Harry Harrison, Chapter ten. It's suicide. The taller
guard grumbled, mine, not yours, so don't worry about it.
Brion barked at him. Your job is to remember your
orders and keep them straight. Now let's hear them again.
(00:40):
The guard rolled his eyes up in silent rebellion and
repeated in a toneless voice. We stay here in the
car and keep the motor running while you go inside
the stone pile there. We don't let anybody in the car,
and we try to keep them clear of the car
short of shooting them. That is, we don't come in,
no matter what happens or what it looks like. But
(01:02):
wait for you here unless you call on the radio,
in which case we come in with the automatics going
and shoot the place up, and it doesn't matter who
we hit. This will be done only as a last resort.
See if you can't arrange that last resort thing, the
other guard said, patting the heavy blue barrel of his weapon.
(01:25):
I meant that last resort, Brion said angrily. If any
guns go off without my permission, you will pay for it,
and pay with your next I want that clearly understood.
You were here as a rearguard and a base for
me to get back to. This is my operation and
mine alone, unless I call you in. Understood. He waited
(01:48):
until all three men had nodded in agreement, then checked
the charge on his gun. It was fully loaded. It
would be foolish to go in unarmed, but he had to.
One gun, wouldn't, say him. He put it aside. The
button radio on his collar was working and had a
strong enough signal to get through any number of walls.
(02:09):
He took off his coat, threw open the door, and
stepped out into the searing brilliance of the disan noon.
There was only the desert silence, broken by the steady
throb of the car's motor behind him, Stretching away to
the horizon. In every direction was the eternal desert of sand.
The keep stood nearby, solitary a massive pile of black rock.
(02:32):
Brion plodded closer, watching for any motion from the walls.
Nothing stirred. The high walled, irregularly shaped construction sat in
a ponderous silence. Brion was sweating, now only partially from
the heat. He circled the thing, looking for a gate.
There wasn't one at ground level. A slanting cleft in
(02:55):
the stone could be climbed easily, but it seemed incredible
that this might be the only entrance. A complete circuit
proved that it was. Brion looked unhappily at the slanting
and broken ramp, then cupped his hands and shouted loudly,
I'm coming up. Your radio doesn't work anymore. I'm bringing
(03:16):
the message from Niord that you have been waiting to hear.
This was a slight bending of the truth without fracturing it.
There was no answer, just the hiss of wind blown
sand against the rock and the mutter of the car
in the background. He started to climb. The rock underfoot
(03:37):
was crumbling, and he had to watch where he put
his feet. At the same time, he fought a constant
impulse to look up, watching for anything falling from above.
Nothing happened. When he reached the top of the wall,
he was breathing hard sweat moistened his body. There was
still no one in sight. He stood on an unevenly
(03:58):
shaped wall that appeared to circle the building instead of
having a courtyard inside it. The wall was the outer
face of the structure, the domed roof rising from it
at varying intervals. Dark openings gave access to the interior.
When Brion looked down, the sand car was just a
dun colored bump in the desert, already far behind him. Stooping,
(04:22):
he went through the nearest door. There was still no
one in sight. The room inside was something out of
a madman's funhouse. It was higher than it was wide,
irregular in shape, and more like a hallway than a room.
At one end, it merged into an incline that became
a stairwell. At the other it ended in a hole
(04:44):
that vanished in darkness below. Light of sorts filtered in
through slots and holes drilled into the thick stone wall.
Everything was built of the same crumble textured but strong rock.
Brion took the stairs. After a number of blind passages
and wrong turns, he saw a stronger light ahead and
(05:05):
went on. There was food, metal, even artifacts of the
unusual disan design in the different rooms he passed through,
yet no people. The light ahead grew stronger, and the
last passageway opened and swelled out until it led into
the large central chamber. This was the heart of the
(05:27):
strange structure. All the rooms, passageways, and halls existed just
to give form to this gigantic chamber. The walls rose sharply,
the room, being circular in cross section and growing narrower
towards the top. It was a truncated cone, since there
was no ceiling, A hot blue disc of sky cast
(05:50):
light on the floor. Below. On the floor stood a
knot of men who stared at Brion. Out of the
corner of his eyes and with the very periphery of
his consciousness, he was aware of the rest of the room, barrels, stores, machinery,
a radio transceiver, various bundles and heaps that made no
(06:11):
sense at first glance. There was no time to look closer.
Every fraction of his attention was focused on the muffled
and hooded men. He had found the enemy. Everything that
had happened to him so far on diss had been
preparation for this moment. The attack in the desert, the escape,
(06:34):
the dreadful heat, of sun and sand. All this had
tempered and prepared him, It had been nothing in itself.
Now the battle would begin in earnest. None of this
was conscious in his mind. His fighter's reflexes bent, his
shoulders curved, his hands before him as he walked softly
in balance, ready to spring in any direction. Yet none
(06:58):
of this was really necessary. All the danger so far
was non physical. When he did give conscious thought to
the situation, he stopped, startled. What was wrong here? None
of the men had moved or made a sound. How
could he even know they were men? They were so
(07:18):
muffled and wrapped in cloth that only their eyes were exposed.
No doubt, however, existed in Brion's mind. In spite of
muffled cloth and silence, he knew them for what they were.
The eyes were empty of expression and unmoving, yet were
filled with the same negative emptiness as those of a
(07:39):
bird of prey. They could look on life, death, and
the rending of flesh with the same lack of interest
and compassion. All this Brion knew in an instant of time,
without words being spoken. Between the time he lifted one
foot and walked a step, he understood what he had
to face, there could be no doubt not to an
(08:02):
empathetic from the group of silent men poured a frost
white wave of unemotion, and empathetic shares what other men feel.
He gets his knowledge of their reaction by sensing lightly
their emotions, the surges of interest, hate, love, fear, desire,
(08:22):
the sweep of large and small sensations that accompany all
thought and action. The empathetic is always aware of this
constant and silent surge, whether he makes the effort to
understand it or not. He is like a man glancing
across the open pages of a table full of books.
He can see that the type, words, paragraphs, thoughts are there,
(08:47):
even without focusing his attention to understand any of it.
Then how does the man feel when he glances at
the open books and sees only blank pages. The books
are there, the words are not. He turns the pages
of one of the others, flipping the pages, searching for meaning.
(09:08):
There is no meaning. All the pages are blank. This
was the way in which the magter were blank without emotions.
There was a barely sensed surge in return that must
have been neural impulses. On a basic level. The automatic
adjustments of sense and muscle that keep an organism alive.
(09:29):
Nothing more. Brion reached for other sensations, but there was
nothing there to grasp. Either these men were without emotions,
or they were able to block them from his detection.
It was impossible to tell which. Very little time had
passed while Brion made these discoveries. The knot of men
still looked at him, silent and unmoving. They weren't expectant.
(09:54):
Their attitude could not have been called one of interest.
But he had come to them, and now they waited
to find out why. Any questions or statements they spoke
would be superfluous, so they didn't speak. The responsibility was his.
I have come to talk with lig Magte. Who is he?
(10:16):
Brion didn't like the tiny sound his voice made in
the immense room. One of the men gave a slight
motion to draw attention to himself. None of the others moved.
They still waited. I have a message for you, Brion said,
speaking slowly to fill the silence of the room and
the emptiness of his thoughts. This had to be handled right.
(10:40):
But what was right? I'm from the foundation in the city,
as you undoubtedly know. I've been talking to the people
of Nyjord, they have a message for you. The silence
grew longer. Brion had no intention of making this a monolog.
He needed facts to operate to form an opinion. Looking
(11:03):
at the silent forms was telling him nothing. Time stretched taut,
and finally lig Magtu spoke, the Nyjorders are going to surrender.
It was an impossibly strange sentence. Brion had never realized
before how much of the content of speech was made
(11:26):
up of emotion. If a man had given it a
positive emphasis, perhaps said it with enthusiasm, it would have
meant success. The enemy is going to surrender. This wasn't
the meaning. With a rising inflection on the end, it
would have been a question, are they going to surrender?
(11:48):
It was neither of these. The sentence carried no other
message than that it contained, in the simplest meanings of
the separate words intellectual connotations. But these could only be
gained from past knowledge, not from the sound of the words.
(12:08):
There was only one message they were prepared to receive
from Niord. Therefore Brion was bringing the message. If that
was not the message Brion was bringing, the men here
were not interested. This was the vital fact. If they
were not interested. He could have no further value to them.
(12:28):
Since he came from the enemy, he was the enemy.
Therefore he would be killed. Because this was vital to
his existence, Brion took the time to follow the thought through.
It made logical sense, and logic was all he could
depend on. Now he could be talking to robots or
alien creatures for all the human response he was receiving.
(12:52):
You can't win this war. All you can do is
hurry your own deaths. He said this with as much
conviction as he could, realizing at the same time that
it was wasted effort. No flicker of response stirred in
the men before him. The NIEJ orders know you have
the cobalt bombs, and they have detected your jump space projector.
(13:16):
They can't take any more chances. They have pushed the
deadline closer by an entire day. There are one and
a half days left before the bombs fall, and you
were all destroyed. Do you realize what that means? Is
that the message? Lig Magta asked yes, Brion said, two
(13:38):
things saved his life. Then he had guessed what would
happen as soon as they had his message, though he
hadn't been sure, but even the suspicion had put him
on his guard. This, combined with the reflexes of a
winner of the twenties, was barely enough to enable him
to survive from frozen mobility. Lig Maga had kept Polted
(14:00):
into headlong attack. As he leaped forward, he drew a curved,
double edged blade from under his robes. It plunged unerringly
through the spot where Brion's body had been an instant before.
There had been no time to tense his muscles and jump,
just the space of time to relax them and fall
(14:20):
to one side. His reasoning mind joined the battle. As
he hit the floor, lig Magta plunged by him, turning
and bringing the knife down. At the same time, Brion's
foot lashed out and caught the other man's leg, sending
him sprawling. They were both on their feet at the
same instant, facing each other. Brion now had his hands
(14:42):
clasped before him, in the unarmed man's best defense against
a knife, the two arms protecting the body. The two
hands joined to beat aside the knife arm from whichever
direction it came. The disan hunched low, flipped the knife
quickly from hand to hand hand, then thrust it again
at Brion's midriff. Only by the merest fractional margin did
(15:07):
Brion evade the attack for the second time. Lig Magta
fought with utter violence. Every action was as intense as possible,
deadly and thorough. There could be only one end to
this unequal contest. If Brion stayed on the defensive, the
man with the knife had to win. With the next charge,
(15:28):
Brion changed tactics. He leaped inside the thrust, clutching for
the knife arm. A burning slice of pain cut across
his arm. Then his fingers clutched the tendoned wrist. They
clamped down hard, grinding shut, compressing with the tightening intensity
of a closing vice. It was all he could do,
(15:50):
simply to hold on. There was no science in it,
just his greater strength from exercise and existence on a
heavier planet. All of this strength went to his clutching hand,
because he held his own life in that hand, forcing
away the knife that wanted to terminate it forever. Nothing
else mattered, neither the frightening force of the knees that
(16:14):
thudded into his body, nor the hooked fingers that reached
for his eyes to tear them out. He protected his
face as well as he could. While the nails tore
furrows through his flesh and the cut on his arm
bled freely. These were only minor things to be endured.
His life depended on the grasp of the fingers of
(16:35):
his right hand. There was a sudden immobility as Brion
succeeded in clutching lig Magta's other arm. It was a
good grip, and he could hold the arm immobilized. They
had reached stasis, standing knee to knee, their faces only
a few inches apart. The muffling cloth had fallen from
(16:55):
the Disan's face during the struggle, and empty, frigid eyes
stared in to Brion's. No flicker of emotion crossed the
harsh planes of the other man's face. A great puckered
white scar covered one cheek and pulled up a corner
of the mouth in a cheerless grimace. It was false.
(17:16):
There was still no expression here, even when the pain
must be growing more intense. Brion was winning. If none
of the watchers broke the impasse. His greater weight and
strength counted. Now the disan would have to drop the
knife before his arm was dislocated at the shoulder. He
didn't do it. With sudden horror, Brion realized that he
(17:39):
wasn't going to drop it no matter what happened. A dull,
hideous snap jerked through the disan's body, and the arm
hung limp and dead. No expression crossed the man's face.
The knife was still locked in the fingers of the
paralyzed hand. With his other hand, lig Magta reached a
(18:00):
cross and started to pry the blade loose, Ready to
continue the battle one handed, Brion raised his foot and
kicked the knife free, sending it spinning across the room.
Lig Magda made a fist of his good hand and
crashed it into Brion's groin. He was still fighting as
if nothing had changed. Brion backed slowly away from the man.
(18:23):
Stop it, he said, you can't win now, it's impossible.
He called to the other men who were watching the
unequal battle with expressionless immobility. No one answered him with
a terrible, sinking sensation. Brion then realized what would happen
and what he had to do. Lig Magda was as
(18:45):
heedless of his own life as he was of the
life of his planet. He would press the attack no
matter what damage was done to him. Brion had an
insane vision of him breaking the man's other arm, fracturing
both his legs, and the limbless broken creature still coming forward, crawling,
rolling teeth bared. Since they were the only remaining weapon,
(19:10):
there was only one way to end it. Brion fainted
and the Ligmagta's arm moved clear of his body. The
engulfing cloth was thin, and through it, Brion could see
the outlines of the disan's abdomen and rib cage, the
clear location of the great nerve Ganglion. It was the
death blow of karate. Brion had never used it on
(19:33):
a man. In practice, he had broken heavy boards, splintering
them instantly with the short, precise stroke, the stiffened hand
moving forward in a sudden surge, all the weight and
energy of his body concentrated in his joined fingertips, plunging
deep into the other's flesh, killing, not by accident or
(19:56):
in sudden anger, killing, because this was the only away
the battle could possibly end. Like a ruined tower of flesh,
the disan crumpled and fell, dripping blood. Exhausted, Brion stood
over the body of lic Magta and stared at the
dead man's allies. Death filled the room, end of chapter ten,
Chapter ten of Planet of the Damned. This is a
LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
Recording by November eighth, Echo Victor Victor, Planet of the
(00:20):
Damned by Harry Harrison, Chapter ten. It's suicide. The taller
guard grumbled, mine, not yours, so don't worry about it.
Brion barked at him. Your job is to remember your
orders and keep them straight. Now let's hear them again.
(00:40):
The guard rolled his eyes up in silent rebellion and
repeated in a toneless voice. We stay here in the
car and keep the motor running while you go inside
the stone pile there. We don't let anybody in the car,
and we try to keep them clear of the car
short of shooting them. That is, we don't come in,
no matter what happens or what it looks like. But
(01:02):
wait for you here unless you call on the radio,
in which case we come in with the automatics going
and shoot the place up, and it doesn't matter who
we hit. This will be done only as a last resort.
See if you can't arrange that last resort thing, the
other guard said, patting the heavy blue barrel of his weapon.
(01:25):
I meant that last resort, Brion said angrily. If any
guns go off without my permission, you will pay for it,
and pay with your next I want that clearly understood.
You were here as a rearguard and a base for
me to get back to. This is my operation and
mine alone, unless I call you in. Understood. He waited
(01:48):
until all three men had nodded in agreement, then checked
the charge on his gun. It was fully loaded. It
would be foolish to go in unarmed, but he had to.
One gun, wouldn't, say him. He put it aside. The
button radio on his collar was working and had a
strong enough signal to get through any number of walls.
(02:09):
He took off his coat, threw open the door, and
stepped out into the searing brilliance of the disan noon.
There was only the desert silence, broken by the steady
throb of the car's motor behind him, Stretching away to
the horizon. In every direction was the eternal desert of sand.
The keep stood nearby, solitary a massive pile of black rock.
(02:32):
Brion plodded closer, watching for any motion from the walls.
Nothing stirred. The high walled, irregularly shaped construction sat in
a ponderous silence. Brion was sweating, now only partially from
the heat. He circled the thing, looking for a gate.
There wasn't one at ground level. A slanting cleft in
(02:55):
the stone could be climbed easily, but it seemed incredible
that this might be the only entrance. A complete circuit
proved that it was. Brion looked unhappily at the slanting
and broken ramp, then cupped his hands and shouted loudly,
I'm coming up. Your radio doesn't work anymore. I'm bringing
(03:16):
the message from Niord that you have been waiting to hear.
This was a slight bending of the truth without fracturing it.
There was no answer, just the hiss of wind blown
sand against the rock and the mutter of the car
in the background. He started to climb. The rock underfoot
(03:37):
was crumbling, and he had to watch where he put
his feet. At the same time, he fought a constant
impulse to look up, watching for anything falling from above.
Nothing happened. When he reached the top of the wall,
he was breathing hard sweat moistened his body. There was
still no one in sight. He stood on an unevenly
(03:58):
shaped wall that appeared to circle the building instead of
having a courtyard inside it. The wall was the outer
face of the structure, the domed roof rising from it
at varying intervals. Dark openings gave access to the interior.
When Brion looked down, the sand car was just a
dun colored bump in the desert, already far behind him. Stooping,
(04:22):
he went through the nearest door. There was still no
one in sight. The room inside was something out of
a madman's funhouse. It was higher than it was wide,
irregular in shape, and more like a hallway than a room.
At one end, it merged into an incline that became
a stairwell. At the other it ended in a hole
(04:44):
that vanished in darkness below. Light of sorts filtered in
through slots and holes drilled into the thick stone wall.
Everything was built of the same crumble textured but strong rock.
Brion took the stairs. After a number of blind passages
and wrong turns, he saw a stronger light ahead and
(05:05):
went on. There was food, metal, even artifacts of the
unusual disan design in the different rooms he passed through,
yet no people. The light ahead grew stronger, and the
last passageway opened and swelled out until it led into
the large central chamber. This was the heart of the
(05:27):
strange structure. All the rooms, passageways, and halls existed just
to give form to this gigantic chamber. The walls rose sharply,
the room, being circular in cross section and growing narrower
towards the top. It was a truncated cone, since there
was no ceiling, A hot blue disc of sky cast
(05:50):
light on the floor. Below. On the floor stood a
knot of men who stared at Brion. Out of the
corner of his eyes and with the very periphery of
his consciousness, he was aware of the rest of the room, barrels, stores, machinery,
a radio transceiver, various bundles and heaps that made no
(06:11):
sense at first glance. There was no time to look closer.
Every fraction of his attention was focused on the muffled
and hooded men. He had found the enemy. Everything that
had happened to him so far on diss had been
preparation for this moment. The attack in the desert, the escape,
(06:34):
the dreadful heat, of sun and sand. All this had
tempered and prepared him, It had been nothing in itself.
Now the battle would begin in earnest. None of this
was conscious in his mind. His fighter's reflexes bent, his
shoulders curved, his hands before him as he walked softly
in balance, ready to spring in any direction. Yet none
(06:58):
of this was really necessary. All the danger so far
was non physical. When he did give conscious thought to
the situation, he stopped, startled. What was wrong here? None
of the men had moved or made a sound. How
could he even know they were men? They were so
(07:18):
muffled and wrapped in cloth that only their eyes were exposed.
No doubt, however, existed in Brion's mind. In spite of
muffled cloth and silence, he knew them for what they were.
The eyes were empty of expression and unmoving, yet were
filled with the same negative emptiness as those of a
(07:39):
bird of prey. They could look on life, death, and
the rending of flesh with the same lack of interest
and compassion. All this Brion knew in an instant of time,
without words being spoken. Between the time he lifted one
foot and walked a step, he understood what he had
to face, there could be no doubt not to an
(08:02):
empathetic from the group of silent men poured a frost
white wave of unemotion, and empathetic shares what other men feel.
He gets his knowledge of their reaction by sensing lightly
their emotions, the surges of interest, hate, love, fear, desire,
(08:22):
the sweep of large and small sensations that accompany all
thought and action. The empathetic is always aware of this
constant and silent surge, whether he makes the effort to
understand it or not. He is like a man glancing
across the open pages of a table full of books.
He can see that the type, words, paragraphs, thoughts are there,
(08:47):
even without focusing his attention to understand any of it.
Then how does the man feel when he glances at
the open books and sees only blank pages. The books
are there, the words are not. He turns the pages
of one of the others, flipping the pages, searching for meaning.
(09:08):
There is no meaning. All the pages are blank. This
was the way in which the magter were blank without emotions.
There was a barely sensed surge in return that must
have been neural impulses. On a basic level. The automatic
adjustments of sense and muscle that keep an organism alive.
(09:29):
Nothing more. Brion reached for other sensations, but there was
nothing there to grasp. Either these men were without emotions,
or they were able to block them from his detection.
It was impossible to tell which. Very little time had
passed while Brion made these discoveries. The knot of men
still looked at him, silent and unmoving. They weren't expectant.
(09:54):
Their attitude could not have been called one of interest.
But he had come to them, and now they waited
to find out why. Any questions or statements they spoke
would be superfluous, so they didn't speak. The responsibility was his.
I have come to talk with lig Magte. Who is he?
(10:16):
Brion didn't like the tiny sound his voice made in
the immense room. One of the men gave a slight
motion to draw attention to himself. None of the others moved.
They still waited. I have a message for you, Brion said,
speaking slowly to fill the silence of the room and
the emptiness of his thoughts. This had to be handled right.
(10:40):
But what was right? I'm from the foundation in the city,
as you undoubtedly know. I've been talking to the people
of Nyjord, they have a message for you. The silence
grew longer. Brion had no intention of making this a monolog.
He needed facts to operate to form an opinion. Looking
(11:03):
at the silent forms was telling him nothing. Time stretched taut,
and finally lig Magtu spoke, the Nyjorders are going to surrender.
It was an impossibly strange sentence. Brion had never realized
before how much of the content of speech was made
(11:26):
up of emotion. If a man had given it a
positive emphasis, perhaps said it with enthusiasm, it would have
meant success. The enemy is going to surrender. This wasn't
the meaning. With a rising inflection on the end, it
would have been a question, are they going to surrender?
(11:48):
It was neither of these. The sentence carried no other
message than that it contained, in the simplest meanings of
the separate words intellectual connotations. But these could only be
gained from past knowledge, not from the sound of the words.
(12:08):
There was only one message they were prepared to receive
from Niord. Therefore Brion was bringing the message. If that
was not the message Brion was bringing, the men here
were not interested. This was the vital fact. If they
were not interested. He could have no further value to them.
(12:28):
Since he came from the enemy, he was the enemy.
Therefore he would be killed. Because this was vital to
his existence, Brion took the time to follow the thought through.
It made logical sense, and logic was all he could
depend on. Now he could be talking to robots or
alien creatures for all the human response he was receiving.
(12:52):
You can't win this war. All you can do is
hurry your own deaths. He said this with as much
conviction as he could, realizing at the same time that
it was wasted effort. No flicker of response stirred in
the men before him. The NIEJ orders know you have
the cobalt bombs, and they have detected your jump space projector.
(13:16):
They can't take any more chances. They have pushed the
deadline closer by an entire day. There are one and
a half days left before the bombs fall, and you
were all destroyed. Do you realize what that means? Is
that the message? Lig Magta asked yes, Brion said, two
(13:38):
things saved his life. Then he had guessed what would
happen as soon as they had his message, though he
hadn't been sure, but even the suspicion had put him
on his guard. This, combined with the reflexes of a
winner of the twenties, was barely enough to enable him
to survive from frozen mobility. Lig Maga had kept Polted
(14:00):
into headlong attack. As he leaped forward, he drew a curved,
double edged blade from under his robes. It plunged unerringly
through the spot where Brion's body had been an instant before.
There had been no time to tense his muscles and jump,
just the space of time to relax them and fall
(14:20):
to one side. His reasoning mind joined the battle. As
he hit the floor, lig Magta plunged by him, turning
and bringing the knife down. At the same time, Brion's
foot lashed out and caught the other man's leg, sending
him sprawling. They were both on their feet at the
same instant, facing each other. Brion now had his hands
(14:42):
clasped before him, in the unarmed man's best defense against
a knife, the two arms protecting the body. The two
hands joined to beat aside the knife arm from whichever
direction it came. The disan hunched low, flipped the knife
quickly from hand to hand hand, then thrust it again
at Brion's midriff. Only by the merest fractional margin did
(15:07):
Brion evade the attack for the second time. Lig Magta
fought with utter violence. Every action was as intense as possible,
deadly and thorough. There could be only one end to
this unequal contest. If Brion stayed on the defensive, the
man with the knife had to win. With the next charge,
(15:28):
Brion changed tactics. He leaped inside the thrust, clutching for
the knife arm. A burning slice of pain cut across
his arm. Then his fingers clutched the tendoned wrist. They
clamped down hard, grinding shut, compressing with the tightening intensity
of a closing vice. It was all he could do,
(15:50):
simply to hold on. There was no science in it,
just his greater strength from exercise and existence on a
heavier planet. All of this strength went to his clutching hand,
because he held his own life in that hand, forcing
away the knife that wanted to terminate it forever. Nothing
else mattered, neither the frightening force of the knees that
(16:14):
thudded into his body, nor the hooked fingers that reached
for his eyes to tear them out. He protected his
face as well as he could. While the nails tore
furrows through his flesh and the cut on his arm
bled freely. These were only minor things to be endured.
His life depended on the grasp of the fingers of
(16:35):
his right hand. There was a sudden immobility as Brion
succeeded in clutching lig Magta's other arm. It was a
good grip, and he could hold the arm immobilized. They
had reached stasis, standing knee to knee, their faces only
a few inches apart. The muffling cloth had fallen from
(16:55):
the Disan's face during the struggle, and empty, frigid eyes
stared in to Brion's. No flicker of emotion crossed the
harsh planes of the other man's face. A great puckered
white scar covered one cheek and pulled up a corner
of the mouth in a cheerless grimace. It was false.
(17:16):
There was still no expression here, even when the pain
must be growing more intense. Brion was winning. If none
of the watchers broke the impasse. His greater weight and
strength counted. Now the disan would have to drop the
knife before his arm was dislocated at the shoulder. He
didn't do it. With sudden horror, Brion realized that he
(17:39):
wasn't going to drop it no matter what happened. A dull,
hideous snap jerked through the disan's body, and the arm
hung limp and dead. No expression crossed the man's face.
The knife was still locked in the fingers of the
paralyzed hand. With his other hand, lig Magta reached a
(18:00):
cross and started to pry the blade loose, Ready to
continue the battle one handed, Brion raised his foot and
kicked the knife free, sending it spinning across the room.
Lig Magda made a fist of his good hand and
crashed it into Brion's groin. He was still fighting as
if nothing had changed. Brion backed slowly away from the man.
(18:23):
Stop it, he said, you can't win now, it's impossible.
He called to the other men who were watching the
unequal battle with expressionless immobility. No one answered him with
a terrible, sinking sensation. Brion then realized what would happen
and what he had to do. Lig Magda was as
(18:45):
heedless of his own life as he was of the
life of his planet. He would press the attack no
matter what damage was done to him. Brion had an
insane vision of him breaking the man's other arm, fracturing
both his legs, and the limbless broken creature still coming forward, crawling,
rolling teeth bared. Since they were the only remaining weapon,
(19:10):
there was only one way to end it. Brion fainted
and the Ligmagta's arm moved clear of his body. The
engulfing cloth was thin, and through it, Brion could see
the outlines of the disan's abdomen and rib cage, the
clear location of the great nerve Ganglion. It was the
death blow of karate. Brion had never used it on
(19:33):
a man. In practice, he had broken heavy boards, splintering
them instantly with the short, precise stroke, the stiffened hand
moving forward in a sudden surge, all the weight and
energy of his body concentrated in his joined fingertips, plunging
deep into the other's flesh, killing, not by accident or
(19:56):
in sudden anger, killing, because this was the only away
the battle could possibly end. Like a ruined tower of flesh,
the disan crumpled and fell, dripping blood. Exhausted, Brion stood
over the body of lic Magta and stared at the
dead man's allies. Death filled the room, end of chapter ten,
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