by Larry Niven
"Fight, you sexless female!" Telepath shrieked. A deeply obscene curse, and the observers did some of their own growling now. Telepath had done nothing to increase their esteem.
Fixer used the kzin's anger to his own advantage. The fight would have to end quickly he was tiring rapidly, far faster than his puny opponent. Fixer seemed to run to a curved wall, leaping and rebounding, crossing the chamber in a flash and bypassing Telepath without a blow. Telepath screamed with rage and tried to remove his gloves, but they were locked, and only the observers had the keys.
While Telepath was yowling fury and frustration, Fixer-Halloran delivered a bolt of suggestion that staggered the kzin, sending him to all fours with an apparent cuff to the jaw. The position was not as dangerous for a kzin they could run more quickly on fours than erect but Halloran-Kzin's image loomed over the stunned Telepath and kicked downward. The observers did not see the maneuver precisely, and Telepath was on the floor writhing in pain, his ear and the side of his head swelling with auto-suggestion injury.
Fixer offered his gloves to the observers and they were unlocked. He had not harmed Telepath, and had not received so much as a scratch himself. Fixer had acquitted himself; he still wore Kfraksha-Admiral's stink, but he was not the lowest of the kzinti on Sons Contend With Bloody Fangs.
"The humans obviously have a way of tracking our ships, yet they do not have the gravity polarizer..." Kfraksha-Admiral sat on his curved bench, legs raised, black-leather fingers clasped behind his thick neck, seeming quite casual and relaxed. "What is our weakness, that they spy on us and can aim their miserable adapted weapons upon us?"
Fixer's turmoil was not apparent. He knew the answer but of course he could not give it. He had to maneuver this conversation to determine if the commander was asking a rhetorical question, or testing him in some way.
"By our drives," he suggested.
"Yes, of course, but not by spectral signatures or flare temperatures, for in fact we do not use our fusion drives when we enter the system. And without polarizer technology, gravitational gradient warps cannot be detected ... short of system wide detectors, which these animals do not have, correct?"
Fixer rippled his fur in agreement.
"No. They detect not the effects of our drives, but the power sources themselves. It is obvious they have discovered magnetic monopoles. I have suspected as much for years, but now plans are taking shape..."
Fixer-Halloran was relieved, and horrified, at once. This was indeed how kzinti ships were tracked, in fact, it was a little slow of the enemy not to have thought of it before. The cultural scientists back on Ceres had been puzzled as well; the kzinti had a science and technology more advanced than the human, but they seemed curiously inept at pure research. Almost as if the knowledge had been pasted onto a prescientific culture...
Every Belter prospector had monopole detection equipment; mining the super-massive particles was a major source of income for individual Belters, and for huge Belt corporations. Known monopole storage centers and power stations were automatically compensated for in even the cheapest detector. In an emergency, a detector could be used to determine position in the Belt or anywhere else in the solar system by triangulation from those known sources. An unknown or kzinti monopole source set detectors off throughout the solar system. And the newly converted propulsion lasers could then be locked onto their target....
"This much is now obvious. It explains our losses. Do you concur?"
"This is a fact," Fixer said.
"And how do you know it is a fact?" Kfraksha-Admiral challenged.
"The lifeship from War Loot is not powered by monopoles. I survived. Animals would not distinguish monopole sources by the size of the vessel they would attack all sources."
Kfraksha-Admiral pressed his lips tight together and twitched whiskers with satisfaction. "Precisely so. We must have patience in our strategies, then. We cannot enter the system using our monopole-powered gravity polarizers. But there is the ghost star... if we enter the system without monopoles, and without approaching the gas-giant planets, where we might be expected... We can enter from an apparently empty region of space, unexpectedly, and destroy the animal populations of many worlds and asteroids. This plan's success is my sinecure. Many females, much territory glory. We are moving outward now to pass around the ghost star and gain momentum."
Fixer-Halloran again felt a chill. Truly, without the monopoles, the kzinti ships would be difficult to detect.
Fixer pressed his hands together before his chest, a sign of deep respect. Kfraksha-Admiral nodded in condescending fashion.
"You have proven valuable, in your own reluctant, rankless way," he acknowledged, staring at him with irises reduced to pinpoints in the wide golden eyes. "You have endured humiliation with surprising fortitude. Some, our more enlightened and patient warriors, might call it courage." The commander drew a rag soaked in some pale liquid from a bucket behind his bench. He threw it at Fixer, who caught it.
The rag had been soaked in diluted acetic acid vinegar. "You may remove my mark,"
Kfraksha-Admiral said. "Henceforth, you have the status of full officer, on my formal staff, and you will be in charge of interpreting the alien technologies we capture. Your combat with Telepath .. . has been reported to me. It was not strictly honorable, but your forbearance was remarkable. In part, this earns you a position."
Fixer now had status. He could not relax his vigilance, for he would no longer be under the commander's protection, but he could assume the armor of a true billet; separate quarters, specific duties, a place in the ritual of the kzinti flagship. Presumably the commander would not grant permission for many challenges, and as a direct subordinate he would count as one of the commander's faction, who would retaliate for any unprovoked attack.
The Sons Contend With Bloody Fangs had pulled its way out of the sun's gravity well at a prodigious four-tenths of the speed of light, faster than was safe within a planetary system, and was racing for the ghost star a hundred billion kilometers from the sun. Sol was now an anonymous point of light in the vastness of the Sagittarius arm of the galaxy; the outer limits of the solar system were almost as far behind.
The commander's plans for the whiplash trip around the ghost star were secret to all but a few. Fixer was still not even certain what the ghost star was it was not listed under that name in the libraries, and there was obviously a concept he was not connecting with. But it was fairly easy to calculate that to accomplish the orbital maneuvers the commander proposed, the ghost star would have to be of at least one-half solar mass. Nothing that size had ever been detected from Earth; it was therefore dark and absolutely cold. There would be no perturbed orbits to give it away; its distance was too great.
So for the time being, Fixer assumed they were approaching a rendezvous with either a dark, dead hulk of a star, or perhaps a black hole.
A hundred billion kilometers was still close to the solar neighborhood, as far as interstellar distances were concerned. That kzinti knew more about these regions than humans worried the sublimated Halloran. What other advantages would they gain?
The time had come for Halloran to examine what he had found. With his personality split in half, and locked into a kzin mentality, he might easily overlook something crucial to his mission.
In his quarters, with the door securely bolted, Halloran came to the surface. Seven days in the kzinti flagship had taken a terrible toll on him; in a small mirror, he saw himself almost cadaverous, his face deeply lined. Kzinti did not use water to groom themselves, and there were no taps in his private quarters the aliens were descended from a pack-hunting desert carnivore, and had efficient metabolisms so his skin and clothing would remain dirty. He took a medicinal towelette, used to treat minor scratches received during combats, and wiped as much of his face and hands clean as he could. The astringent solution in the towelette served to sharpen his wits. After so long in Fixer's charge, there seemed little brilliance and fire left in Halloran himself.
/> And Fixer is just not very bright, he thought sourly. Think, monkey, think!
He looked old.
"Bleep that," he murmured, and picked up the library pack. As Fixer, he had subliminally marked interesting passages in the kzinti records. Now he set out to learn what the ghost star was, and what he might expect in the next few hours, as they approached and parabolically orbited. A half-hour of inquiry, his eyes reddening under the strain of reading the kzinti script without Fixer's intercession, brought no substantial progress.
"Ghost," he muttered. "Specter. Spirit. Ancestors. A star known to ancestors? Not likely they would have come on into the solar system and destroyed or enslaved us centuries ago... what the tanj is a ghost star?"
He queried the library on all concepts incorporating the words ghost, specter, ancestor, and other synonyms in the Hero's Tongue. Another half-hour of concentrated and fruitless study, and he was ready to give up, when the projector displayed an entry. Specter Mass.
He cued the entry. A flagged warning came up; the symbol for shame-and-disgrace, a Patriarchal equivalent of Most Secret.
Fixer recoiled; Halloran had to intervene instantly to stop his hand before it halted the search. Curiosity was not a powerful drive for a kzin, and shame was a very effective deterrent.
A basic definition flashed up. "That mass created during the first instants of the universe, separated from kzinti space-time and detectable only by weak gravitational interaction. No light or other communication possible between the domain of specter mass and kzinti space-time. "
Halloran grinned for the first time in seven days.
Now he had it he could feel the solution coming. He cued more detail.
"Stellar masses of specter matter have been detected, but are rare. None has been found in living memory. These masses, in the specter domain, must be enormous, on the order of hundreds of masses of the sun" the star of Kzin, more massive and a little cooler than Sol 'for their gravitational influence is on the order of .6 [base 8] Kzin suns. The physics of the specter domain must differ widely from our own. Legends warn against searching for ghost stars, though details are lost or forbidden by the Patriarchy."
Not a black hole or a dark star, but a star in a counter-universe. Human physicists had discovered the possible existence of shadow mass in the late twentieth century Halloran remembered that much from his physics classes. The enormously powerful superstring theory of particles implied shadow mass pretty much as the kzinti entry described it. None had been detected . ..
Who would have thought the Earth was so near to a ghost star?
And now, Kfraksha-Admiral was recommending what the kzinti had heretofore forbidden close approach to a ghost star to gain a gravitational advantage. The kzinti ships would appear, to human monopole detectors, to be leaving the system retreating, although slowly. Then the fleet would decelerate and discard its monopoles, sending them on the same outward course, and swing around the ghost star, gaining speed from the star's angular momentum. No fusion drives would be used, so as not to alarm human sentries. Slowly, the fleet would swing back into the solar system, and within a kzinti year, attack the worlds of men. Undetected, unsuspected, the kzinti fleet could end the war then and there. The monopoles would be within retrieval distance.
And all it would require was a little kzinti patience, a rare virtue indeed.
Someone scratched softly at the ID plate on his hatch. Halloran did not assume the Fixer persona, but projected the Fixer image, before answering. The hatch opened a safe crack, and Halloran saw the baleful, rheumy eye of Telepath peering in.
"I have bested you already," the Fixer image growled. "You wish to challenge for a shameful rematch?" Not something Fixer need grant in any case, now that his status was established.
"I have a problem which I must soon bring to the attention of Kfraksha-Admiral," Telepath said, with the edge of a despicable whimper.
"Why come to me?"
"You are the problem. I hear sounds from you. I remember things from you. And I have dreams in which you appear, but not as you are now... sometimes I am you. I am the lowest, but I am important to this fleet, especially with the death of War Loot's Telepath. I am the last Telepath in the fleet. My health is important "
"Yes, yes! What do you want?"
"Have you been taking the telepath drug?"
"No."
"I can tell ... you speak truth, yet you hide something."
The kzin could not now deeply read Halloran without making an effort, but Halloran was "leaking." Just as he had never been able to quell his "intuition,' he could not stop this basic hemorrhage of mental contents. The ladies drug-weakened mind was there to receive, perhaps more vulnerable because the subconscious trickle of sensation and memory was alien to it.
"I hide nothing. Go away," the Fixer-image demanded harshly.
"Questions first. What is an 'Esterhazy'? What are these sounds I hear, and what is a 'Haydn'? Why do I feel emotions which have no names?"
The kzin's pronunciation was not precise, but it was close enough. "I do not know. Go away." Halloran began to close the door, but Telepath wailed and stuck his leathery digits into the crack. Halloran instinctively stopped the hatch to prevent damage. A kzin would not have...
"I cannot see Kfraksha-Admiral. I am the lowest... but I feel danger! We are approaching very great danger. My shields are weakening and my sensitivity increases even with lower doses of the drug . .. Do you know where we are going? I can feel this danger deep, in a place my addiction has only lightly touched ... Others feel it too. There is restlessness. I must report what I feel! Tell the commander "
Cringing, Halloran pressed the lever and the door continued to close. Telepath screamed and pulled out his digits in time to avoid losing more than a tip and one sheathed claw.
That did it. Halloran began to shake uncontrollably. Sobbing, he buried his face in his hands. Death seemed very immediate, and pain, and brutality. He had stepped into the lion's den. The lions were closing in, and he was weakening. He had never faced anything so horrible before. The kzinti were insane. They had no softer feelings, nothing but war and destruction and conquest...
And yet, within him there were fragments of Fixer-of-Weapons to tell him differently. There was courage, incredible strength, great vitality.
"Not enough," he whispered, removing his face from his hands. Not enough to redeem them, certainly, and not enough to make him feel any less revulsion. If he could, he would wipe all kzinti out of existence. If he could just expand his mind enough, reach out across time and space to the distant homeworld of kzin, touch them with a deadlines....
The main problem with a talent like Halloran's was hubris. Aspiring to god-like ascendancy over others, even kzinti. That way lay more certain madness.
A kzin wouldn’t think that way, Halloran knew. A kzin would scream and leap upon a tool of power like that. "Kzin have it easier," he muttered.
Time to marshal his resources. How long could he stay alive on the kzinti flagship?
If he assumed the Fixer persona, no more than three days. They would still be rounding the ghost star...
If he somehow managed to take control of the ship and could be Halloran all the time, he might last much longer. And to what end?
To bring the Sons Contend With Bloody Fangs back to human space? That would be useful, but not terribly important the kzinti would have discarded their gravity polarizers. Human engineers had already studied the hulk of War Loot, not substantially different from Sons Contend.
But he wanted to survive. On that Halloran and Fixer-Halloran were agreed. He could feel survival as a clean, metallic necessity, cutting him off from all other considerations. The Belter pilots and their initiation... Coming to an understanding of sorts with his father. Early's wish-list. What he knew about kzinti...
That could be transmitted back. He did not need to survive to deliver that. But such a transmission would take time, a debriefing of weeks would be invaluable.
Surviv
al
Simple life.
To win.
Thorough shit or not, Halloran valued his miserable life.
Perhaps I'm weak, like Telepath. Sympathetic. Particularly towards myself: But the summing up was clear and unavoidable. The best thing he could do would be to find some way to inactivate at least this ship, and perhaps the whole kzinti fleet. Grandiose scheme. At the very top of Early's wish-list. All else by the wayside.
And he could not do it by going on a rampage. He had to be smarter than the kzinti; he had to show how humans, with all their love of life and self-sympathy, could beat the self-confident, savage invaders.
No more being Fixer. Time to use Fixer as a front, and be a complete, fully aware Halloran.
Telepath whimpered in his sleep. There was no one near to hear him in this corridor; disgust could be as effective as status and fear in securing privacy.
Hands were lifting him. Huge hands, tearing him away from Mother's side. His own hands were tiny, so tiny as he clung with all four limbs to Mother's fur.
She was growling, screaming at the males with the Y-shaped poles who pinned her to the wicker mats, lashing out at them as they laughed and dodged. Hate and fury stank through the dark air of the hut.
"Maaaa!" he screamed. "Maaaa!"
The hands bore him up, crushed him against a muscular side that smelled of leather and metal and kzintosh, male kzin.
They will eat me, they will eat me! cried instinct. He lashed out with needle-sharp baby claws, and the booming voice above him laughed and swore, holding the wriggling bundle out at arm's length.
"This one has spirit," the Voice said.
"Puny," another replied dismissively. "/ will not rear it. Send it to the crèche."
They carried him out into the bright sunlight, and he blinked against the pain of it. Fangs loomed above him, and he hissed and spat; a hand pushed meat into his mouth. It was good, warm and bloody; he tore loose chunks and bolted them, ears still folded down. From the other enclosures came the growls and screams of females frightened by the scent of loss, and behind him his mother gave one howl of grief after another.