"What are those offworlders doing?" Ulv asked.
Brion stirred from his lethargy of defeat and looked across the cavern floor. The men had a wheeled hand-truck and were rolling one of the atomic warheads onto it. They pushed it over to the latticework of the jump-field.
"They are going to bomb Nyjord now, just as Nyjord bombed Dis. That machine will hurl the bombs in a special way to the other planet."
"Will you stop them?" Ulv asked. He had his deadly blowgun in his hand and his face was an expressionless mask.
Brion almost smiled at the irony of the situation. In spite of everything he had done to prevent it, Nyjord had dropped the bombs. And this act alone may have destroyed their own planet. Brion had it within his power now to stop the launching in the cavern. Should he? Should he save the lives of his killers? Or should he practice the ancient blood-oath that had echoed and destroyed down through the ages—An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. It would be so simple. He literally had to do nothing. The score would be evened and his and the Disans' deaths avenged.
Did Ulv have his blowgun ready to kill Brion if he should try to stop the launchings? Or had he misread the Disan entirely?
"Will you stop them, Ulv?" he asked.
How large was mankind's sense of obligation? The cave man first had this feeling for his mate, then for his family. It grew until men fought and died for the abstract ideas of cities and nations, then for whole planets. Would the time ever come when men might realize that the obligation should be to the largest and most encompassing reality of all? Mankind. And beyond that to life of all kinds.
Brion saw this idea not in words, but as a reality. When he posed the question to himself in this way he found that it stated clearly its inherent answer. He pulled his gun out, and as he did he wondered what Ulv's answer might be.