“I’m sorry,” he smiled. “I was using a figure of speech, and a bac chosen one at that. Let’s put the problem on more concrete terms. Ta an example. Suppose I were to tell you that over there, hanging fr the doorframe, was a stingwing-”
Meta’s gun was pointing at the door before he finished the last wo There was a crash as the guard’s chair went over. He had jumped fr a half-doze to full alertness in an instant, his gun also searching t doorframe.
“That was just an example,” Jason said. “There’s really nothi
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 looks like 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 ho!ster. 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-spinner that lives on Stover’s Planet. It imitates the most violent forms of life there, does such a good job that it has no need for other defenses. It’ll sit quietly on your hand and spin for you by the yard. If I dropped a shipload of them here’on Pyrrus, you never could be sure when to shoot, could you?”
“But they arc 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 sternness was gone from her face as she listened to what he said, letting herself follow these alien concepts. He had put his hand out automatically as he talked, and had taken hers. It was warm and her pulse fast to his touch.
Meta suddenly became conscious of his hand and snapped hers away, rising to her feet at the same time. As she started blindly toward the door, Jason’s voice snapped after her.
“The guard, Skop, ran away 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 winning over the Pyrran. I think that I saw-perhaps for the first time in the history of this bloody, wartorn city-a tear in one of its citizen’s eyes.”
Li
“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.