by Larry Niven
"There's one thing I regret," Ingrid continued.
"What's that?"
"That we're not going to be able to see what happens when the Catskinner and those slugs make a high-Tau transit of the sun's outer envelope," she said.
Jonah felt a smile crease the rigid sweat-slick muscles of his face. The consequences had been extrapolated, but only roughly. At the very least, there would be solar-flare effects like nothing this system had ever witnessed before, enough to foul up every receptor pointed this way. "It would be interesting, at that." "Prepare for separation," the computer continued. "Five seconds and counting."
One. Ingrid had crossed herself just before the field went on.
Astonishing. There were worse people to be crammed into a Dart with for a month, even among the more interesting half of the human race. Two. They were probably going to be closer to an active star than any other human beings had ever been and survived to tell the tale. Provided they survived, of course.
Three. His grandparents had considered emigrating to the Wunderland system; he remembered them complaining about how the Belt had been then, everything regulated and taxed to death, and psychists hovering to re-sanitize your mind as soon as you came in from a prospecting trip. If they'd done it, he might have ended up as a conscript technician with the Fourth Fleet.
Four. Or a guerrilla, the prisoners had mentioned activity by "feral humans." Jonah barred his teeth in an expression a kzin would have had no trouble at all understanding. I intend to remain very feral indeed. The kzin may have done us a favor; we were well on the way to turning ourselves into sheep when they arrived. If I'm going to be a monkey, I'll be a big, mean baboon, by choice.
Five. Ingrid was right, it was a pity they wouldn't be able to see
—discontinuity
"Greow-Captain, there is an anomaly in the last projectile!” "They are all anomalies, Sensor Operator!” The commander did not move his eyes from the schematic before his face, but his tone held conviction that the humans had used irritatingly nonstandard weapons solely to annoy and humiliate him. Behind his back, the other two kzin exchanged glances and moved expressive ears.
The Slasher-class armed scout held three crewkzin in its delta-shaped control chamber, the commander forward and the Sensor and Weapons Operators behind him to either side; three small screens instead of the single larger divisible one a human boat of the same size would have had, and many more manually activated controls. Kzin had broader-range senses than humans, faster reflexes, and they trusted cybernetic systems rather less. They had also had gravity control almost from the beginning of spaceflight; a failure serious enough to immobilize the crew usually destroyed the vessel.
"Simply tell me," the kzin commander said, "if our particle-beam is driving it down." The cooling system was whining audibly as it pumped energy into its central tank of degenerate matter, and still the cabin was furnace hot and dry, full of the wild odors of fear and blood that the habitation-system poured out in combat conditions. The ship shuddered and banged as it plunged in a curve that was not quite suicidally close to the outer envelope of the sun.
Before Greow-Captain a stepped-down image showed the darkened curve of the gas envelope, and the gouting coriolis-driven plumes as the human ship's projectiles ploughed their way through plasma. Shocks of discharge arched between them as they drew away from the kzin craft above, away from the beams that sought to tumble them down into denser layers where even their velocity would not protect them. Or at least throw them enough off course that they would recede harmlessly into interstellar space. The light from the holo-screen crawled in iridescent streamers across the flared scarlet synthetic of the kzin's helmet and the huge lambent eyes; the whole corona of Alpha Centauri was writhing, flowers of nuclear fire, a thunder of forces beyond the understanding of human—or kzinkind.
The two Operators were uneasily conscious that Greow-Captain felt neither awe nor the slightest hint of fear. Not because he was more than normally courageous for a young male kzin, but because he was utterly indifferent to everything but how this would look on his record. Another glance went between them; younger sons of nobles were notoriously anxious to earn full Names at record ages, and Greow-Captain had complained long and bitterly when their squadron was not assigned to the Fourth Fleet. He was so intent on looking good that operational efficiency might suffer. They knew better than to complain openly, of course. Whatever the state of his wits, there was nothing wrong with Greow-Captain's reflexes, and he already had an imposing collection of kzin-ear dueling trophies. "Greow-Captain, the anomaly is greater than a variance in reflectivity," the Sensor Operator yowled. Half his instruments were useless in the flux of energetic particles that were sheeting off the Skwhei-s screens. He hoped they were being deflected; as a lowly Sensor Operator he had not had a chance to breed. Not so much as a sniff of kzinrett fur since they carried him mewling from the teats of his mother to the training crèche. "The projectile is not absorbing the quanta of our beam as the previous one did, nor is its surface ablating. And its trajectory is incompatible with the shape of the others; this is larger, less dense, and moving... "-a pause of less than a second to query the computer-"... moving as if its outer shell were absolutely frictionless and reflective, Greow-Captain. Should this not be reported?"
Reporting would mean retreat, out to where a message-maser could punch through the chaotic broad-spectrum noise of an injured star's bellow. "Do my Heroes refuse to follow into danger?" Greow-Captain snarled. "Lead us, Greow-Captain!" Put that way, they had no choice; which was why a sensible officer would never have put it that way. Both Operators silently cursed the better diet and personal-combat training available to offspring of a noble's household. It had been a long time since kzin had met an enemy capable of exercising greater selective pressure than their own social system.
"Weapons Operator, shift your aim to the region of compressed gasses directly ahead of our target, all energy weapons. I am taking us down and accelerating past redline." With a little luck, he could ignite the superheated and compressed monatomic hydrogen directly ahead of the projectile, and let the multimegaton explosion flip it up or down off the ballistic trajectory the humans had launched it on.
Muffled howls and spitting sounds came from the workstations behind him; the thin black lips wrinkled back more fully from his fangs, and slender lines of saliva drooled down past the open necking of his suit. Warren-dwellers, he thought, as the Slasher lurched and swooped.
His hands darted over the controls, prompting the machinery that was throwing it about at hundreds of accelerations. Vatach hunters. The little quasi-rodents were all lower-caste kzin could get in the way of live meat. Although the anomaly was interesting, and he would report noticing it to Khurut-Squadron Captain. I will show them how a true hunter
The input from the kzin boat's weapons was barely a fraction of the kinetic energy the Catskinner was shedding into the gasses that slowed it, but that was just enough. Enough to set off chain-reaction fusion in a sizable volume around the invulnerably-protected human vessel. The kzin craft was far enough away for the wave-front to arrive before the killing blow:
“—shield overload, loss of directional hhnrrreaw,”
The Sensor Operator shrieked and burned as induction-arcs crashed through his position. Weapons Operator was screaming the hiss of a nursing kitten as his claws slashed at the useless controls.
Greow-Captain's last fractional second was spent in a cry as well, but his was of pure rage. The Slasher's fusion-bottle destabilized at almost the same nanosecond as her shields went down and the gravity control vanished; an imperceptible instant later only a mass-spectroscope could have told the location as atoms of carbon and iron scattered through the hot plasma of the inner solar wind.
—discontinuity
"Shit," Jonah said, with quiet conviction. "Report. And stabilize that spin." The streaking pinwheel in the exterior-view screen slowed and halted, but the control surface beside it continued to show the Cats
kinner twirling end-over-end at a rate that would have pasted them both as a thin reddish film over the interior without the compensation fields.
The screen split down the middle as Ingrid began establishing their possible paths.
"We are," the computer said, "traveling at twice our velocity at switch off, and on a path twenty-five degrees further to the solar north." A pause. "We are still, you will note, in the plane of the elliptic." "Thank Finagle for small favors," Jonah muttered, working his hands in the control gloves. The Catskinner was running on her accumulators, the fusion reactor, and its so-detectable neutrino flux shut down. "Jonah," Ingrid said. "Take a look. " A corner of the screen lit, showing the surface of the sun and a gigantic pillar of flare reaching out in their wake like the tongue of a hungry fire-elemental. "The pussies are burning up the communications spectra, yowling about losing scoutboats. They had them down low and dirty, trying to throw the slugs that went into the photosphere with us off course."
"Lovely," the man muttered. So much for quietly matching velocities with Wunderland while the commnet is still down. To the computer: "What's ahead of us?"
"For approximately twenty-three point six lightyears, nothing. "
"What do you mean, nothing?"
"Hard vacuum, micrometeorites, interstellar dust, possible spacecraft, bodies too small or nonradiating to be detected from our position, superstrings, shadowmatter-"
"Shut up!” he snarled. "Can we brake?"
"Yes. Unfortunately, this will require several hours of thrust and exhaust our onboard fuel reserves."
"And put up a fucking great sign, 'Hurrah, we're back' for every pussy in the system," he grated. Ingrid touched him on the arm.
"Wait, I have an idea... is there anything substantial in our way, that we could reach with less of a burn?"
"Several asteroids, Lieutenant Raines. Uninhabited."
"What's the status of our stasis-controller."
A pause. "Still... I must confess, I am surprised. " The computer sounded surprised that it could be. "Still functional, lieutenant Raines."
Jonah winced. "Are you thinking what I think you're thinking?" he said plaintively. "Another collision?"
Ingrid shrugged. "Right now, it'll be less noticeable than a long burn. Computer, will it work?"
"97% chance of achieving a stable Swarm orbit. The risk of emitting infrared and visible-light signals is unquantiflable. The field switch will probably continue to function, Lieutenant Raines."
"it should, it's covered in neutronium. " She turned her head to Jonah. "Well?"
He sighed. "Offhand, I can't think of a better solution. When you can't think of a better solution than a high-speed collision with a rock, something's wrong with your thinking, but I can't think of what would be better to think... What do you think?"
"That an unshielded collision with a rock might be better than another month imprisoned with your sense of humor... Got, all those fish puns..."
"Computer, prepare for minimal bum. Any distinguishing characteristics of those rocks?"
"One largely silicate, one 83% nickel-iron with traces of-"
"Spare me. The nickel-iron, it's denser and less likely to break up. Prepare for minimal bum."
I have so prepared, on the orders of Lieutenant Raines. "
Jonah opened his mouth, then frowned. "Wait a minute. Why is it always Lieutenant Raines? You're a damned sight more respectful of her." Ingrid buffed her fingernails. "While you were briefing up on Wunderland and the Swarm... I was helping the team that programmed our tin friend.
"Are you sure?"
The radar operator held her temper in check with an effort. She had not been part of the Nietzsche's crew long, but more than long enough to learn that you did not backtalk Herrenmann Ulf Reichstein-Markham. Bastard's as arrogant as a kzin, she thought resentfully.
"Yes, sir. It's definitely heading our way since that microbum. Overpowered thruster, usual spectrum, and unless it's unmanned they have a gravity polarizer. 200 G's, they pulled."
The guerrilla commander nodded thoughtfully. “then it is either kzin, which is unlikely in the extreme since they do not use reaction drives on any of their standard vessels, or —"
"And, sir, it's cool. Hardly radiating at all, when the fusion plant's off. If we weren't close and didn't know where to look... granted this isn't a military sensor, but I doubt the ratcats have seen him."
Markham's long face drew into an expression of disapproval. "They are called kzin, soldier. I will tolerate no vulgarities in my command."
Bastard. "Yessir."
The man was tugging at his asymmetric beard. "Evacuate the asteroid. It will be interesting to see how they decelerate, perhaps some gravitic effect... And even more interesting to find out what those fat cowards in the Sol system think they are doing. "
"Prepare for stasis," the computer said.
"How?" Ingrid and Jonah asked in unison. The rock came closer, tumbling, half a kilometer on a side, falling forever in a slow silent spiral.
Closer....
"Interesting," the computer said. "There is a ship adjacent."
"What?" Jonah said. His fingers slid into the control gloves like snakes fleeing a mongoose, then froze. It was too late; they were committed. "Very well stealthed. " A pause, and the asteroid grew in the wall before them, filling it from end to end.
Tin-brained idiot's a sadist, Jonah thought.
"And the asteroid is an artifact. Well hidden as well, but at this range my semi-passive systems can pick up a tunnel complex and shut-down power system. Life support on maintenance. Twelve seconds to impact."
"Is anybody there?" Jonah barked.
"Negative, Jonah. The ship is occupied; I scan twinned fusion drives, and hull-mounted weaponry. Concealed as part of the grappling apparatus. X-ray lasers, possible railguns. Two of the cargo bays have dropslots that would be of appropriate size for kzin light seeker missiles. Eight seconds to impact."
"Put us into combat mode," the Sol-Belter snapped. "Prepare for emergency stabilization as soon as the stasis field is off. Warm for boost. Ingrid, if we're going to talk you'll probably be better able to convince them of our "-bona fides."
The ripping-cloth sound of the gravity polarizer hummed louder and louder, and there was a wobble felt more as a subliminal tugging at the inner ear as the system strained to stop a spin as rapid as a gyroscope's. The asteroid was fragments glowing a dull orange-red streaked with dark slag, receding; the Catskinner was backing under twenty G's, her laser-pods starfishing out and railguns humming with maximum charge.
"Alive again," Jonah breathed, feeling the response under his fingertips. The wall ahead had divided into a dozen panels, schematics of information, stresses, possibilities; the central was the exterior view. "Tightbeam signal, identify yourselves."
"Sent. Receiving signal, also tightbeam." A pause. "Obsolete hailing pattern. Requesting identification."
"Request video, same pattern."
The screen flickered twice, and an off right panel lit with a furious bearded face. Tightly contained fury, in a face no older than his own, less than thirty. Beard close-shaven on one side, pointed on the right. Yellow-blond and wiry, like the close-cropped matt on the narrow skull; pale narrow eyes, mobile ears, long-nosed with a prominent boney chin beneath the carefully cultivated goatee. Behind him a control chamber that was like the Belter museum back at Ceres, an early-model independent miner. But modified, crammed with jury-rigged systems of which many were marked in the squiggles-and-angles kzin script; crammed with people as well, some of them in armored spacesuits. An improvised warship, then. Most of the crew were in neatly Wored gray skinsuits, with a design of a phoenix on their chests.
"Explain yourselves," the man said, with a slight guttural overtone to his Belter-English, enough to mark him as one born speaking Wunderlander. "UNSN Catskinner, Captain Jonah Matthieson commanding, Lieutenant Raines as second. Presently," he added dryly, "on detached duty. As representative of the human armed forc
es, I require your cooperation. "
"Cooperation!” That was one of the spacesuited figures behind the Wunderlander. A tall man with hair cut in the Belter crest, and adorned with small silver bells. "You fucker, you just missiled my bloody base and a year's takings!"
"We didn't missile it, we just rammed into it," Jonah said. "Takings? What are these people, pirates?"
"Calm yourzelf, McAllistaire," the Wunderlander said. His eyes had narrowed slightly at the Sol-Belter's words, and his ears cocked forward. "Permit selfintroduction, Haupmann Matthieson. Commandant Ulf Reichstein-Markham, at your zerfice. Commandant in the Free Wunderland navy, zat is. My, ahh, coworker here is an independent entrepreneur who iss pleazed to cooperate wit' the Naval forces."
"Goddam you, Markham, that was a year's profit,
yours and mine both. Shop the bastard to the ratcats, now. We could get a pardon out of it, easy. Hell, you could get that piece of dirt back on Wunderland you're always on about."
The self-proclaimed commandant held up a hand palm-forward to Jonah and turned to speak to the owner of the ex-asteroid. "You try my patience, McAllistaire. Zilence. "
"Silence yourself, dirtsider. I-"
"Am now dispensable." Markham's finger tapped the console. Stunners hummed in the guerrilla ship, and the figures not in gray crumpled. The commandant turned to a figure offsereen. "Strip zem of all useful equipment and space zem," he said casually. Turning to the screen again, with a slight smile. "It is true, you half cost us valuable materiel... you will understand, a clandestine war requires unorthodox measures, Captain. Ve are forced sometimes to requisition goods, as the Free Wunderland government cannot levy ordinary taxes, and it is necessary to exchange these for vital supplies vit t'ose not of our cause." A more genuine smile. "As an officer ant a chentelman, you vill appreciate the relief of no lonker having to deal vit this schweinerie. "
Ingrid spoke softly to the computer, and another portion of the screen switched to an exterior view of the Free Wunderland ship. An airlock door swung open, and figures spewed out into vacuum with a puff of vapor; some struggled and thrashed for nearly a minute. Another murmur, and a green line drew itself around the figure of Markham. Stress-reading, Jonah reminded himself Pupil-dilation monitoring —I should have thought of that. Interesting, he thinks he's telling the truth.