Tales of Known Space: The Universe of Larry Niven

by Larry Niven

  He pointed to a model of a small boat attached to the main model. “That shows the scale—about 1,000:1. I’m not sure how they measured length in those days, but the real ship would have been about 35,000 tonnes. Police—the fore-runners of ARM—still carried guns then, but for these things to have been guns,”—he touched one of the three sets of triple tubes on turntables on the foc’sle—”they would have had to fire ‘bullets’ as big as a man! Also, see how wide the hull is. That’s for weight and volume. In any real world, of course, races that made war with each other could never advance to build machines like this.”

  “That’s a—what did they call it?—a lifeboat?”

  “Yes. Analogous to the boats on a Spaceship. Used for going ashore when the water was not deep enough for the main ship to go right in. And for emergencies, I suppose. Not very nice to have to get into such a thing when your ship was sinking in a storm, though. I bet the sailors on”—he read the name and date on the model’s stand—”the HMS Nelson of 1928 would envy your conveniences. The other was called the HMS Rodney. Of course civilization was long established then. I don’t know what the names mean, but they were built the same. Perhaps a bit like us... It might matter, you know.”

  This last was their private cryptic, indicated by inflection. Satellites could detect key-words. “Quixotic” had gone from the unrestricted vocabulary, but she knew something of his mission that dared not speak its name.

  A strange linkage between them. It had been suggested that she had some telepathic potential, but she refused to be tested. Her internal life was complex enough, and if she had any abilities, latent or otherwise, in that direction, she did not want to know it. Without proper shields and controls telepathy might be a fatal gift.

  Modern research hinted that telepathy had killed the Neanderthals, making them too vulnerable, too able to empathize with the pain of prey, of competitors, and of one another. Modern telepaths—the very few there were—tended to be abnormal in a number of ways, and often desperately disturbed. She had met a few when the idea of testing her was raised and that had been more than enough.

  Arthur and Selina were perhaps lucky to be brother and sister. Otherwise they would undoubtedly at their first meeting have become lovers, in an intense, consuming relationship probably ultimately doomed, for they were consort personalities, not complementary ones. As it was, there was much of closeness and comfort they could give each other which no lover or husband or wife could touch, in a relationship that had no sexual tension or jealousy about it.

  A last night of delicate, careful talk. Then it was time for her to board the shuttle to the Happy Gatherer in its parking orbit. They had driven to the field together, under the gaze of the preserved monoliths.

  Angel’s Pencil

  “We’ve lost the wreckage.” Steve Weaver turned from the instrument console and stood up. The remnants of the alien enemy had dwindled and vanished on the last screen.

  “And no more headaches.” Sue Bhang’s eyes beseeched him for reassurance.

  ‘No more headaches. Maybe never again.”

  The nightmare still pressed against them, almost physically, as the Angel’s Pencil drove on its fixed course behind its vast ramscoop field. Ship and crew had changed much since the colony expedition had left Earth. The console was a small cleared space. A colony ship is crowded with cargo at the best of times, but now what had been the few free areas of the Pencil were piled with alien machinery weapons, and instruments, whole and in pieces. And in the hastily-improvised cold-room (cold, at least, tended to be easily available in Space) were the corpses and salvaged fragments of the things themselves, dissected, fragmented, burned, or—in a few cases—as nearly whole as explosive decompression in vacuum had left them. Jim Davis and Helen Boyd were supervising the filming.

  The cadavers were like a declaration of intent: huge, far bigger than humans, with black razor claws, huge slabs of muscle, cable-like sinews, bolt-cutter jaws with tremendous gape and dagger fangs. All the eyes were gone, but the huge sockets told of binocular and night-vision, and the cast of the features was still plain. Convergent evolution had produced something like enough to the ancient sabre-tooth tiger of Earth for them to name it Pseudofelis. But there was more: bigger than human brain-cases. An upright stance. Hands. A hideous contradiction in terms: Pseudofelis Sapiens.

  The resemblance to that family of creatures which made up nature’s master-work among Earth’s predators was obvious. But that qualifier Sapiens overarched all else. Not only knife-like teeth: some of the bodies had equipment that included real knives of some monomolecular-edged metal which cut through steel. There were fusion-bomb missiles, weapon-lasers there had been the heat-induction ray. And there was a drive immeasurably better than the Angel’s Pencil’s hydrogen-fusion ramjet which was the best that human brains could build.

  The Angel’s Pencil could flee from the wreckage of the battle it had miraculously won, but the nightmare was travelling with it. The humans aboard looked older now, and more than one had a tendency to wake up screaming. The doc remained busy.

  Like so many of the best nightmares, it made no sense. There was no reason carnivores should not evolve intelligence—the dolphins had, and Steve knew something of the story of the sea-statue the dolphins had found—but intelligence like this? The evolution of humanity had surely shown that civilization and technology were interdependent.

  Well, they weren’t. There were plenty of mysteries among the things they had salvaged—the drive-motor that made no sense, the smashed bodies of a couple of things like giant starfish, weird tools and artifacts, an untranslatable script—but the overall picture was clear: the long search for intelligent extraterrestrial life was over, and humanity was in trouble.

  “They won’t believe it,” Steve said. “I wouldn’t believe it...” He stared into the humming, moving battery of camera lenses and shook his fist in confused, frustrated fury.

  “They’ll have to believe it…” Jim said. Hundreds of pictures had already been sent back to the Solar system.

  “And we,” said Helen, “have no business wondering whether they believe it or not. We’ve made our decision. All we can do for Earth is to keep sending.

  “And for ourselves, we had better finish fitting those missiles and pray for time.”

  Gutting Claw

  First Telepath taught me new uses of the Sthondat-drug, gave me new spoor to follow, thoughts to chew bitterly upon. When Telepath talks to Telepath, we are not always humble. Are we not also Kzin?

  Long we spent in bases and in the great ship. My hunting began as First Telepath was dying. I was to succeed him.

  We had been roused from hibernation by the help-call of Tracker, our lead scout, one thirty-second of a light-year ahead of us. Our ship replied in war-code. No messages returned save the ghost-cry.

  Later First Telepath probed far down the tunnels of what some call the World of the Eleventh Sense. He thought at last that he touched strange minds at the extremity of his range. Feared Zraar-Admiral expended him. I felt his collapse, though I shielded as I could. First Telepath was old as we are counted but Feared Zraar-Admiral would not scrap him while any of his power remained: we are always used to the end. Though we may not shame the Heroes’ Race by breeding our ability is rare.

  When I probed in my turn I found no minds. If they had been, they were gone. To find Tracker I was not needed, and often I was left alone to sleep. Dreaming,

  I was, when Orderly kicked me awake, of Karan when

  I was her kitten, the warm, milky time of purring and kneading. Often I had that dream now.

  Tracker, when we closed with her, was in two pieces, hull chopped rather than blast-damaged. I saw mirror-shine laser-cutting at myriad points in the gaping structure. Around it was debris, much wreckage of heavy fittings which should have been securely mounted in the hull and seemed to have been pumped out like gut by hind-claws from a prey after the disabling wound.

  Damage Control and Alien Technologies
Officers with crew had gathered the wreckage and investigated. Alien Technologies was on the bridge when I arrived.

  “It was one slash. The laser was close. The ship was ransacked. The gravity-planer, weapons, stores, medical supplies and many computers and memory-bricks are gone.”

  “Pirates, Weeow-Captain?” Zraar-Admiral asked. His tail was twitching.

  I caught Weeow-Captain’s thought: Pirates attack a Patriarch’s warship? And his polite answer.

  “That was my first thought, Dominant One. But holes were cut to sealed compartments for bodies far smaller than ours. They did not know access points or service ducts or corridors. They did not disable the beacon. Some remaining memory-bricks are intact and the bridge recorder is in place. If the enemy recognized our equipment they would surely have taken these or destroyed them completely.

  ‘The gravity motor was an Admiralty standard type. Indeed it was fitted here. I estimate from the slash in Tracker that it would have been too damaged to use again. Therefore the fact that it is gone suggests that it was a technology which the destroyers of Tracker did not possess and took to examine or copy.”

  “Urrr. What of the recorder?”

  “The laser passed through it. We’re working on it, Dominant One.”

  “Patriarch’s priority!”

  “It is so ordered, Sire. We have found small artifacts made of primitive alloys we don’t use. We have rayed and otherwise examined them and I am sure they are not miniature mines. I think they are minor tools. But if hand-tools, not for our hands.

  “Further, Feared Zraar-Admiral, some seals re-engaged. That preserved some atmosphere and what was left of the lifesystem recycled a little more. Some compartments were not completely sterile. In one we found this.”

  Alien Technologies Officer showed a computer-enhanced print of a space-gloved hand with five long digits. Like the hand of a kz’eerkt.

  “This is the clearest but others are similar, No bodies, Zraar-Admiral, not of any kind. There were Jotok slaves aboard, but even their bodies are gone.

  “We cannot tell if or how deeply Tracker’s claws slashed the enemy. It looks as if she was taken by surprise.”

  “She was a scout. It was her task not to be taken by surprise.”

  “Dominant One, perhaps the attackers used some alien warfare method. But from the absence of spreading we think the enemy laser was fired from close quarters. Perhaps close enough to have been in easy visual sight. I do not understand how such a thing happened.”

  Zraar-Admiral twitched his tail and his ears contracted. He merrowered thoughtfully. “Urrr. Her Captain did not have a name.”

  “He was of good record,” Weeow-Captain said. “A brave and competent officer though he died nameless.”

  “Yes.” Feared Zraar-Admiral still had only a partial name himself. Had name-desire betrayed the scout-cruiser’s Captain into folly? Then Zraar-Admiral’s mind was again an unscalable crag. But an alien Space-faring race that fought! Light-years from any star! No aliens had so far been discovered—at least by what we knew of the Eternal Hunt—with more than interplanetary flight and with vestigial weapons systems. By the time lower races got into interplanetary space they had become soft and weak, had lost honor and warrior skills.

  But the Dream of the Day! Those thoughts were not new, nor strange, nor secret: We need a worthy enemy!

  The minds and the odors of the bridge-staff were pouring out messages. Enemies now had the booty of Kzin weaponry and drive-technology to add to whatever demon-arts they already owned. If they eluded radar and Telepaths, they might be targeting Gutting Claw at this moment. Or, beyond reach of my mind or Zraar-Admiral’s weapons, they might be assembling a Fleet.

  A Tech spoke urgently.

  “Sire, we’ve got something out of their bridge recorder. We’re stitching it through now. It’s only a few words.”

  A new voice spoke.

  “Keep all your weapons ready to fire but don’t use them unless I give the order...”

  “That’s the Captain.”

  Hissing interference, then the same ghost-voice.

  “What kind of weapons do they have?”

  Another ghost answered. A Telepath deep in the World of the Eleventh Sense, strained and bewildered. I caught no secret vibrations inserted for the benefit of a Brother Telepath, nothing of the code we had developed for our own war.

  “...a light-pressure drive powered by incomplete hydro gen fusion. They use an electromagnetic ramscoop to get their own hydro gen from space...”

  Zraar-Admiral stopped the record for a moment. All thought alike. That was no Kzin ship the ghosts spoke of. Such a drive was not even on the same path as Kzin technology. The ghosts spoke again.

  There was a blur. Something in the Captain’s voice that I could not make out, then the Telepath.

  “… not even a knife or a club. Wait, they’ve got cooking knives. But that’s all they use them for. They don’t fight.”

  “They don’t fight?”

  “No, Sir, they don’t expect us to fight either The idea has occurred to three of them and each has dismissed It from his mind.”

  “But why?”

  “I don’t know, Sir. It’s a science they use, or a religion. I don’t understand... I don’t…”

  A scrambled shriek, then a voice identified as Tracker’s Alien Technology’s Officer: “Sir, they couldn’t have any big weapons. There isn’t room…”

  There was more interference, then a spitting scream

  In the Battle Imperative from the Captain: “WEAPONS OFFICER! Burn...”

  There the recording ended, in mirror-surfaced fused metal.

  Zraar-Admiral and his officers stood silent for a moment. Zraar-Admiral’s testicles were still in the relaxed position and his tail and whiskers did not stir now. An old red-sandstone statue. His tongue flicked out for a moment across the tips of his fangs. Then Weeow-Captain spoke.

  “But those first words. ‘They don’t fight.’ No weapons. That was the Telepath.”

  “Then the Telepath was deceived.”

  “Urrr.”

  I shrank further into the submissive position, not meeting those stares. Telepaths, whatever else might be wrong with us, did not make factual mistakes in collecting data, any more than a hunter mistook a prey when it was plainly before his eyes.

  Sometimes Telepaths could get things out of context, or be overwhelmed by the alienness of prey minds. Yet the Telepath in Tracker had spoken with absolute certainty. “No weapons” did not admit of context errors. All Telepaths searched, unceasingly, for allies in our own war. In any case, reading alien minds was part of our training and the Telepath in a lead scout was specialized in alien animal contact. Thoughts flowed about me, some tinged with disquiet. If we were despised, we were also taken for granted as an infallible weapon. Can this enemy beat Telepaths? It was the worst part of our lot to have our minds open to the secret fears of Heroes, but now those were my thoughts also.

  Urrr.

  Five long fingers. On the cunning and trickery of wild kz’eerkti many tales and legends turned, from the admonitory to the obscene. Some kz’eerkti breeds used stones as missiles and sticks as tools. Some could ambush Heroes in forest hunts.

  Bad, that hand-print in Space, as the wreckage of a destroyed Kzinti ship fell in endless darkness before us. Traps, deceptions. In any event, for better or worse, a Space-travelling enemy we knew nothing of.

  “Dominant One, there is more. Later, another cell in the recorder was activated. Possibly by aliens sacking the ship.”

  Gibbering and gabbling. Kz’eerkti gibbered and gabbled, when they had played tricks on Heroes, or when they pelted Heroes with fruit or excrement from the branches of tall forest trees, ready to scamper away through the branches when the Heroes concerned began to slash the tree-trunks down or climb them.

  “Record this for yourself, Telepath,” Feared Zraar-Admiral said. “It may be useful when we meet this prey. A-T, translate it.You will allow Telepath to assis
t you.”

  I know now what it said.

  “Energy discharge now.”

  “It looks inert.”

  “Look at the meter: there’s movement there. We should get out. We’ve done what we came to do.”

  “Yes, we should get out! I don’t mean just back to the Pencil. You know that ship could not have been alone.”

  “I have thought of it. However I admit there were once a few seconds when I stopped thinking about it. That was quite a pleasant sensation, I recall.”

  “There may be more cats coming here. I mean here. We’ve picked up other emissions from the hull. Maybe calling them. They could be here... now. Those first headaches the cats may have caused—I had another not long ago. Milder, though, but there.”

  “I had one too. Jim said several people did. I put it down to strain.

  “Or some cat probe. At extreme range now but coming closer? Some mind-weapon?”

  “Tanj! Do you have to think of things like that? We’ve had nightmares enough since this all began... Anyway, we still have a job to do... There’s a light flashing on that control surface.”

  “There’s a Tanj light flashing in my mind. And it’s the biggest warning light there is. Run! Run now!

  “It doesn’t look like a weapon...”

  “I say run! Aren’t we in a bad enough state already?”

  “We’ve got to get every scrap of knowledge we can. We’ve got to keep transmitting to Earth. Keeping the transmission going is more important than our lives.”

  “Can we do that if another warship full of cats jumps us? They may not be so obliging as to leave themselves in the way of our drive next time. Or several ships? These things must be co-operative, with organization. We’ve got the motor, the weapons, the bodies. Enough to keep us busy for years. It’s crazy to wait for them...”

  Jabber.

  “Weeow-Captain, you may fall the crew out from Battle-stations. Remain closed up at Defense-stations.

  “We have the direction of Tracker’s drift. We track It back. There must be spoor, and Tracker has given us a sign. They did not die in vain. Urn... a light-pressure drive powered by Incomplete hydrogen fusion. They use an electromagnetic ramscoop to get their own hydrogen from space...”