by Larry Niven
"Nessus, your whole species is crazy. How did they keep a secret like that? Everyone thinks they're halfway to Andromeda."
"Naturally. Who would stumble across the fleet in interstellar space? Between systems every known species travels in hyperspace - except the Outsiders, with whom we have agreements. In any case, my people are within reach. A scout will arrive within sixty days. The scouts are fitted with hyperdrive."
"Then you're safe if you stay hidden." Damn! thought Jason. He was all alone. It was a proud and lonely thing to be a costume hero. "Well, good luck Nessus. I've got to-"
"Do not sign off. What is your plan?"
"I don't have one. I've got to see the Kzinti don't get this back, but I've also got to get Anne-Marie away from them."
"The weapon should come first."
"My wife comes first. What's your stake in this, anyway?"
"With the principles behind the tnuctip weapon the Kzinti could command known space. My people will be in known space for another twenty-eight human years. Should the Kzinti learn of our fleet, it would be an obvious and vulnerable target."
"Oh."
"We must help each other. How long can you live in your suit?"
"Till I starve to death. I'll have air and water indefinitely. Say thirty days, upper limit."
"Your people should not cut costs on vital equipment, Jason. My people cannot arrive in time to save you."
"If I gave you the weapon, could you stay hidden?"
"Yes. If the ship came in sight, I could shoot it down with the laser setting. I think I could. I could force myself - Jason, will the Kzinti call other ships?"
"Damn! Of course they will. They'd find you easily. What'll we do?"
"Can we force entrance to the Court Jester?"
"Yah, but they took my keys. We couldn't use the drives or the radio or get into the lockers."
"The laser would let us into the lockers."
"Right."
"Have you weapons aboard?"
"No. Nothing."
"Then the Court Jester would be no more than a place from which to surrender. I have no suggestions."
"Chuft-Captain, the eighth setting must be the way the artifact is recharged. It does not itself seem to be a weapon."
"It can be used as one. As we have seen. Don't bother me now, Slaverstudent." Chuft-Captain strove to keep his tone mild. He knew that his rage was the companion of his pain, and Slaverstudent knew it too.
Neither had referred to the fact that Chuft~Captain now walked crouched to the side. Neither would. The Kzinti captain could not even bandage himself; though when they reached space, he could use the ship's medical equipment to set the bones.
The worst damage had been done to Chuft-Captain's ego.
Had the puppeteer known what he was doing? His small clawed foot had shattered more than a couple of ribs. One day Chuft-Captain might have been Chuft, the hero, who found the weapon that beat the human empire to its belly. Now he would be Chuft who was kicked by a puppeteer.
"Chuft-Captain, here comes Flyer."
"Good. Flyer! Get your tail in here and lift us fast."
Flyer went past at a quick shuffling run. Slaverstudent shut the airlock after him, helped Chuft-Captain strap down, and was strapping himself in when Flyer did his trick. The ship rose out of the ice, dripping opalescent chunks and shining blue-white at the stern.
On the smoky arch of Beta Lyrae the bright point had reached its zenith. Behind their permanent veil the two stars had pulled apart in their orbits, so that the vague brightness shaded into an orange tinge on one side and a green on the other.
"One thing we do have," said Jason, "and that's the weapon itself."
"True. We have a laser, a flame-throwing rocket, and a shield against police stunners. But not simultaneously."
"I think we may have overlooked a setting."
"Wishful thinking, Jason, is not a puppeteer trait."
"Neither is knowledge of weapons. Nessus, what kind of weapon is this? I'm talking about the whole bundle, not any. single setting."
"As you say, I am not an expert on warfare."
"I don't think it's a soldier's weapon. I think it's for espionage."
"Would that be different? I gather the question is important."
Jason stopped to gather his thoughts. He held the gun cradled in his hands. It was still at the eighth setting, the peculiar, twisted shape that Nessus had compared to a diagram from differential topology.
He held history in his hands, history a billion and a half years dead. Once upon a time a small, compactly built biped had aimed this weapon at beings with ball-shaped heads, big single eyes, massive Mickey Mouse hands, great splayed feet, and lightly armored skin and clusters of naked-pink tendrils at the corners of wide mouths. What could he have been thinking the last time he stored away this weapon? Did he guess that fifteen million centuries later a mind would be trying to guess his nature from his abandoned possessions?
"Nessus, would you say this gadget is more expensive to produce than eight different gadgets to do similar jobs?"
"Assuredly, and more difficult. But it would be easier to carry than eight discrete gadgets."
"And easier to hide. Have you ever heard of Slaver records describing a shape-changing weapon?"
"No. The tnuctipun would understandably have kept it a secret."
"That's my point. How long could they keep it secret if millions of soldiers had models?"
"Not long. The same objections hold for its use in espionage. Jason, what kind of espionage could a tnuctip do? Certainly it could not imitate a Slaver."
"No, but it could hide out on a sparsely settled world, or it could pretend to be a tnuctip slave. It'd have to have some defense against the Slaver power."
"The cap in the stasis box?"
"Or something else, something it was wearing when the Slavers caught it."
"These are unpleasant ideas. Jason, I have remembered something. The Outsiders found the stasis box in a cold, airless world with ancient pressurized buildings still standing. If a battle had been fought there, would the buildings have been standing?"
"Slaver buildings?"
"Yes."
"They'd have been standing if the Slavers won. But then the Slavers would have captured at least one of the weapons."
"Only if there were many such weapons. I concede your point. The owner of the weapon was a lone spy."
"Good. Now-"
"Why were you so sure?"
"Mainly the variety of settings. The average soldier would get stomped on while he was trying to decide which weapon to use. Then there's a sonic for taking live prisoners. Maybe other settings make them feel fear or pain. The rocket would be silly for a soldier; he'd get killed flying around a battlefield. But a spy could use it for the last stage of his landing."
"All right. Why is it important?"
"Because there ought to be a self-destruct setting somewhere."
"What did-? Ah. To keep the secret of the mutable weapon. But we have used all the settings."
"I thought it would be number eight. It wasn't. That's why we're still alive. An espionage agent's self-destruct button would be made to do as much damage as possible."
Nessus gasped. Jason hardly noticed. "They've hidden it somehow," he said.
The Traitor's Claw was big. She had to be. Redundantly, she carried both a gravity polarizer and a fusionreaction motor. Probably she could have caught anything in real space, barring ships of her own class, many of which were serving as police and courier ships in Kzinti space. Kzinti records listed her as a stolen courier ship. She was a squat cone, designed as a compromise between landing ability and speed in an atmosphere. In contrast, the flat Court Jester had been designed for landing ability alone; she would not have tipped over on a seventy-degree slope.
There was more than speed to the courier ship's two drives. Before it had ever seen a gravity polarizer, the human empire had taught the Kzinti a lesson they would never forget. The more e
fficient a reaction drive, the more effective a weapon it makes. A gravity polarizer was not a reaction drive.
Flyer used both drives at once. The ship went up fast. Six thousand miles up, the Traitor's Claw went into orbit.
"We can find the prisoners with infrared," said ChuftCaptain. "But it will do us little good if they shoot us down. Can the laser setting prevent us from going after them?"
"We can call for more ships," Flyer suggested. "Surely the weapon is important enough."
"It is. But we will not call."
Flyer nodded submission.
Knowing what Flyer knew, Chuft-Captain snarled inside himself with humiliation and the digging agony in his side. He had been kicked by a puppeteer in full view of two subordinates. Never again could he face a Kzin of equal rank, never until he had killed the puppeteer with his own teeth and claws.
Could that kick have been cold-bloodedly tactical? Chuft-Captain refused to believe it. But, intended or not, that kick had stymied Chuft-Captain. He could not call for reinforcements until the puppeteer was dead.
He forced his mind back to the weapon. The only setting that could harm the Kzinti was the laser ... unless the rosy sphere unexpectedly began working. But that was unlikely. He asked, "Is there a completely safe way to capture them? If not-"
"There is the drive," said Slaverstudent.
"They have the laser," Flyer reminded him. "A laser that size is subject to a certain amount of spreading. We should be safe two hundred miles up. Closer than that and a good marksman could burn through the hull."
"Flyer, is two hundred miles too high?"
"Chuft-Captain, they are wearing heatproof suits, and we can hover only at one-seventh Kzin-gravity. Our flame would barely warm the ice."
"But there is the gravity polarizer to pull us down while the fusion flame pushes us up. The ship was designed for just that tactic. Now, the fugitives' suits are heatproof, but the ice is not. Suppose we hovered over them with a fiveKzin-gravity flame . . ."
Jason held a five-inch rosy sphere with a pistol-grip handle. "It has to be here somewhere," he said.
"Try doing things you ordinarily wouldn't: moving the gauge while holding the trigger down ... moving the guide sideways . . . twisting the sphere."
Silence on the private circuit. Then, "No luck yet."
"The fourth setting was the only one that showed no purpose at all."
"Yah. What in-"
High overhead a star had come into being. It was blue-white, almost violet-white, and for Jason it stood precisely at the zenith.
"The Kzinti," said Nessus. "Do not shoot back. They must be out of range of your laser setting. You would only help them find you."
"They've probably found me already with infrared scopes. What the Finagle do they think they're doing?"
The star remained steady. In its sudden light Jason went to work on the weapon. He ran quickly through the remaining settings, memorizing the forms that used the trigger as an on-off switch, probing and prodding almost at random, until he reached neutral and the relic was a silver sphere with a handle.
The guide would not go sideways. It would not remain between any two of the notches. It would not twist.
"Are you making progress?"
"Nothing, dammit."
"The destruct setting would not be too carefully hidden. If a weapon were captured, an agent could always hope the Slavers would destroy it by accident."
"Yah." Jason was tired of looking at the neutral setting. He changed to laser and fired up at the new star, using the telescopic sight. He expected and got no result, but he held his aim until distracted by a sudden change in pressure around his suit.
He was up to his shoulders in water.
In one surge he was out of his hole. But the land around him was gone. A few swells of wet ice rose glistening from a shallow sea that reached to all the horizon. The Kzinti ship's downblast had melted everything for miles around.
"Nessus, is there water around you?"
"Only in the solid form. From my viewpoint the Kzinti ship is not overhead."
"They've got me. As soon as they turn off the drive, I'll be frozen in my tracks."
"I have been thinking. Do you need the destruct setting? Suppose you change to the rocket setting, turn the weapon nose down, and fire. The flame will remain on, and the weapon will eat its way through the ice,"
"Sure, if we could think of a way to keep it pointed down. Odds are it'd turn over in the first few feet. Then the Kzinti find it with deep-radar or seismics and dig it out."
"True."
The water was getting deeper. Jason thought about using the rocket to burn his way loose once the water froze about his ankles. It would be too hot. He would probably burn his feet off. But he might have to try it.
The blue Kzinti star hung bright and clear against the arch of dust and hydrogen. A bright pink glow-showed the Lyrae stars forty-five degrees from sunset.
"Jason. Why is there a neutral setting?"
"Why not?"
"It is not for collecting energy. The eighth setting does that very nicely. It is not for doing nothing. The projectile setting does that, unless you put projectiles in it. Thus the neutral setting has no purpose. Perhaps it does something we do not know about."
"I'll try it."
The bright star above him winked out.
"Chuft-Captain, I cannot locate the puppeteer."
"Its pressure suit may be too efficient to lose heat. We will institute a sight search later. Inform me when the human stops moving."
Nessus' idea would be a good one, Jason thought, if only he could make it workable. Much better than the destruct setting. Because if the destruct setting existed, it would almost certainly kill him.
Probably it would kill Nessus too. The destruct setting on an espionage agent's weapon would be made to do as much damage as possible. And there had been total conversion involved in the rocket setting. Total conversion would make quite a bomb, even if it weighed only four pounds, and the converted mass a fraction of a milligram.
The Kzinti-produced swamp was congealing from the bottom up. His boots were getting heavy. Each had collected a growing mass of ice. He kept walking so that they wouldn't freeze to the bottom.
He'd searched the neutral setting, handle and sphere, for hidden controls. Nothing showed - nothing obvious. He tried twisting various parts of the handle. Nothing broke, which was good, but nothing would twist either.
Maybe something should break. Suppose he broke off the gauge?
He wasn't strong enough.
He tried twisting the ball itself. Nothing.
He tried it again, holding the trigger down.
The silvery sphere twisted one hundred and eighty degrees, then clicked. Jason released the trigger, and it started to change.
"I've found it, Nessus. I've found something."
"A new setting? What does it look like?"
Like a white flash, thought Jason, waiting for the single instant in which it would look like a white flash. It didn't come. The protean material solidified.
"Like a cone with a rounded base, pointing away from the handle."
"Try it. And if you are successful, good-bye, Jason. Knowing you was pleasant."
"The blast could include you, too."
"Is it thus you assuage my loss of you?"
"You sure you don't have a sense of humor? Good-bye, Nessus. Here goes."
The cone did not explode. A time bomb? Jason was about to start looking for a chronometer on the thing when he noticed something that froze him instantly.
A hazy blue line led away in the direction he happened to be pointing the cone. Led away and upward at forty degrees, wavering, as tremor in his fingers waved the cone's vertex.
Another weapon.
He released the trigger. The line disappeared.
The Kzinti ship wasn't in sight. Not that he would have used it as a target, not with Anne-Marie aboard.
A hidden weapon. More powerful than the others
? He had to find out. Like Chuft-Captain, he tried to assume marksman's stance.
His feet were frozen solidly into the ice. He'd been careless. He shrugged angrily, aimed the weapon a little above the horizon, and fired.
A hazy blue line formed. He slowly lowered the vertex until the line touched the horizon.
The light warned him. He threw himself flat on his back and waited for the blast. The light died almost instantly, and suddenly the shiny horizon-to-horizon ice rippled and shot from under him. It took his feet along. His body snapped like a whip, and then the ice tore away from his feet.
He was on his face, with agony in his ankles.
The backlash came. The ice jerked under him, harmlessly.
"Jason, what happened? There was an explosion."
"Hang ... on." Jason rolled over and pulled his legs up to examine them. The pain was bad. His ankles didn't feel broken, but he certainly couldn't walk on them. The boots were covered with cracked wet ice.
"Jason. Puppeteer. Can you hear me?" It was the slurred, blurry voice of the boss Kzin.
"Don't say anything, Nessus. I'm going to answer him." Jason switched his transmitter to the common channel. "I'm here."
"You have discovered a new setting to the weapon."
"Have I?"
"I do not intend to play pup games with you. As a fighter, you are entitled to respect, which your herbivorous friend is not-"
"How are your ribs feeling?"
"Do not speak of that again, please. We have something to trade, you and I. You have a unique weapon. I have a female human who may be your mate."