The World of Ptavvs

by Larry Niven

  “Matchsticks!” Kzanol’s voice dripped with thrintun contempt. “We might just as well be playing Patience.” It was a strange thing to say, considering that he was losing.

  “Tell you what,” Kzanol/Greenberg suggested. “We could divide the Earth up now and play for people. We’d get about eight billion each to play with, with a few left over. In fact, we could agree right now that the Earth should be divided by two north-south great circle lines, leave it at that ’til we get back with the amplifier, and play with eight billion apiece.”

  “Sounds all right. Why north-south?”

  “So we each get all the choices of climate there are. Why not?”

  “Agreed.” Kzanol dealt two cards face down and one up. “Seven stud,” announced the pilot.

  “Fold,” said Kzanol/Greenberg, and watched Kzanol snarl and rake in the antes. “We should have brought Masney,” he said. “It might be dangerous, not having a pilot.”

  “So? Assume I’d brought Masney. How would you feel, watching me operate your former slave?”

  “Lousy.” In point of fact, he now saw that Kzanol had shown rare tact in leaving Masney behind. Lloyd was a used slave, one who had been owned by another. Tradition almost demanded his death, and certainly decreed that he must never be owned by a self-respecting thrint, though he might be given to a beggar.

  “Five stud,” said the pilot. He sat where he could see neither hand, ready to wrap his human tongue around human, untranslatable poker slang when Kzanol wished to speak, and ready to translate for Kzanol/Greenberg. Kzanol dealt one up, one down.

  “That’s funny,” said Kzanol/Greenberg. “I almost remembered something, but then it slipped away.”

  “Open your mind and I’ll tell you what it was.”

  “No. It’s in English anyway. From the Greenberg memories.” He clutched his head. “What is it? It seems so damned appropriate. Something about Masney.”

  “Play.”

  “Nine people.”

  “Raise five.”

  “Up ten.”

  “Call. Greenberg, why is it that you win more than I do, even though you fold more often?”

  Kzanol/Greenberg snapped his fingers. “Got it! ‘When I am grown to man’s estate I shall be very proud and great. And tell the other girls and boys Not to meddle with my toys.’ Stevenson.” He laughed. “Now what made me…”

  “Deuce for you, queen for me,” said the pilot. Kzanol continued in thrintun: “If men had telepathic recorders they wouldn’t have to meddle with sounds that way. It has a nice beat, though.”

  “Sure,” Kzanol/Greenberg said absently. He lost that hand, betting almost two hundred on a pair of fours.

  Somewhat later Kzanol looked up from the game. “Communicator,” he said. He got up and went to the pilot room. Kzanol/Greenberg followed. They took seats next to the control room door and the pilot turned up the volume.

  “…Atwood in Number Six. I hope you’re listening, Lew. There is definitely an ET on the honeymooner, and he definitely has wild talents. There’s nothing phony about any of this. The alien paralyzed the Arm and his chauffeur from a distance of around a million miles. He’s pretty callous, too. The man in the second ship was left drifting near Triton, half starved and without fuel, after the alien was through with him. Garner says Greenberg was responsible. Greenberg’s the one who thinks he’s another ET. He’s on the honeymooner now. There are two others on the honeymooner, the pilot and copilot. Garner says shoot on sight, don’t try to approach the ship. I leave that to you. We’re three days behind you, but we’re coming anyway. Number Four is on Triton, without fuel, and we can’t use it until we clean the mud out of the tank. Only three of us can fly. Garner and his chauffeur are still paralyzed, though it’s wearing off a little. We should have a hypnotherapist for these flatlanders, or they may never dance again.

  “In my opinion your first target is the amplifier, if you can find it. It’s far more dangerous than any single ET. The Belt wouldn’t want it except for research, and I know some scientists who’d hate us for giving up that opportunity, but you can imagine what Earth might do with an amplifier for telepathic hypnosis.

  “I’m putting this on repeat.

  “Lew, this is Atwood in Number Six. Repeat, Atwood in…”

  Kzanol/Greenberg pulled a cigarette and lit it. The honeymooner had a wide selection; this one was double filtered, mentholated, and made from de-nicotinized tobaccos. It smelled like gently burning leaves and tasted like a cough drop. “Shoot on sight,” he repeated. “That’s not good.”

  The thrint regarded him with undisguised contempt. To fear a slave—! But then, it was only a ptavv itself.

  Kzanol/Greenberg glared. He knew more about people than Kzanol did, after all!

  “All ships,” said the man in the lead ship. “I say we shoot now. Comments?”

  There were comments. Lew waited them out, and then he spoke.

  “Tartov, your humanitarian impulses do you credit. No sarcasm intended. But things are too sticky to worry about two flatlanders in a honeymoon special. As for finding the amplifier, I don’t think we have to worry about that. Earth won’t find it before we do. They don’t know what we know about Pluto. We can post guard over the planet until the Belt sends us an automatic orbital guardian. Radar may show us the amplifier; in that case we drop a bomb on it, and the hell with the research possibilities. Have I overlooked anything?”

  A feminine voice said, “Send one missile with a camera. We don’t want to use up all our firepower at once.”

  “Good, Mabe. Have you got a camera missile?”

  “Yes.”

  “Use it.”

  The Iwo Jima had been a week out from Earth, and Kzanol/Greenberg had been daydreaming, as usual. For some reason he’d remembered his watch: the formal elbow watch with the cryogenic gears, now buried in the second suit. He’d have to make a new band.

  But what for? It always ran slow. He’d had to adjust it every time he came back from a visit…From a visit to another plantation. From a trip through space.

  But of course. Relativity had jinxed his watch. Why hadn’t he seen that before?

  Because he’d been a thrint?

  “Raise thirty,” said Kzanol. He had a five down to match his pair showing and it wasn’t that he thought Kzanol/Greenberg was bluffing, with his four-straight showing. He hadn’t noticed that the numbers were in sequence.

  Stupid. Thrintun were stupid. Kzanol couldn’t play poker even when drawing on the pilot’s knowledge. He hadn’t guessed that his ship must have hit Pluto. He didn’t need brains; he had the Power.

  Thrintun hadn’t needed intelligence since they’d found their first slave race. Before, the Power hadn’t mattered; there was nothing to use it on. With an unlimited supply of servants to do their thinking, was it any wonder they had degenerated?

  “Raise fifty,” said Kzanol/Greenburg. The thrint smiled.

  “I never thought the Arms was a grand idea,” said Luke. “I think they’re necessary. Absolutely necessary. I joined because I thought I could be useful.”

  “Luke, if flatlanders need thought police to keep them alive, they shouldn’t stay alive. You’re trying to hold back evolution.”

  “We are not thought police! What we police is technology. If someone builds something that has a good chance of wiping out civilization, then and only then do we suppress it. You’d be surprised how often it happens.”

  Smoky’s voice was ripe with scorn. “Would I? Why not suppress the fusion tube while you’re at it? No, don’t interrupt me, Luke, this is important. They don’t use fusion only in ships. Half Earth’s drinking water comes from seawater distilleries, and they all use fusion heat. Most of Earth’s electricity is fusion, and all of the Belt’s. There’s fusion flame in crematoriums and garbage disposal plants. Look at all the uranium you have to import, just to squirt into fusion tubes as primer! And there are hundreds of thousands of fusion ships, every last one of which—”

  “—turns i
nto a hydrogen bomb at the flip of a switch.”

  “Too right. So why doesn’t the Arms suppress fusion?”

  “First, because the Arms was formed too late. Fusion was already here. Second, because we need fusion. The fusion tube is human civilization, the way the electrical generator used to be. Thirdly, because we won’t interfere with anything that helps space travel. But I’m glad—”

  “You’re begging the…”

  “MY TURN, Smoky. I’m glad you brought up fusion, because that’s the whole point. The purpose of the Arms is to keep the balance wheel on civilization. Knock that balance wheel off kilter, and the first thing that would happen would be war. It always is. This time it’d be the last. Can you imagine a full-scale war, with that many hydrogen bombs just waiting to be used? Flip of a switch, I think you said.”

  “You said. Do you have to stamp on human ingenuity to keep the balance wheel straight? That’s a blistering condemnation of Earth, if true.”

  “Smoky, if it weren’t top secret I could show you a suppressed projector that can damp a fusion shield from ten miles away. Chick Watson got to be my boss by spotting an invention that would have forced us to make murder legal. There was—”

  “Don’t tell me about evidence you can’t produce.”

  “All right, dammit, what about this amplifier we’re all chasing? Suppose some bright boy came up with an amplifier for telepathic hypnosis? Would you suppress it?”

  “You produce it and I’ll answer.”

  Masney said, “Oh, for Christ’s sake, you two!”

  “Dead right,” Anderson’s voice answered. “Give us innocent bystanders an hour’s rest.”

  The man in the lead ship opened his eyes. Afterimages like pastel amoebae blocked his vision; but the screen was dark and flat. “All ships,” he said. “We can’t shoot yet. We’ll have to wait ’til they turn around.”

  Nobody questioned him. They had all watched through the camera in its nose as Mabe Doolin’s test missile approached the Golden Circle. They had watched the glare of the honeymooner’s drive become blinding, even with the camera picture turned all the way down. Then the screens had gone blank. The fusing hydrogen turned missiles to molten slag before they could get close.

  The honeymooner was safe for another day.

  Kzanol/Greenberg reached a decision. “Hold the fort,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

  Kzanol watched him get up and pull on his space suit. “What are you doing?”

  “Slowing down the opposition, if I’m lucky.” The near-ptavv went up the ladder into the airlock.

  Kzanol sighed, pocketed the one-man matchsticks of the ante, and shuffled for solitaire. He knew that the slave with the ptavv mind was making a tremendous fuss over nothing. Perhaps it had brooded too long on the hypothetical tnuctip revolt, until all slaves looked dangerous.

  Kzanol/Greenberg emerged on the dorsal surface of the hull. There were a number of good reasons for putting the airlock there, the best being that men could walk on the hull while the drive was on. He put his magnetic sandals on, because it would be a long fall if he slipped, and walked quickly aft to the tail. A switch buried in the vertical fin released a line of steps leading down the curve of the hull to the wing. He climbed down. The hydrogen light was terribly bright; even with his eyes covered he could feel the heat on his face. When he knelt on the trailing edge the wing shielded him from the light.

  He peered over the edge. If he leaned too far he would be blinded, but he had to go far enough to see…Yes, there they were. Five points of light, equally bright, all the same color. Kzanol/Greenberg dropped the nose of the disintegrator over the edge and pulled the trigger.

  If the disintegrator had had a maser type of beam, it could have done some real damage. But then, he could never have hit any of those tiny targets with such a narrow beam. Still, the cone spread too rapidly. Kzanol/Greenberg couldn’t see any effect. He hadn’t really expected to. He held the digger pointed as best he could the five clustered stars. Minutes ticked by.

  “What the hell…Lew! Are we in a dust cloud?”

  “No.” The man in the lead ship looked anxiously at frosted quartz of his windshield. “Not that our instruments can tell. This may be the weapon Garner told about. Does everyone have a messed-up windshield?”

  A chorus of affirmatives.

  “Huh! Okay. We don’t know how much power there is that machine, but it may have a limit. Here’s what do. First, we let the instruments carry us for a while. Second, we’re eventually going to break our windshields so we can see out, so we’ll be going the rest of the way in closed suits. But we can’t do that yet! Otherwise our faceplates will frost up. Third point.” He glared round for emphasis, though nobody saw him. “Nobody outside for any reason! For all we know, that gun can peel our suits right off our backs in ten seconds. Any other suggestions?”

  There were.

  “Call Garner and ask him for ideas.” Mabel Doolin in Number Two did that.

  “Withdraw our radar antennae for a few hours. Otherwise they’ll disappear.” They did. The ships flew on, blind.

  “We need something to tell us how far this gun has dug into our ships.” But nobody could think of anything better than “Go look later.”

  Every minute someone tested the barrage with a piece of quartz. The barrage stopped fifteen minutes after it had started. Two minutes later it started again, and Tartov, who was out inspecting the damage, scrambled into his ship with his faceplate opaqued along the right side.

  Kzanol looked up to see his “partner” climbing wearily down through the airlock. “Very good,” he said. “Has it occurred to you that we may need the disintegrator to dig up the spare suit?”

  “Yeah, it has. That’s why I didn’t use it any longer than I did.” In fact he’d quit because he was tired, but he knew Kzanol was right. Twenty-five minutes of a most continuous operation was a heavy drain on the battery. “I thought I could do them some damage. I don’t know whether I did or not.”

  “Will you relax? If they get too close I’ll take them and get us some extra ships and body servants.”

  “I’m sure of that. But they don’t have to get that close.”

  The gap between the Golden Circle and the Belt fleet closed slowly. They would reach Pluto at about the same time, eleven days after the honeymooner left Neptune.

  “There she goes,” said somebody.

  “Right,” said Lew. “Everyone ready to fire?”

  Nobody answered. The flame of the honeymooner’s drive stretched miles into space, a long, thin line of bluish white in a faint conical envelope. Slowly it began to contract.

  “Fire,” said Lew, and pushed a red button. It had a tiny protective hatch over it, now unlocked. With a key.

  Five missiles streaked away, dwindling match flames. The honeymooner’s fire had contracted to a point.

  Minutes passed. An hour. Two.

  The radio beeped. “Garner calling. You haven’t called. Hasn’t anything happened yet?”

  “No,” said Lew into the separate maser mike. “They should have hit by now.”

  Minutes dragging by. The white star of the honeymoon special burned serenely.

  “Then something’s wrong.” Garner’s voice had crossed the light-minutes between him and the fleet. “Maybe the disintegrator burned off the radar antennae on your missiles.”

  “Son of a bitch! Sure, that’s exactly what happened. Now what?”

  Minutes.

  “Our missiles are okay. If we can get close enough we can use them. But that gives them three days to find the amplifier. Can you think of a way to hold them off for three days?”

  “Yeah.” Lew was grim. “I’ve an idea they won’t be landing on Pluto.” He gnawed his lip, wondering if he could avoid giving Garner this information. Well, it wasn’t exactly top secret, and the Arm would probably find out anyway. “The Belt has made trips to Pluto, but we never tried to land there. Not after the first ship took a close-up spectroscopic reading…
”

  They played at a table just outside the pilot room door. Kzanol/Greenberg had insisted. He played with one ear cocked at the radio. Which was all right with Kzanol, since it affected the other’s playing.

  Garner’s voice came, scratchy and slightly distorted, after minutes of silence. “It sounds to me as if it all depends on where they land. We can’t control that. We’d better think of something else, just in case. What have you got besides missiles?”

  The radio buzzed gently with star static.

  “I wish we could hear both sides,” Kzanol growled. “Can you make any sense of that?”

  Kzanol/Greenberg shook his head. “We won’t, either. They must know we’re in Garner’s maser beam. But it sounds like they know something we don’t.”

  “Four.”

  “I’m taking two. Anyway, it’s nice to know they can’t shoot at us.”

  “Yes. Well done.” Kzanol spoke with absent-minded authority, using the conventional overspeak phrase to congratulate a slave who shows proper initiative. His eye was on his cards. He never saw the killing rage in his partner’s face. He never sensed the battle that raged across the table, as Kzanol/Greenberg’s intelligence fought his fury until it turned cold. Kzanol might have died that day, howling as the disintegrator stripped away suit and skin and muscle, without ever knowing why.

  Ten days, twenty-one hours since takeoff. The icy planet hung overhead, huge and dirty white, with the glaring highlight which had fooled early astronomers. From Earth, only that bright highlight is visible, actually evidence of Pluto’s flat, almost polished surface, making the planet look very small and very dense.

  “Pretty puny,” said Kzanol.

  “What did you expect of a moon?”

  “There was F-28. Too heavy even for whitefoods.”

  “True. Mmph. Look at that big circle. Looks like a tremendous meteor crater, doesn’t it?”

  “Where? Oh, I see it.” Kzanol listened. “That’s it! Radar’s got it cold. Powerloss,” he added, looking at the radar telescope through the pilot’s eyes, “you can almost see the shape of it. But we’ll have to wait for the next circuit before we can land.”