by Larry Niven
Markham rose and strode forth. Ryan and Tregennis followed. The Hawaiian nudged the Plateaunian and made little circling motions with his forefinger near his temple. Unwontedly bleak of countenance, the astronomer nodded, then whispered, “Be careful. I have read history. All too often, his kind is successful.”
17
Kzinti did not use their gravity polarizers to maintain a constant, comfortable weight within spacecraft—unless accelerations got too high even for them to tolerate. The boat left with a roar of power. Humans sagged in their seats. Tregennis whitened. The thin flesh seemed to pull back over the bones of his face, the beaky nose stood out like a crag and blood trickled from it. “Hey, easy, boy,” Ryan gasped. “Do you want to lose this man . . . already?”
Markham spoke to Hraou-Captain, who made a contemptuous noise but then yowled at the pilot. Weightlessness came as an abrupt benediction. For a minute silence prevailed, except for the heavy breathing of the Wunderlander and the Hawaiian, the rattling in and out of the old Plateaunian’s.
Harnessed beside Tregennis, Ryan examined him as well as he could before muttering, “I guess he’ll be all right in a while, if that snotbrain will take a little care.” Raising his eyes, he looked past the other, out the port. “What’s that?”
Close by, a kilometer or two, a small spacecraft—the size and lines indicated a ground-to-orbit shuttle—was docked at a framework which had been assembled around a curiously spheroidal dark mass, a couple of hundred meters in diameter. The framework secured and supported machinery which was carrying out operations under the direction of suited kzinti who flitted about with drive units on their backs. Stars peered through the lattice. In the distance passed a glimpse of Rover, moon-bound, and the warship.
The boat glided by. A new approach curve computed, the pilot applied thrust, this time about a single g’s worth. Hraou-Captain registered impatience at the added waiting aboard. Markham did not venture to address him again. It must have taken courage to do so at all, when he wasn’t supposed to defile the language with his mouth.
Instead the Wunderlander said to Ryan, on a note of awe, “That is doubtless one of their iron sources. Recently arrived, I would guess, and cooled down enough for work to commence on it. From what I have heard, a body that size will quickly be reduced.”
Ryan stared at him, forgetting hostility in surprise. “Iron? I thought there was hardly any in this system. What it has ought to be at the center of the planets. Don’t the kzinti import their metals for construction?”
Markham shook his head. “No, that would be quite impractical. They have few hyperdrive ships as yet—I told you Vengeful Slasher alone is so outfitted here, at present. Once the transports had brought personnel and the basic equipment, they went back for duty closer to home. Currently a warship calls about twice a year to bring fresh workers and needful items. It relieves the one on guard, which carries back kzinti being rotated. A reason for choosing this sun was precisely that humans won’t suspect anything important can ever be done at it.” He hesitated. “Except pure science. The kzinti did overlook that.”
“Well, where do they get their metals? Oh, the lightest ones, aluminum, uh, beryllium, magnesium . . . manganese?—I suppose those exist in ordinary ores. But I don’t imagine those ores are anything but scarce and low-grade. And iron—”
“The asteroid belt. The planet that came too close to the sun. Disruption exposed its core. The metal content is low compared to what it would be in a later-generation world, but when you have a whole planet, you get an abundance. They have had to bring in certain elements from outside, nickel, cobalt, copper, et cetera, but mostly to make alloys. Small quantities suffice.”
Tregennis had evidently not fainted. His eyelids fluttered open. “Hold,” he whispered. “Those asteroids . . . orbit within . . . less than half a million kilometers . . . of the sun surface.” He panted feebly before adding, “It may be a . . . very late type M . . . but nevertheless, the effective temperature—” His voice trailed off.
The awe returned to Markham’s. “They have built a special tug.”
“What sort?” Ryan asked.
“In principle, like the kind we know. Having found a desirable body, it lays hold with a grapnel field. I think this vessel uses a gravity polarizer system rather than electromagnetics. The kzinti originated that technology, remember. The tug draws the object into the desired orbit and releases it to go to its destination. The tug is immensely powerful. It can handle not simply large rocks like what you saw, but whole asteroids of reasonable size. As they near Secunda—tangential paths, of course—it works them into planetary orbit. That’s why local space is too crowded for the kzinti to leave Rover in it unmanned. Besides ferrous masses on hand, two or three new ones are usually en route, and not all the tailings of worked-out old ones get swept away.”
“But the heat near the sun,” Ryan objected. “The crew would roast alive. I don’t see how they can trust robotics alone. If nothing else, let the circuits get too hot and—”
“The tug has a live crew,” Markham said. “It’s built double-hulled and mirror-bright, with plenty of radiating surfaces. But mainly it’s ship size, not boat size, because it loads up with water ice before each mission. There is plenty of that around the big planets, you know, chilled well below minus a hundred degrees. Heated, melted, evaporated, vented, it maintains an endurable interior until it has been spent.”
“I thought we . . . found traces of water and OH . . . in a ring around the sun,” Tregennis breathed. “Could it actually be—?”
“I don’t know how much ice the project has consumed to date,” Markham said, “but you must agree It is grandly conceived. That is a crew of heroes. They suffer, they dare death each time, but their will prevails.”
Ryan rubbed his chin. “I suppose otherwise the only spacecraft are shuttles. And the warcraft and her boats.”
“They are building more.” Markham sounded proud. “And weapons and support machinery. This will be an industrial as well as a naval base.”
“For the next war—” Tregennis seemed close to tears. Ryan patted his hand. Silence took over.
The boat entered atmosphere, which whined as she decelerated around the globe. A dawn storm, grit and ice, obscured the base, but the humans made out that it was in the great crater, presumably because the moonfall had brought down valuable ores and caused more to spurt up from beneath. Interconnected buildings made a web across several kilometers, with a black central spider. Doubtless much lay underground. An enterprise like this was large-scale or it was worthless. True, it had to start small, precariously—the first camp, the assembling of life support systems and food production facilities and a hospital for victims of disasters such as were inevitable when you drove hard ahead with your work on a strange world—but demonic energy had joined the exponential-increase powers of automated machines to bring forth this city of warriors.
No, Ryan thought, a city of workers in the service of future warriors. Thus far few professional fighters would be present except the crew of Vengeful Slasher. They weren’t needed . . . yet. The warship was on hand against unlikely contingencies. Well, in this case kzin paranoia had paid off.
The pilot made an instrument landing into a cradle. Ryan spied more such units, three of them holding shuttles. The field on which they stood, though paved, must often be treacherous because of drifted dust. Secunda had no unfrozen water to cleanse its air; and the air was a chill wisp. Most of the universe is barren. Hawaii seemed infinitely far away.
A gang tube snaked from a ziggurat-like terminal building. Airlocks linked. An armed kzin entered and saluted. Hraou-Captain gestured at the humans and snarled an imperative before he went out. Markham unharnessed. “I am to follow him,” he said. “You go with this guard. Quarters are prepared. Behave yourselves and . . . I will do my best for you.”
Ryan rose. Two-thirds Earth weight felt good. He collected his and Tregennis’ bags in his right hand and gave the astronomer his left arm
for support. Kzinti throughout a cavernous main room stared as the captives appeared. They didn’t goggle like humans, they watched like cats. Several naked tails switched to and fro. An effort had been made to brighten the surroundings, a huge mural of some hero in hand-to-hand combat with a monster; the blood jetted glaring bright.
The guard led his charges down corridors which pulsed with the sounds of construction. At last he opened a door, waved them through, and closed it behind them. They heard a lock click shut.
The room held a bed and a disposal unit, meant for kzinti but usable by humans; the bed was ample for two, and by dint of balancing and clinging you could take care of sanitation. “I better help you till you feel better, Prof,” Ryan offered. “Meanwhile, why don’t you lie down? I’ll unpack.” The bags and floor must furnish storage space. Kzinti seldom went in for clothes or for carrying personal possessions around.
They did hate sensory deprivation, still more than humans do. There was no screen, but a port showed the spacefield. The terminator storm was dying out as the sun rose higher, and the view cleared fast. Under a pale red sky, the naval complex came to an end some distance off. Tawny sand reached onward, strewn with boulders. In places, wind had swept clear the fused crater floor. It wasn’t like lava, more like dark glass. Huge though the bowl was, Secunda—much less dense than Earth, but significantly larger—had a wide enough horizon that the nearer wall jutted above it in the west, a murky palisade.
Tregennis took Ryan’s advice and stretched himself out. The quartermaster smiled and came to remove his shoes for him. “Might as well be comfortable,” Ryan said, “or as nearly as we can without beer.”
“And without knowledge of our fates,” the Plateaunian said low. “Worse, the fates of our friends.”
“At least they are out of Markham’s filthy hands.”
“Kamehameha, please. Watch yourself. We shall have to deal with him. And he—I think he too is feeling shocked and lonely. He didn’t expect this either. His orders were merely to hamper exploration beyond the limits of human space. He wants to spare us. Give him the chance.”
“Ha! I’d rather give a shark that kind of chance. It’s less murderous.”
“Oh, now, really.”
Ryan thumped fist on wall. “Who do you suppose put that kzin up to attacking Bob Saxtorph back in Tiamat? It has to have been Markham, when his earlier efforts failed. Nothing else makes sense. And this, mind you, this was when he had no particular reason to believe our expedition mattered as far as the kzinti were concerned. They hadn’t trusted him with any real information. But he went ahead anyway and tried to get a man killed to stop us. That shows you what value he puts on human life,”
“Well, maybe . . . maybe he is deranged,” Tregennis sighed. “Would you bring me a tablet, please? I see a water tap and bowl over there.”
“Sure. Heart, huh? Take it easy. You shouldn’t’ve come along, you know.”
Tregennis smiled. “Medical science has kept me functional far longer than I deserve.
“‘But fill me with the old familiar Juice,
“‘Methinks I might recover by-and-by!’“
Ryan lifted the white head and brought the bowl, from which a kzin would have lapped, carefully close to the lips. “You’ve got more heart than a lot of young bucks I could name,” he said.
Time crept past.
The door opened. “Hey, food?” Ryan asked.
Markham confronted them, an armed kzin at his back. He was again pallid and stiff of countenance. “Come,” he said harshly.
Rested, Tregennis walked steady-footed beside Ryan. They went through a maze of featureless passages with shut doors, coldly lighted, throbbing or buzzing. When they encountered other kzinti they felt the carnivore stares follow them.
After a long while they stopped at a larger door. This part of the warren looked like officer country, though Ryan couldn’t be sure when practically everything he saw was altogether foreign to him. The guard let them in and followed.
The chamber beyond was windowless, its sole ornamentation a screen on which a computer projected colored patterns. Kzin-type seats, desk, and electronics suggested an office, but big and mostly empty. In one corner a plastic tub had been placed, about three meters square. Within stood some apparatus, and a warrior beside, and the drug-dazed telepath huddled at his feet.
The prisoners’ attention went to Hraou-Captain and another—lean and grizzled by comparison—seated at the desk. “Show respect,” Markham directed. “You meet Werlith-Commandant.”
Tregennis bowed, Ryan slopped a soft salute.
The head honcho spat and rumbled. Markham turned to the men. “Listen,” he said. “I have been in . . . conference, and am instructed to tell you . . . Fido has been found.”
Tregennis made a tiny noise of pain. Ryan hunched his shoulders and said, “That’s what they told you.”
“It is true,” Markham insisted. “The boat went to Prima. The interrogation aboard Rover led to a suspicion that the escapers might try that maneuver. Ya-Nar-Ksshinn—call it Sun Defier, the asteroid tug, was prospecting. The commandant ordered it to Prima, since it could get there very fast. By then Fido was trapped on the surface. Fenger and Yoshii broadcast a call for help, so Sun Defier located them. Just lately, Fido has made a new broadcast which the kzinti picked up. You will listen to the recording.”
Werlith-Commandant condescended to touch a control. From the desk communicator, wavery through a seething of radio interference, Juan Yoshii’s voice came forth.
“Hello, Bob, Dorcas, Lau-laurinda—Kam, Arthur . . . Ulf, if you hear—hello from Carita and me. We’ll set this to repeat on different bands, hoping you’ll happen to tune it in somewhere along the line. It’s likely goodbye.”
“No,” said Carita’s voice, “it’s ‘good luck.’ To you. Godspeed.”
“Right,” Yoshii agreed. “Before we let you know what the situation is, we want to beg you, don’t ever blame yourselves. There was absolutely no way to foresee it. And the universe is full of much worse farms we could have bought.
“However—” Unemotionally, now and then aided by his companion, he described things as they were, “We’ll hang on till the end, of course,” he finished. “Soon we’ll see what we can rig to keep us alive. After the hull collapses altogether, we’ll flit off in search of bare rock to sit on, if any exists. Do not, repeat do not risk yourselves in some crazy rescue attempt. Maybe you could figure out a safe way to do it if you had the time and no kzinti on your necks. Or maybe you could talk them into doing it. But neither one is in the cards, eh? You concentrate on getting the word home.”
“We mean that,” Carita said.
“Laurinda, I love you,” Yoshii said fast. “Farewell, fare always well, darling. What really hurts is knowing you may not make it back. But if you do, you have your life before you. Be happy.”
“We aren’t glum.” Carita barked a laugh. “I might wish Juan weren’t quite so noble, Laurinda, dear. But it’s no big thing either way, is it? Not any more. Good luck to all of you.”
The recording ended. Tregennis gazed beyond the room—at this new miracle of nature? Ryan stood swallowing tears, his fists knotted.
“You see what Saxtorph’s recklessness has caused,” Markham said.
“No!” Ryan shouted. “The kzinti could lift them off! But they—tell his excellency yonder they’re afraid to!”
“I will not. You must be out of your mind. Besides, Sun Defier cannot land on a planet, and carries no auxiliary.”
“A shuttle—No. But a boat from the warship.”
“Why? What have Yoshii and Fenger done to merit saving, at hazard to the kzinti for whom they only want to make trouble? Let them be an object lesson, gentlemen. If you have any care whatsoever for the rest of your party, help us retrieve them before it is too late.”
“I don’t know where they are. Not on P-prima, for sure.”
“They must be found.”
“Well, send that damned tug.”<
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Markham shook his head. “It has better uses. It was about ready to return anyway. It will take Secunda orbit and wait for an asteroid that is due in shortly.” He spoke like a man using irrelevancies to stave off the moment when he must utter his real meaning.
“Okay, the warship.”
“It too has other duties. I’ve told them about Saxtorph’s babbling of kamikaze tactics. Hraou-Captain must keep his vessel prepared to blow that boat out of the sky if it comes near—until Saxtorph’s gang is under arrest, or dead. He will detach his auxiliaries to search.”
“Let him,” Ryan jeered. “Bob’s got this whole system to skulk around in.”
“Tertia is the first place to try.”
“Go ahead. That old fox is good at finding burrows.”
Werlith-Commandant growled. Markham grew paler yet, bowed, turned on Ryan and said in a rush: “Don’t waste more time. The master wants to resolve this business as soon as possible. He wants Saxtorph and company preferably alive, dead will do, but disposed of, so we can get on with the business of explaining away at Wunderland what happened to Rover. You will cooperate.”
Sweat studded Ryan’s face. “I will?”
“Yes. You shall accompany the search party. Broadcast your message in Hawaiian. Persuade them to give themselves up.”
Ryan relieved himself of several obscenities.
“Be reasonable,” Markham almost pleaded. “Think what has happened with Fido. The rest can only die in worse ways, unless you bring them to their senses.”
Ryan shifted his feet wide apart, thrust his head forward, and spat, “No surrender.”
Markham took a backward step. “What?”
“Your mother’s motto, ratcat-lover. Have you forgotten? How proud of you she’s going to be when she hears.”
Markham closed his eyes. His lips moved. He looked forth again and said in a string of whipcracks: “You will obey. Werlith-Commandant orders it. Look yonder. Do you see what is in the corner? He expected stubbornness.”