“There are things you can do that will stop the war without hurting yourself or the magter,” Brion said, searching for a way to enlist their aid.

“Tell us,” Ulv grunted.

“There would be no war if the magter could be contacted, made to listen to reason. They are killing you all. You could tell me how to talk to the magter, how I could understand them—”

“No one can talk to the magter,” the woman broke in. “If you say something different they will kill you as they killed Gebk’s brother. So they are easy to understand. That is the way they are. They do not change.” She put the length of plant she had been softening for the child back into her mouth. Her lips were deeply grooved and scarred from a lifetime of this work, her teeth at the sides worn almost to the bone.

“Mor is right,” Ulv said. “You do not talk to magter. What else is there to do?”

Brion looked at the two men before he spoke, and shifted his weight. The motion brought his fingertips just a few inches from his gun. “The magter have bombs that will destroy Nyjord—this is the next planet, a star in your sky. If I can find where the bombs are, I will have them taken away and there will be no war.”

“You want to aid the devils in the sky against our own people!” Gebk shouted, half rising. Ulv pulled him back to the ground, but there was no more warmth in his voice as he spoke.

“You are asking too much. You will leave now.”

“Will you help me, though? Will you help stop the war?” Brion asked, aware he had gone too far, but unable to stop. Their anger was making them forget the reasons for his being there.

“You ask too much,” Ulv said again. “Go back now. We will talk about it.”

“Will I see you again? How can I reach you?”

“We will find you if we wish to talk to you,” was all Ulv said. If they decided he was lying he would never see them again. There was nothing he could do about it.

“I have made up my mind,” Gebk said, rising to his feet and drawing his cloth up until it covered his shoulders. “You are lying and this is all a lie of the sky people. If I see you again I will kill you.” He stepped to the tunnel and was gone.

There was nothing more to be said. Brion went out next—checking carefully to be sure that Gebk really had left—and Ulv guided him to the spot where the lights of Hovedstad were visible. He did not speak during their return journey and vanished without a word. Brion shivered in the night chill of the air and wrapped his coat more tightly around himself. Depressed, he walked back towards the warmer streets of the city.