The Man-Kzin Wars 09 mw-9

by Poul Anderson

  Raden nodded. “I rather expected this,” he told Tyra. “I didn't think the captain would leave us to cut our way in with laser torches. Dangerous, as well as slow. No doubt she'll order the program wiped from our database after we return, but actually, one relies more on interstellar distances and infrequent contacts to keep such things from spreading. All colony worlds have similar tools, civilian as well as military, and many spacecraft carry them. You might need to get into a friendly ship, too—a Crashlander, say—when for some reason the crew couldn't just let you in. Or any of all the other unpredictable situations.”

  He spoke rapidly, dryly, as if he were lecturing to a class. Tyra listened, though she already knew most of it. This must be a way for him to release some tension. Mainly he directed himself toward the keyboard.

  Sweat gleamed on his brow. Tyra felt it on her own face and soaking her armpits.

  She wondered how much of it was due to excitement—fear?—and how much was the body trying to maintain temperature. The compartment, the whole interior had gotten unpleasantly warm, and still the temperature crept upward.

  The thermostatics weren't failing; they struggled as best they could against an input for which they weren't intended. Caroline had unfolded her extra radiation surfaces, like huge wings, their thinness tilted normal to the swollen sun-disc. Unless you have vapor to release, as the kzin venturer had had, radiation is the single way to shed excess heat in space, and it does not work very fast.

  The wings of an angel, speeding on an errand of mercy—Memories arose of themselves in Tyra, childhood, church, the steel steeple of St. Joachim's shining above München… during the kzinti occupation, it stood in more human minds than hers as a symbol of freedom, eventual liberation, but you seldom said such things aloud, never where kzinti might hear, because then they would likely tear it down…

  Caroline was closing in, sensors at maximum, autopilot adjusting vectors like a high-wire walker… Yes, Wunderlanders had revived quite a few such acts during the war, more often performed for live audiences than cameras, another silent declaration that humans were not cattle…

  Optics gave a clear view of the sundiver, massive, ungainly against the stars, but—she must admit—its own sign of indomitability. She could magnify until a single section filled the screen for close study. She saw the holes strewn over the outer hull, small, not really very many, but sufficient to let the water seethe unchecked away. And forward she identified a damaged outercom dish. That explained why there had been no contact on any band. The damage didn't look great to her. Crew could readily have fixed it and regained communication, except that none could venture outside and live to do the work. Could a robot? Kzinti technology seemed to lag others when it came to robotics. Nevertheless but maybe there was no robot, or maybe no person left who was able to dispatch one.

  Minute by minute, the image expanded. Caroline was closing swiftly in on the reality.

  Raden finished at the keyboard, rose, and stretched, seeking to limber muscles too long tautened. “Is the medical care station ready?” he asked. Laying everything out for that had been her job.

  “Yes,” she snapped.

  “I'm sorry. Stupid of me to ask. You're always competent.” He sighed. “Not long now. I damn near wish it were. Then we could perhaps—But we'd better prepare ourselves.”

  She gave him a smile.

  He did pause to frown at the spacecraft's image. “Quite a bombardment,” he muttered. “I doubt it holed the inner hull. I'd expect somewhat different spectroscopic readings in that case, and sheer off right away. As is, all we know is that it's an oven inside there.”

  They started aft. “Have you any idea what did it?” she asked. “Does Pele have a ring of meteoroids?”

  “No, Maria would have identified one, even a thin strewing of gravel, and told us. Implausible anyway, on general principles. I have been speculating, though, whenever I got a chance. A notion has occurred to me. It may be utterly wrong.”

  An eagerness flickered amidst the forebodings. “What is it? I promise not to laugh.”

  “Thanks. I badly needed a grin.” Raden spoke on as they made their way to the space gear lockers and busied themselves there. “Do you remember the anomalous iron content Maria found in the high Kumukahi atmosphere?” She nodded. “We don't yet know what spews it out. I'd say the best guess is convulsions in the planetary body; then rising air currents—what storms those must be!—bring it aloft. Pele isn't an ultraviolet emitter on the scale of Sol or Alpha A, but that close, Kumukahi surely gets plenty to split molecules or radicals into atoms—ionized atoms—once they're up where the air is thin. Then—here's my guess, tremendous magnetic fields are interacting, the star's and the planet's, changeably, chaotically. It may result in vortices that pull ferromagnetic atoms together over an enormous range. They join into macroscopic clumps, pellets, perhaps still carrying some charge. Then a surge in the fields accelerates them to escape velocity, or nearly. They're thrown out of the atmosphere, probably in bursts, like shotgun fire. The sundiver ran into a cluster. The planet had given her such a velocity of her own that the encounter riddled her.

  “Whether I'm right or wrong, the notion suggests precautions for the future, doesn't it? We need data, data, data, observations, missions, year after year before we can hope to make a halfway decent computer model.” His tone and eyes came ablaze. “Unique in our experience. What a wild fluke of luck! What a chance to learn!”

  For a moment the enthusiasm caught her too. She had always been fascinated by science, but none of her men before now had been scientists. To see, to be a part of truly doing it—If nothing else, life with Craig would never be dull. The mood chilled and hardened in them both. They had work on hand. Elementary prudence dictated wearing space gear. It needn't be cumbersome full armor, simply protection against possible hot spots, noxious gases, or the like. They stripped off their clothes—gazes flying up and down, and a pulse in the throat—and took skintights from the suit locker. Those were easy to pull on. The molecules flowed to make a dermis from neck to ankles, shinily reflective, leather-tough, silk-flexible, veined with electronics and tiny capillaries for exuding sweat vapor or other unwanted fluids but sealing the body off from the outside. Boots snuggled similarly to feet and ankles. A backrack went on nearly as readily, for powerpack, airtank, regulators, water supply. The collars of the clear, hard helmets made themselves fast to shoulders and coupled to the rack. The wearers could talk by radio or, with sound amplification, directly; they likewise had good hearing, while sensors woven into the integument provided tactility.

  His smile quirked at her through the barriers between. “All set for the dance, Tyra?”

  “Well, I'll take a promissory note for my corsage,” she forced herself to reply in kind.

  Sternly: “To repeat the doctrine one last time. I go first. You stay behind at the entrance till I call for you. If I call, 'Get away!' instead, or you realize that something's gone seriously wrong, close our airlock and release the gang tube. Worning will instruct you how to bring Caroline back. This isn't heroics, it's plain common sense, and you know how and why to follow orders.” Softly: “Not that I expect danger. Horror, perhaps. You may well be tougher than me, dealing with that. You're a remarkable lady, Tyra, and I'm an incredibly lucky man.”

  “I love you,” she whispered, and knew she meant it. Whatever happened in the future, she had been set free of regrets from the past.

  They waited for a span that felt endless, although clocks showed little change. Then she felt a thud go through metal and knew that the vessels had made contact.

  She stood trying to visualize events. Caroline nudged the sundiver. Both recoiled the least bit. The autopilot had gauged nicely; airlocks were nearly aligned. Caroline's gang tube need only extrude two or three meters to enclose the lock opposite and grip with molecular forces. The search program got busy as directed, stimulating crystals into vibrations that it detected and analyzed. It found the combination that would activate
the mechanisms. Quantum levels fluctuated, utterances of command. Engines in the outer and inner portals of the kzin hull swung the valves aside. Gas billowed into the tube. Instruments verified that, while not in any normal state, it was not potentially destructive. Caroline's lock opened.

  Heat rushed over Tyra in a flood. Protected, she felt it only slightly. The suit could maintain her in the oven for several minutes at least. She was flashingly, selfishly glad she could not smell whatever stenches the inflow bore. Raden sprang forward. She followed as far as the airlock chamber and halted. Raden spun upward. His heels kicked ridiculously as he went out of her sight. The gravity polarizers inside the sundiver had failed too, she understood. Well, he knew how to handle himself in microgravity.

  After a few hundred heartbeats his voice reached her. “Come on through, Tyra. There's just one of them. He's in bad shape, but alive. Come help me bring him over to us.”

  15

  Heroes scream when they leap to do battle. They bear pain in silence. That was a battle of its own. Ghrul-Captain had never dreamed how long and lonely it could be. Often he wanted to make an end. If necessary, he could claw his throat across.

  But his folk might yet regain the spacecraft. Finding his body, they would see how he died. If he had endured to the end, always watchful for the chance to somehow strike back, they would bring home his praise. His kin would gain pride, and renewed standing. He would live on in memory, song, fame. If what he had done turned out to be to the good of the Race, he might be given a shrine and yearly blood sacrifices.

  If nothing else, they would remember how he had dared. Something no kzin had ever done before. Something no monkey ever would.

  Yes, let him keep this before him, that he was not a monkey who whimpered and fled, but a Hero.

  He bobbed about randomly. Now and then he bumped into a side of the cabin. Though the lining was a soft insulator, every touch seared, and he jerked free with the breath hissing between his fangs. His fur was singed, his whiskers scorched, his tail one blister from end to end. Each shallow breath filled his breast with pain. His ears were clenched tight. He seldom opened his eyes to the parching, baking air. Dreams had begun to weave distortedly through the darkness behind the lids. He tried to fight them off.

  If only death would come, the cool, kindly night—No, he must not think so, the wish was unworthy of a Hero. Let him rather hold that fact to his bosom, and the victory over the monkeys he had achieved.

  It was what meant most, he thought whenever the tide of delirium ebbed back for a while. If only within his own spirit, he had struck a blow at them. Someday they would find out how deeply the blade had gone in. One stab, true, one out of the millions it would take to bring them down and avenge the Race, but his. Something stirred, something made noise. He hauled himself to full awareness. A shape, not a vision, a real thing that touched him—anguish lanced; he almost cried out—and gabbled. Behind its helmet was a face like the face of a flayed corpse.

  Monkey.

  Another soared in. He snatched for recollections. Strong Runner swung afar. The monkeys, the rich, battening monkeys had sent boats out. One had laid alongside his.

  What did they want? To take him captive, maybe try to sell him back to his folk to seize the knowledge his vessel had won from the wreck of a world—or hand him over freely and gloat?

  It hardly mattered. They were monkeys, victorious.

  They were pulling and shoving him with them.

  No, never. A kind of joy gleamed through the pain that had become Ghrul-Captain's universe.

  Monkeys crawled around in their tree. They jeered at the hunter below and pelted him with dung. But all the while, their bough was bending under their weight, until they were in reach of him.

  To kill these would be his vengeance for the Race and himself. What happened afterward mattered little. He might or might not be able to pilot their craft back to Strong Runner in time for the medic to save him. Certainly their fellow monkeys would shriek and jabber; but they'd do nothing decently warlike. Certainly, too, his achievement would go far toward inspiring the Race, would help hasten the day of reckoning.

  His warrior skills returned to him. He should bide his time, let them carry him off to where he'd have weight under his feet, where he'd draw some lungfuls of air like the air of home. Then he'd be ready. Enough strength would flow back for long enough. Later he could rest in the blessed cool, rest and rest, sleep and sleep.

  To loosen his muscles was the start of his preparing. He shut his eyes again and tried not to wince or gasp when the monkeys touched a burnt spot. They didn't mean to. There drifted through him a recollection of a teacher at his academy, discussing the monkeys, saying, “What they call conscience makes cowards of them all.”

  16

  “Easy, now, easy,” Raden said. “The poor devil. You or I wouldn't have survived this long, or wanted to. We can't let him crash on the deck when we enter our gravity field.”

  “No,” Tyra agreed, “but we can't drag him to the first aid station either. He weighs,” that huge body.

  “Yes. I think probably we'd do best to turn off the polarizer while we convey him. First, though, for God's sake, we have got to get him out of this damned kiln.”

  They maneuvered the kzin through the gang tube. Straining, they eased his sudden ponderousness to the deck beyond. He lay sprawled, seemingly barely conscious. The eyelids weren't quite shut, a yellow slit gleamed between. Raden straightened and tapped instructions for airlock closure. Ventilators whirred, sucking away the hot air. Tyra imagined that, through her suit, she felt the freshness gusting in. She stepped a pace aside to catch her breath. Her glance flitted across scorch marks, blisters, raw fire wounds. I suppose this was our duty, she thought. Do we have any analgesics that work on kzinti? Maybe they can tell me on our ship or maybe we can only make haste there.

  The giant stirred. He struggled up. For half a minute he stood unsteadily, breath harsh in his throat. Bloodshot eyes glared.

  “What the hell?” Raden exclaimed. “Don't be afraid. You're with friends now.” Silly, flashed through Tyra. The kzin probably doesn't know English. And if he did, would he listen?

  He didn't quite scream and leap. He uttered a hoarse, broken cry and lurched toward the man. Claws slid forth. He swiped a mighty arm. The spacesuit fabric ripped.

  “No! Don't! Are you crazy?” Raden stumbled backward. The kzin followed. Again he slashed. Raden barely dodged, into a corner.

  And we have no weapon, Tyra silently shrieked.

  Maybe I do! She wheeled about and fled. Growls, snarls, and human yells pursued. Up the companionway. Down the passageway. A remote part of her knew how fast she bounded and ran, but it felt nightmarishly slow. Swivel through a doorway into the tiny galley. The largest knife she had brought gleamed in a rack. Her father had taught her always to keep cutting tools sharp. She snatched it and sped back.

  She half expected to find Craig disemboweled. But he knew his martial arts, sidestepped, ducked, weaved, dropped to the deck and bounced up again. The kzin was slow and clumsy. Though red flowed from half a dozen shallow gashes, the dance of death went on.

  The kzin didn't see her, or reckon her for anything if he did. She got behind him and sprang. Her legs clamped around his great barrel of a body, her free hand dug into an ear and hauled. The knife struck.

  The kzin coughed a roar and reached back. She clung while she worked the blade across his throat. Blood spouted. She felt claws rake through her own suit. She clung and cut.

  The kzin buckled. She let go and jumped clear. The kzin went to his knees, to all fours, onto his belly. He struggled for a while as the life pumped out of him.

  Tyra had left the knife in his neck. She and Raden fell into each other's arms. “Are you all right?” she choked.

  “N-nothing serious, I think. You?”

  “Same.”

  They stood thus, shuddering, until the body slumped and lay quiet. Blood reddened the chamber; excrement befouled the deck.
So much for a heroic death, thought Tyra vaguely.

  “What shall we do?” Raden mumbled.

  She rallied a little. “Take care of our injuries. Disengage the spacecraft. Call our own. And… and send this corpse out the airlock.” Unwillingly, she thought: Let him go on to the stars. “Set the pilot for rendezvous with Freuchen, and go to sleep. Sleep and sleep. Later, we can clean up this place. And think.”

  They trembled for an hour or more. A kzin wouldn't have. But they were merely human.

  17

  The captains met with them in Bihari's cabin aboard Samurai. She wanted complete privacy.

  “You were wise not to report more than the bare minimum on your way back,” she said. After they arrived and gave her the whole story, the medical program ordered them to sickbay for two daycycles under sedation. Released, calmed, they would need a while more to feel entirely fit. However, a flit across to the lancer was, if anything, refreshing—a sight of stars, Milky Way, majesty and immensity.

  Worning nodded. “Ja, we can't be quite sure the ratcats don't keep a few little receivers orbiting about; and you didn't have the equipment to encrypt.” Raden winced. “I, at least, didn't trust my judgment in this case either,” he confessed. “How might the kzinti react to a… a terrible incident?”

  “I could have told you that,” Tyra said. “I'm damned glad we have a better warship than they do.”