by Larry Niven
Perhaps even beyond.
And — perhaps — the Outsiders kept Diplomat's people in zoos, as well. It was impossible to know.
A low tone filled the chamber with music. Diplomat fluted an acknowledgment.
"The re-creation of the Bruno-human has begun," sang the Outsider puppeteer translation program. "We have learned much about the physiology of this variant species.”
The little puppeteer shook his right head up and down twice — the gesture the humans called 'nodding'. It was an agreement or acceptance signal between them, one he knew he should learn.
"They have agreed to aid us?" persisted the synthesized voice.
"Of course," Diplomat sang in reply. "The one named Carol had no choice." "Why? Her coding partner — " "... mate... " Diplomat whistled in correction. "... mate, then, was enough of a impetus?" "Indeed. Also, the promise of help for her species." The Outsider voice sounded a bit confused. "We would have done that in any event. The hominids are special interests of ours, and this species has even more generality than the other variant forms under study." "They do not know that," Diplomat reminded his host.
Still, it was good that the Dissonants had decided to aid the humans. The Outsiders said nothing for a time. Diplomat knew from his dealings with the coldlife traders that they would speak when ready, and not before.
"We were not," stated the Outsider program, "responsible for these Pak variants, despite our intense interest in them. They are escaped ferals. There is no violation of Treaty of Pact." "I gathered as much." Were the Outsiders just as driven by self-justification as a puppeteer? Even with circulator fluid a few degrees above Absolute Zero? Diplomat's neck flipped up and looked at one another in a chuckle.
The synthesized voice became stern. "A new Pact must be drawn, at the Oracle." Diplomat ran a forked tongue over lips. The Outsiders needed to travel to a great cosmic string, and the colony of Radiants that kept watch over it. There, they would plead the case for another treaty between Zealot and Dissonant. "Have I — and the humans — not agreed to help?" Diplomat was not surprised at the humans' offer; they were grateful. The Outsiders were to provide a new balance of power against the kzin, by providing human space — seemingly by accident — with access to primitive hyperdrive capacity. Which would not incidentally halt the humans from using large-scale reaction drives in deep space. That would please the uncommitted Outsider factions.
"They will be useful to our common goals, then?" Diplomat nodded again. "They are marvelously complex, and well worth preserving from the kzin and the Zealots." He thought a moment, then offered the highest praise he could. "I grow less frightened of them with each watch." Though he always kept force-shields ready, of course. "It is good," responded the idealized puppeteer voice. "You have a duty to perform, as do the humans.
Will you guide them?" "Of course." Diplomat tried to laugh in the human fashion. The choking gurgles he emitted did not sound humorous, but like an animal in pain. Were all human utterances devoid of a sense of tone and pitch?
He considered duty. Was it so very different for Outsider and puppeteer, kzinti and human? His left mouth snaked into the ornately carved box on the low platform. He picked up the Sigil of the Hindmost. Guardian had left it for him before she died fighting the Zealots.
"Perhaps this thing called duty is common to all thinking beings," Diplomat hummed meditatively.
"One is a portion of the All, you have tried to tell me before. Does not one reflect the other?" asked the Outsider translator program.
"Perhaps," Diplomat replied, and hung the medallion around his own left neck. It felt warm there.
He had caught threads of thought from the Outsiders, slippery contemplations that were truly unsettling. To them, kzin and primates and the Herd were all the same, finally — warmlife. To Outsiders, the true basis of all things was, well, objects — dusty plasmas and topological fractures of space-time, names like Radiants and Those Who Pass. Those were more important than the fleeting forms of sun-baked creatures.
He shivered. Duty. Perhaps such an idea could bind the many factions of warmlife together. He suspected that they would need it, for what lay ahead. Strangeness awaited. Forces that, worse than merely killing, could make a being irrelevant, meaningless.
Duty. He began reviewing data for the jump they would soon make. Across the yawning geometries of hyperspace, to the ancient menace called the Oracle.
PRISONER OF WAR
Paul Chafe, 1995
The kzin ship dropped out of hyperdrive and drifted. Jupiter's bulk stood between Earth and the telltale spoor of her re-emergence. Course and speed had been carefully calculated to swing through the Solar system with no maneuvering. All nonessential systems had been shut down. Her crew hoped that any casual observer would take them for a chunk of fast-moving cometary debris.
It was already too late for that.
A couple of hours later a civilian observation station in the Belt picked up an anomalous radiation burst. It corresponded to a hyperspace emergence but it was outside the arrival zones designated for human ships. Powerful scanners swept the space around Jupiter. More hours passed before their echoes highlighted perhaps a thousand likely objects. Only two had been in the emergence zone, only one had a course that would fly past Earth. The analysts took their time verifying the contact. It didn't matter: war in space is slow.
Forty hours after the kzin's arrival the destroyer Excalibur abandoned her Belt patrol and changed course. Her new orbit swept past Earth in a slow, looping curve. Then she too shut down her systems and drifted. When the kzinti caught up they would be well past the orbit of Mars, too far inside Sol's gravity well to use their hyperdrive.
Commander Mace was not happy about her orders' They were to intercept a 'single kzinti ship, presumed scout'. When UNSN Command 'presumed' something it meant they were guessing. As a line officer Elizabeth Mace had little respect for the speculations of staffers whose necks weren't on the line with hers. The intruder could be an unkzinned launch platform crammed with conversion bombs or it could be a battlecruiser. It might even be a scoutship after all. UNSN Command didn't know, and it wanted Excalibur to find out for them. All she could do was plot her intercept deep enough into the singularity to prevent the kzin from jumping out when she sprang her trap, but not so deep that Excalibur couldn't back away from a losing battle. Humans and kzinti were not again at war, yet, but the peace was continually interrupted by what the flatlander holocasters called 'minor skirmishes'. Minor to them perhaps, but the loss of a warship involved one hundred percent fatalities ninety nine percent of the time, regardless of the size of the battle. Elizabeth didn't want to lose Excalibur to some analyst's error. She sighed and tried to put the worry out of her mind. It would be another two months before she would have her answer.
Aboard the scoutship Silent Prowler Chraz-Captain extended and retracted his claws. The cramped conditions and deadening watch-on/watch-off routine were barely tolerable at the best of times. With life-support systems running at minimum and an extra body consuming precious space and atmosphere his nerves were stretched to the extreme. That the extra body was a senior officer did nothing to improve the situation. Now that they were at the most delicate and dangerous point of their mission his passive sensors were picking up a ship on a nearly intercepting course. It too was drifting, power off. Worse yet its flight path would put it behind him in another two hours, cutting off his retreat. It could be a derelict, but that was asking too much of coincidence. It was even less likely to be another kzin reconnaissance ship. The vegetable chewers had detected them and laid a subtle trap.
He vented his pent-up frustration in a scream, slammed his fist down on the alarm button and shouted into the intercom, "Battle stations! Chief Engineer, come to full power." Simultaneously he grabbed his battle armor and began to put it on. It took him less than thirty seconds to don the cumbersome gear and pressurize it. Before he was finished Advanced Sensor Operator and Sraowl-Navigator had bounded into the control
room and started scrambling into their own suits. Already the missile status indicators were glowing red, indicating Senior Gunner was at his post. No more than forty-five seconds elapsed before Sraowl-Navigator reported, "Battle stations established, sir, power and drive coming on line, sensors and weapons systems ready.”
Chraz-Captain growled in approval, his hands busy entering targeting and course commands. His crew were second to none. Their performance could not fail to impress the senior officer. After weeks of tense boredom it was almost a relief to see combat. He keyed the intercom again. "The monkeys have set a snare for us. We will show them what it means to catch a kzin!”
"They're powering up," warned the ensign at the sensor console. Commander Mace had no need to sound the alarm. Her crew had been waiting on full alert standby for six hours now. Knowing their target's course and speed, Excalibur had found the enemy three days previously through their optical telescope. To her infinite relief it had turned out be a scoutship after all, Prowler class, reconnaissance variant. Now its image floated serenely on the bridge display screen, its absorptive hull coating only slightly lighter than the ultimate black surrounding it. A stylized twin glowed red on her combat console. Excalibur had gone to battle stations long before her wide-angle sensors had given the slightest hint of the icon's presence. It was a safe bet that the scoutship would have instruments as good or better than theirs, but Excalibur had the advantage of knowing their target's courseline.
She smiled a little at that thought. Detection technology had become amazingly sophisticated, but since the time of sail nothing beat a trained eye and a telescope — you just had to know where to look. She had an antique brass naval telescope hanging on the wall of her cabin and beside it an iron sextant. Thus she maintained her link with the generations of mariners who had sailed Earth's oceans. She also wore a skull-and-crossbones earring in defiance of UNSN regulation.) Elizabeth Mace was a Belter, and Belters were prone to identify with outlaws in general and pirates in particular.
She pushed the comm button. "All hands look sharp, we've been spotted. All systems on." She switched the comset to external. It was already set to the Terran emergency band; presumably the scoutship would be monitoring it. She'd spent some time in the last two months improving her command of the Hero's Tongue. One short speech had occupied much of her studies. "Kzin scoutship, this is the UNSN destroyer Excalibur. Surrender or be fired on.”
In reply the image on the display flashed several times. "Missile launch, radar lock," called the sensor ensign. Simultaneously a cluster of flashing icons appeared beside the enemy's symbol on her combat console. That was a bit of a surprise. The Prowler class mounted no beam weapons, but at this range it would take minutes for the missiles to reach Excalibur, more than enough time to shoot them down. Typical tabby behavior: attacking seemed to be more important than winning to them. Mace keyed the intercom again. "A and B turrets, hit the kzin. C turret, take the missiles." She felt relaxed and confident. They easily outgunned the scoutship and while it could outrun them it couldn't outrun a laser beam. She had them right where she wanted them.
Suddenly the viewscreen flared white. "Missile detonated," called the sensor ensign. Her combat display showed an expanding sphere of orange haze, marking the area where the warhead's energetic plasma degraded Excalibur's instruments. She waited for it to dissipate as it grew but it didn't. Mace's calm evaporated. The kzin hadn't intended to hit them, he was covering himself. Another warhead went off. The red icon and its gentle orbit curve disappeared from the display, replaced by a rapidly expanding course funnel. The scoutship could be anywhere inside it. Mace swore and swung the navigation cursor around until it intersected the outsystem side of the funnel. The enemy captain would be trying use his superior acceleration to get out of Excalibur's range and Sol's gravity well at the same time. She punched execute and felt the ship surge beneath her as the gravity compensator adjusted to the new load, The viewscreen flared again and she flipped it off. On her display Excalibur's icon began to slide towards the interception point, slowly at first, then faster and faster. A second volley of missiles detonated, filling the screen with more blobs of orange blankness.
Suddenly a new icon appeared, very close, flashing red. Even before the sensor ensign called 'Missile lock-on', she had stabbed the comm button. "All turrets — " Before she could finish, a green line flashed on her display, linking Excalibur and the missile. It flashed again and the icon disappeared.
"Good shooting, C turret," she finished. That one was too close for comfort. She cursed herself for not expecting the tactic and hoped the tabbies didn't have any more surprises like that up their sleeves.
Minutes later they had reached the expected intercept point but had yet to locate the kzin. Large areas of the screen were now covered in orange haze, but from their position they had a clear view of the portion of the kzin's course funnel that would give most promise of a viable escape route. There was nothing there.
Hypothesis: The kzin had much more powerful drives than the assumptions punched into the combat computer. If so they were already beyond Excalibur's range and beyond capture. It might be true but since it left no options, assume not.
Hypothesis: The kzin had accelerated deeper into Sols gravitational well. They might have escaped for the moment, but their mission was doomed. If Excalibur didn't find them the massive Earth-orbiting sensor arrays would be brought into play. Dozens of warships would be available for the hunt. That far into the singularity there would be no need for them to sneak up on their quarry. Perhaps the tabby had taken the risk, but if he had then Mace didn't need to worry about it.
Hypothesis: The kzin had reversed course when the warheads went off, his drive emissions covered by their blast. He'd simply followed his own missiles, overtaken the fog of charged particles, matched velocities and shut down again He'd just drift back out the way Excalibur had come in. By the time the haze dissipated enough to allow Mace's sensors to work reliably the volume the kzin could occupy would be immense. Before they could search that space he would be far enough out to use his hyperdrive.
Mace stabbed an orange sphere with her finger. That had to be it. With no power emissions to track and no precomputed course to search with the telescope Excalibur would be forced to use active scanning to search out her quarry. That might work but it would also give away their position. At the short detection ranges possible in the particle haze they'd probably earn a beamrider missile in the tracking array for their trouble. Earth's facilities were no use. They were powerful enough to find the kzin through the fog but Earth was over a light-hour away and hyperwave didn't work inside the singularity. It would take an hour to ask for help, two more for Earth to bounce a beam off the scout and another for them to tell her what they'd found. By then the kzin would be long, long gone.
Mace mentally doffed her hat to the enemy captain He'd led her straight down the garden path to her present predicament. First he'd made her think he was attacking then that he was fleeing and while she was preoccupied chasing shadows he'd just tiptoed out the back door. She'd like to meet that cat — not that it was very likely under the circumstances. Of course she'd try her best.
With sudden decision she keyed the intercom. "Weapons officer to the bridge.”
A few moments later he stepped through the bulkhead Lieutenant Curzon was tall and lanky, with a face that managed to be simultaneously roguish and boyish. His movements were sure and self-confident. He had a reputation as a lady-killer, and Mace could see why. Of course any sort of personal involvement was out of the question. Not that the idea was unpleasant, but its effect on shipboard morale would be disastrous. Elizabeth was no prude, but she was Excalibur's commanding officer first and last.
Quickly she outlined the situation and her conclusions, illustrated by the combat display. "We can't track him in that soup passively, and our active scanners will be so degraded that by the time we get a lock well be well inside his missile range. The only way we'll find him is if he emit
s something, and he's not going to do that until he's ready to jump out.”
"So our job is to make him give himself away, without giving ourselves away in the process." Whatever Curzon's reputation, he was the soul of professionalism when it came to the job at hand.
"Exactly. What I want to do is launch a spread of missiles, on these courses." She touched a key and a fan of lines spread out from Excalibur's icon, skewering the orange cloud. "I don't want them to switch to active scanning until they enter the cloud, and I want them to go to target-track mode halfway through, whether they've acquired anything or not.”
"And make them think we've got a lock on them when we don't." Curzon was smiling, the rogue showing through.
Mace smiled back. "How long?" she asked.
Curzon was already on his way out. "Ten minutes," he said. "Ten minutes or you can have my next leave." He was running when he left the control room, leaving her wondering if the ambiguity in his words was deliberate or not.
In fact it was only eight minutes before the ready lights on the launch board flicked back to Armed. Excalibur had reversed course and was coasting towards Mace's best guess at the kzin's position. The viewscreen was back on but showed only stars, their hard brilliance undiminished by the particle storm. Despite the havoc it was playing with their sensors it was little more than hard vacuum in the visible spectrum. She keyed the intercom. "All turrets stand by, missile bay sequence launch as planned." A faint tremor came through the floor and a blue icon appeared on her display. Mace held her breath and watched intently. Even if the kzin didn't fall for the ploy there was the chance that Excalibur would pick up an echo from one of the missiles. Another tremor and another icon appeared, following a different track. There was nothing to do but wait.
"Missile detected!" Sensor Operator's voice cut through the silent control room like a knife. "No lock yet." A wiggling line on his display showed the telltale signature of the missile's search beam.