For my Mother and Father⁠— Ria and Leo Harrison...

Sweat covered Brion’s body, trickling into the tight loincloth that was the only garment he wore. The light fencing foil in his hand felt as heavy as a bar of lead to his exhausted muscles, worn out b...

Ihjel gave the doctors exactly one day before he went to the hospital. Brion wasn’t dead, though there had been some doubt about that the night before. Now, a full day later, he was on the mend and th...

This time there was no way to hold the door. Ihjel didn’t try. He stepped aside and two men stumbled into the room. He walked out behind their backs without saying a word. “What happened? What did he ...

“I’ve never seen anyone quite as angry as that doctor,” Brion said. “Can’t blame him.” Ihjel shifted his immense weight and grunted from the console, where he was having a coded conversation with the ...

“Dis,” Ihjel said, consulting a thick file, “third planet out from its primary, Epsilon Eridani. The fourth planet is Nyjord⁠—remember that, because it is going to be very important. Dis is a place yo...

“Identify yourself, please.” The quiet words from the speaker in no way appeared to coincide with the picture on the screen. The spacer that had matched their orbit over Dis had recently been a freigh...

With the cool air and firmly packed sand under foot, walking should have been easy. Lea spoiled that. The concussion seemed to have temporarily cut off the reasoning part of her brain, leaving a direc...

With each second the noise grew louder, coming their way. The tracks squeaked as the car turned around the rock spire, obviously seeking them out. A large carrier, big as a truck, it stopped before th...

The guard inside the front entrance of the Foundation building jumped at the thunderous noise and reached for his gun. He dropped his hand sheepishly when he realized it was only a sneeze⁠—though a ga...

“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.” Th...

Facing the silent Disans, Brion’s thoughts hurtled about in sweeping circles. There would be no more than an instant’s tick of time before the magter avenged themselves bloodily and completely. He fel...

On Brion’s desk when he came in, were two neat piles of paper. As he sat down and reached for them he was conscious of an arctic coldness in the air, a frigid blast. It was coming from the air-conditi...

“He wouldn’t come in, sir. Just hammered on the door and said, ‘I’m here, tell Brandd.’ ” “Good enough,” Brion said, fitting his gun in the holster and sliding the extra clips into his pocket. “I’m go...

Life was ended. Brion’s mind contained nothing but despair and the pain of irretrievable loss. If his brain had been completely the master of his body he would have died there, for at that moment ther...

Brion hurled himself backward and sprawled flat in the dust and filth of the road. No poison dart sought him out; the empty silence still reigned. Telt’s murderers had come and gone. Moving quickly, u...

Ulv joined them as they looked down at the exposed brain of the magter. The thing was so clearly evident that even Ulv noticed it. “I have seen dead animals and my people dead with their heads open, b...

“Do you mean what you said, about giving up?” Lea asked. Brion realized that she had stopped talking to Ulv some time ago, and had been listening to his conversation with Krafft. He shrugged, trying t...

One of the technicians was running and screaming. The magter knocked him down and beat him into silence. Seeing this, the other two men returned to work with shaking hands. Even if all life on the sur...

Dis was a floating golden ball, looking like a schoolroom globe in space. No clouds obscured its surface, and from this distance it seemed warm and attractive set against the cold darkness. Brion almo...