The Man-Kzin Wars 04

by Larry Niven

  Still in a rage induced by the defeat of the Fourth Fleet, he took his rage out in an aggressive attack on this problem which had been plaguing him. He thought about his mother. He was thinking about all the times she had saved his life.

  His experimental mistakes had confronted him with strange facts. He'd had to question his ideas about intelligence, to break that concept down into its many parts. Now he analyzed what his mother must have been aware of while she was actively protecting him and he came to the remarkable conclusion that his mother had to be intelligent.

  But that was impossible. He flashed on his cherished image of catching her chewing on one of his first books, chewing it to a pulp.

  The Fanged God had given souls to the first kzinretti but at the crucial Battle of Hungry Years they had betrayed both Him and their mates while the males stayed loyal to their God and so He had taken away the female souls and given their bodies over to kzintosh masters so that the race might continue to propagate itself. That was mythology, tales of events that had happened before science, before writing. What had happened? What had the kzinretti lost at the Battle of Hungry Years if it wasn't intelligence?

  Trainer-of-Slaves was sure that he loved his mother whatever she was. What she was remained locked behind silence; she seldom spoke and when she did speak she used only the elementary vocabulary of the Female Tongue, no more than a few octal-squared words. Was it a contradiction in terms to call an animal intelligent if she couldn't use language?

  CHAPTER 19

  (2414 - 2419 A.D.)

  "Why don't we go!" He stooped through the oval bulkhead door, trying to tromp out his anger. But in the light artificial gravity he had to hold on to the handrails to make the floor shake.

  His Jotoki scattered before his voice and busied themselves with what they thought would please him. Some went to their sleeping frameworks and hid.

  Trainer-of-Slaves was eager to launch toward Mansun to avenge the Fourth Fleet. He had expected action after a ten year wait and buildup. His liver demanded an explosion of Heroism raging out toward the enemy star. He was tired of waiting, waiting, waiting with nothing to claw but the claw-sharpening "bark" in his miserably small stateroom. He was restless. His blood told him to make something happen...

  But the implacable, immovable, unmoving Chuut-Riit thought differently. Waiting wasn't waiting, said his bulk, grinning at his foes. Waiting was planning. The size of the defeat had sobered him. May the Fanged God not lose patience with his inaction!

  Grraf-Hromfi conceded in one of his seminars that the Wunderland Admiralty was reassessing top strategy. Chuut-Riit had cynically expected the Fourth Fleet to fail because of its arrogant commanders, but he had also expected it to demoralize the monkey hive and drastically weaken human military capability. Now Chuut-Riit was opting for a few more years of preparation. He wanted Centaurian industry built up to the point where it could keep an interstellar supply line filled. And he needed that extra crop of warriors that more time would provide.

  In the meantime the Third Black Pride kept track of Sol through the distant transmissions of the First and Second Black Pride communication warships. Those scoutships of the Fifth Fleet had remained in place, well away from the battle zone undetected as of 4.3 years ago keeping their vigil out where Mansun was only the brightest star in the heavens.

  A steady flicker and hiss of messages came through to be filtered and cleaned and analyzed by the kzinti spoor specialists back in the Centaurian system. Fuzzy pictures of UNSN Gibraltar Base. Specks that looked like a fleet moving in the asteroid belt. Some new markings on Mercury. The trace of search beams scanning the skies. Non-military beamcasts giving the tone and morale of the monkey civilization. Better and better maps of the cities of Earth.

  Trainer-of-Slaves often flipped through the images. He gave only a glance to one of the earliest post-battle transmissions. It was a single crude picture of a vehicle being assembled in the asteroid belt. The scale markings indicated enormous size but its size was deceptive. Most of the structure seemed to be a flimsy magnetic funnel one of the monkey ramscoops of no military utility. To be noted and ignored. Perhaps it was to be an emissary to one of their local allies.

  Months later there was a second flurry of activity when more pictures of the ramscoop came through. Now it was equipped with massive disposable hydrogen tanks and was actually being launched toward Alpha Centauri! To what possible purpose? This time Trainer noticed the furor only because Grraf-Hromfi used the item as the inspiration for a seminar lecture on human technology.

  Trainer-of-Slaves was not to recall that seminar for another five years. Immediately when he left the briefing room other worries occupied his mind. He had a sick Jotok to tend and he was in the middle of a card game that he was losing to Long-Reach.

  In that five years the Fifth Fleet doubled in size. The effort caused great hardship among the vassals of Wonderland, more than Chuut-Riit thought prudent to impose. Such stress created an alarming increase in feral activity. But there was no help for it. Extraordinary war efforts always cause hardship, both among slave and Hero. Sacrifices had to be made for the Long Peace, always. Peace did not exist without war to impose it.

  Trainer-of-Slaves developed a lucrative sideline. It did not pay off in coin, but it paid off in favors. His Jotoki became experts at modifying warships and fighter craft to better than standard performance. This was not particularly difficult to do.

  "Kr-Captain, your Screener now gives us a perfect check-down. But I do know ways its performance could be improved." While unbinding the terrified zianya who was to be their dinner, Trainer paused to let his message sink in. It was against regulations to make non-standard changes. Waiting without comment, he watched Kr-Captain tear out his hunk of flesh to an anguished animal cry. Trainer was not going to mention the subject of irregular modifications again.

  "I'll take any edge," said Kr-Captain, blood on his Jaws.

  "Of course, any alteration can be re-standardized."

  "A laudable way to deal with fussy bureaucrats."

  "Useful too, in case non-standard parts are unavailable during an emergency."

  "When might such work be done?"

  To avoid equipment chaos, standardization had been rigidly imposed since the time of the first interstellar Patriarchs. All improvements, by decree, had to come out of Kzin-home. In a subluminal empire, sixty light-years in diameter, new standards diffused slowly.

  Brilliant innovations built to serve a need during the heat of some local war tended to die in the files. First the innovation had to reach Kzin-home. Then it had to be tested by a bureaucracy which considered itself to be the sole font of all change---and was understaffed. The ideas that lived often took ten or fifteen generations to become the new standard authorized by the High Admiralty, not because the Admiralty was particularly senile, but because the pace of light from star to star was pitiably slow.

  Still, many such battle-tried ideas could be found hibernating within the labyrinthine network of lairs inside the data-links. Finding them took maze-tracking skills, and battle-cunning to know what was wanted, and an engineering background to know what was possible. Having fanatically loyal Jotoki technicians also helped.

  The Flayer-of-Monkeys was a three-kzin fighterscout. They were well away from the Sherrek's Ear, testing the illegal modifications, when they got an emergency message. "Flayer. Flayer. Flayer. Record. Record. Record." Kr-Captain was at the leading point of the delta-shaped control chamber. He switched on his combat communications memory. Trainer-of-Slaves happened to be riding in the Sensor's harness, and Long-Reach was uncomfortably seated on his mouth in the Weapons-Operator chair, peering at his instruments. He was used to maintaining them, not reading them.

  Sherrek's Ear continued urgently. "Acknowledge and Execute. Time Lag too Long for Confirmation. Will Repeat Message. Ramscoop Coming Through. Intercept and Destroy. Flayer is only Warcraft in Combat Range. Repeat: Intercept and Destroy. Ramscoop Coming in Much Faster than Predicted.
"

  The excited kzin controller spat out a number. "We See Target: Three Octal-squared Light-days Out, Coming In. Real Position: Passing A-star; Perhaps Already Outbound. Possible Collision A-star. If So:

  Cancel Intercept. Now Read Coordinates for Flayer Intercept."

  They were given a position which placed Man-sun almost in occultation with Alpha Centauri A, on a circle surrounding A at a point thirty degrees north-east of a reference longitude through Kzin-sun. If they couldn't intercept within forty-seven hours, the ramscoop would escape.

  "...We Assume You Are Unarmed. Destroy-mode Your Choice. Message Will Now Repeat. Flayer. Flayer..."

  A startled Kr-Captain swung his outer antenna toward the Sherrek's Ear. "Flayer Ack. Will Intercept. Flayer Ack. Flayer Ack. Moving out." He switched off the comm they were too far away to carry on a conversation pulled down his goggles, and took a brief look at the heavens while he rolled Flayer-of-Monkeys in the direction of the line joining Man-sun and Alpha Centauri A, now separated by about seven degrees.

  "We've got to close up Man-sun and the A-star. That's shaving the hairs. Hope your juiced-up polarizer really will do octal-squared g's. What the sthondat is a ramscoop?"

  "Hey, two missiles!" said long-Reach's short(arm) after checking the weapons readout.

  "Camera missiles," snarled Kr-Captain, lolling his tongue. "For maneuvers."

  Trainer-of-Slaves was suddenly remembering Grraf-Hromfi's long forgotten seminar on ramscoops. "I know what a ramscoop is."

  "Good. Whatever it is, can we kill it? We're disarmed." They were already accelerating at sixty-three g's, yet it would be hours before they began to see Alpha Centauri creeping across the starfield. Kr-Captain turned to calculating orbits on his screen. They were going to have to cross the line-of-flight of the man-thing at ninety degrees. "We have just enough time to decelerate and stop on their line-of-flight. Should we stop or do a flying pass?"

  All of Grraf-Hromfi's lectures on tactics crowded into Trainer's thoughts. Think before you leap. "Stop if we can. We get one try. We don't want our fire crossing the line-of-flight at an angle not at those velocities."

  The old seminar room on the Sherrek's Ear was filling Trainer's imagination. The smell of frame-beryllium and old fur. The wet sniff of algae. But especially that room five years ago. Grraf-Hromfi was the same benevolent tyrant that he had always been, mane a bit scraggly. His halo mockup of the ramscoop floated to one side and he held his shamboo pointer tipped with slashtooth tusk that he liked to jab into his bolos and sometimes into the bellies of his less attentive listeners.

  "We do not know its intention," the ghost-memory was saying to Trainer. "It is probably coming to sniff spoor around our boundaries. It cannot have an attack capability."

  Trainer tried to reevaluate was that still true? And drew a blank.

  "It cannot defend itself."

  Yes, thought Trainer, its speed * its only defense, running like a fangless herbivore.

  "The most interesting fact that this mockup reveals about the United Nations Space Navy is that they have not as of four years ago, I repeat learned how to build an interstellar-grade gravity polarizer. Otherwise they would not be launching such a massive low-performance device. The magnetic funnel" he pointed "is used to collect interstellar hydrogen for the reaction drive. Can any of you tell me its major constraint?"

  There had been silence in the classroom. Today it was the silence of interception through soundless space.

  Trainer remembered himself prompting, mischievously, "Ask Long-Tooth. He knows."

  Long-Tooth-Son of Grraf-Hromfi jumped out of his reverie. "Honored patriarch, a ramscoop is too slow."

  "Its acceleration is too feeble," corrected the father. "And why is that?"

  Long-Tooth cast Trainer a venomous look for getting him into this dialog. "There's not much hydrogen for it to use."

  "How much?"

  "Sire! I don't know."

  "Trainer-of-Slaves?"

  "Please accept my surrender if I am wrong. Between here and Man-sun the density is about an octal-squared to four-octal-squared hydrogens per fistful of space."

  Grraf-Hromfi again passed the slashtooth tusk of his pointer through the fuzzy holographic ramscoop in front of him. The spout of its funnel was burdened by racks of spherical tanks. "They need these huge hydrogen tanks to prime their reaction engines since they can't collect much hydrogen at low speeds. The tanks will be dropped off once they are moving fast enough to devour more than starvation rations of the interstellar hydrogen."

  He was grinning at monkey folly. "They can't collect much at high speeds either in spite of the fact that the main funnel collector surface seems to be about as large as the Patriarch's private hunting estate. Their maximum speed is a quarter that of light if they use a ramjet design. With a more sophisticated flow-through design they are only limited by relativistic effects which are considerable. I doubt a top velocity beyond a half-lightspeed."

  ...and you were wrong... The Flayer was at the center of a sphere of stars, intercepting some manthing that was coming at them close to the velocity of light.

  "At really high speeds they would have to know how to burn proton cosmic rays an unpleasant diet." Grraf-Hromfi got an amused ripple of ears when he added that this might be to the taste of a herbivore.

  ... yes, and the monkeys have managed to thrive on that unpleasantly lethal die...

  "Those are engineering details and I presume they can be mastered. Ramscoops are a primitive solution and we've never used them, so we know little of the details. The major problem is not an engineering one it is a flaw in the concept. A fusion funnel cannot attain high accelerations, first because it is fuel starved, and second because reaction drives produce inertial acceleration. How do you build a gossamer funnel that can take even one gravity of inertial acceleration?"

  ...but at a fifth of a gravity, year after year...

  Grraf-Hromfi did not mention in his lecture that a fighting kzin warship could accelerate at sixty gravities with the pilot floating in his cockpit and thus reach its maximum cruising speed in about five days, because all of his officers knew that. "How long would it take this funny-funnel to attain six-eighths the velocity of light?"

  "Six months?" ventured a bored officer who leaped to conclusions before.

  "More like eight-ten years with most of that time spent at low velocity. When will it reach Alpha Centauri?"

  "About the time the Fifth Fleet has occupied Manhome," said Long-Tooth-Son with a grin for the poor beasts.

  ...but it is here and the Fifth Fleet hasn't even started yet...

  "That's a reasonable estimate. I'd like to remind you that these pictures are more than four years old."

  ...it took them only nine plus years to get here...

  "The monkey-funnel is already out of range of both the First and Second Black Pride. But even after all this time" the 4.3 years the Pride's message took to reach Alpha Centauri "the ramscoop will still be close to Man-sun and just beginning its journey. It is not something we'll ever have to worry about. We'll keep an automatic tracker looking for it that's our duty but I doubt if we'll ever sniff it again. The monkeys will decelerate and sulk around outside Alpha Centauri well out of our range."

  So even Grraf-Hromfi could be dead wrong.

  Trainer-of-Slaves did a calculation on the Sensor's data-link. The automatic tracker had detected the first trace of the ramscoop two-hundred light-days out yet years earlier than expected. Which meant that its maximum speed was far higher than kzin engineers had anticipated.

  Kr-Captain finished his trajectory plot and put the Flayer-of-Monkeys on automatic. Turnaround was in twenty-three hours. "Sherrek's Ear gave us orders to be creative." He meant that they were unarmed.

  "Best little mechanic in the galaxy sitting right beside me," said Trainer-of-Slaves.

  "So how are we going to kill this what-ever-it-is?"

  "We may not have to. Grraf-Hromfi proved that a monkey can't stay alive in a sh
ip moving at that speed cosmic sleeting."

  "Give old red-mane an ear," he purred sarcastically. "We don't have to fight because the enemy has already suicided! A nice philosophy until a monkey leaps out of the funeral pyre." He returned to a commander's inflected spits and growls. "We shall assume they have a gravity polarizer shield and are still alive."

  "A gravity shield is the same as a gravity drive. Then they wouldn't need a ramscoop."

  "What's a ramscoop?"

  "A magnetic funnel that collects interstellar hydrogen and ejects helium as reaction mass."

  "Is a monkey going to stand at a porthole and shoot arrows at us?" Kr-Captain flapped his batwing ears.

  "Maybe the magnetic field protects them," suggested Long-Reach, two arm-slits speaking in unison.

  "Slave! Shut up," growled Kr-Captain.

  "Does he play cards?" whispered the arm nearest the relaxed ears of Trainer-of-Slaves.

  "Don't eat your seat, Long-Reach. I'll need your brains in due time."

  Long-Reach hunkered down on his undermouth, petulantly. He was muttering along internal channels to himselves that he was Weapons-Operator. That started an argument among the arms about who was to take charge of the camera missiles.

  "The line-of-flight cuts right past the A-star," said Trainer. "They'll already be dead. The starwind is fierce at that distance. It will have hit them like your father's claw." Kr-Captain seemed unconvinced and so Trainer used an analogy from a virtual horror-adventure they had both lived together under shared eyecaps. "It's like a hurricane wind in your sails."

  Kr-Captain bared his fangs. He didn't like being reminded of that horror-story world covered with water, trying to survive in the company of five warstranded Heroes on board a fleeing sloop in typhoon weather. His liver was still recovering. "I will not repeat myself again! We shall assume that the monkeys are alive, you miserable fur-tick fleeing-the-skin-of-a-dying-sthondat! "