Larry Niven’s Man-Kzin Wars - III

by Larry Niven

  Executive Officer was a Hero, but he remembered the punishments. “Never, sire! I misspoke me. I abase myself before you.”

  “Correct.” Weoch-Captain switched off. He had not actually taken offense. Because he was a cautious leader, he must snatch every opportunity to assert dominance.

  Alone, he rose and prowled the control cabin. Its narrowness caged him. The real mockery came from the stars in the viewport, multitudes and majesty, a hunting ground unbounded. He bared fangs at them. We shall range among you yet, he vowed; we shall do with you what we will.

  First the humans—

  Excitement waxed. Clearly the expedition had caught something important, something of power. He would persist until he knew everything the message told. Then he would seek out the old ship, hear whatever might remain to hear, give whatever praise and reassurance were due. And then, informed and prepared, he would be off to the goal of all this voyaging.

  His ears lay back. The hair stood up on his body. Let any monkeys that he might encounter beware. The kzinti had much to avenge.

  Chapter XIV

  Once more Rover came out of hyperspace, and there the fugitive was. A computer recognized the inputs to instruments; a chime sounded; an image leaped into a screen. “That’s it,” said Saxtorph quietly in the command cabin. The intercom brought him a gasp from Tyra at the mass detector. Everybody else was at a duty station too. “Got to be.”

  He increased magnification, and the spark crawling across the constellations waxed. Tyra saw the same, on the viewer where she was. Optics set limits to what could be reconstructed at a distance of some eighty million kilometers, but he made out a blurry lancehead shape amidst a comma of bluish light, which trailed aft like a tail, the visible part of photons from excited atoms and plasma around the screen fields and aft of them. The invisible part was greater, and deadly.

  “The right class of vessel, and just about where she ought to be,” Saxtorph added. “Uh, what’s her name? I forget.”

  “Khrach-Sherrek,” Dorcas supplied. It was in the bit of record and recollection that had survived. “A cursorial carnivore on their home planet.” She didn’t normally waste breath on trivia. Anticipated though it was, this culmination must have shaken her too.

  “Well, well,” came Ryan’s voice, overly genial. “That was fun. Now what shall we play?”

  “Dada-mann,” Tyra whispered. Saxtorph guessed it was unconscious, her pet name for her father when she was small. He imagined tears running down her cheeks, and wanted to go hold her hand and speak comfort. Her words strengthened, not yet quite steady. “Y-yes, that is the proper question. Isn’t it? How shall we get him out? Have you had any more ideas, Robert?”

  They had discussed it, of course, over and over, as watch after watch dragged by. Yonder vessel couldn’t decelerate if the kzinti aboard wanted to, and Rover hadn’t a decent fraction of the delta v necessary to match velocities. In the era of hyperdrive such capabilities were very nearly as obsolete as flint axes. If somebody took off in a boat, he’d still have that forward speed, and be unable to kill enough of it to help before his energy reserve was gone. Not that there’d be any point in trying. A boat’s screens were totally inadequate against the level of radiation involved. He’d be doomed in a second, dead in an hour or two. The craft would become an instant derelict, electronics burned out.

  The UN Navy kept a few high-boosters. They had marginal utility for certain kinds of research. “Besides,” Saxtorph had observed, “all government agencies hoard stuff to a degree a squirrel or jaybird would envy. They’ve also got quite a lot else in common with squirrels and jaybirds.”

  Rigged with a hyperdrive, such as a craft could theoretically come out here, spend months building up her vector, at last draw close, mesh fields, and extend a gang tube—if the kzinti cooperated. If they didn’t, an operation already perilous would become insanely so, forcing an entry under those conditions in order to meet armed resistance. Either way, the expense would be staggering. Next year’s budget might even have to cut back on a boondoggle or two. Would the top brass consider it, to rescue one man, a man convicted of treason? Saxtorph’s bet was that they wouldn’t. If they did anything, it would most likely be to order the ship destroyed—simple and safe; leave an undeflectably large mass ahead of her—before she brought home intelligence of the black hole.

  He’d not had the heart to express his opinion as more than a possibility, nor did he now. After all, in the course of time Tyra might conceivably manage to rouse public sentiment and turn it into political pressure. She was a skilled writer, and beautiful. Never had he pointed out that her success must entail mortal hazard to a number of other lives. Once he’d thought Dorcas was about to say it, and had given her their private “steer clear” sign. “She’s got grief aplenty as is,” he explained later.

  “We start by peering, don’t we?” Carita put in. Good girl, Saxtorph thought. You can always count on her for nuts-and-bolts common sense.

  “Right,” he said. “Not that I expect we’ll learn a lot. However, let’s secure every loose end we can before we decide on any further moves.”

  “We shall c-call them,” Tyra stammered. “Shall we not?”

  “Well, I suppose we should, but I want to gang mighty warily. ’Twon’t be easy, you know.”

  Indeed not. Aberration and Doppler effect complicated the task abundantly. The speed that caused them made matters worse yet. If Rover sent a message, by the time a response could arrive, Sherrek would have passed the point where Rover lay. Saxtorph meant to stay always well clear. It would be nice if he could fake matched velocity by popping in and out of hyperspace. Too bad that transition between relativistic and quantum modes required time to get the wave functions of atoms into the proper phase relationships. Late in the war the kzinti had figured this out and discovered what the neutrino emission pattern was when a drive prepared itself. Warned of impending attack from an unpredictable new direction, they’d actually won a couple of engagements.

  Modern vessels changed state in minutes. The engineers talked about future models that would only take seconds. Rover’s antiquated engine needed almost half an hour. Ordinarily that made no difference. You’d be doing something else meanwhile anyway, such as completing your climb sufficiently high out of a gravity well. But here she’d better come no closer than a quarter billion klicks ahead of Sherrek. Preferably much more.

  “Bloody hell!” cried Ryan. “Why are we glooming and dooming like this? We’ve found her! Let’s throw a proper luau.”

  A sob caught in Tyra’s throat. “Thank you, Kam. Yes. Let us.”

  When she’s seen the ship and doesn’t know whether her father is alive or dead or worse, thought Saxtorph. That’s one gallant lass. “Okay,” he said. “The computers can handle the observations. We’ll put other functions on auto and relax. Aside from you, Kam. We expect something special for dinner this evenwatch.”

  “I will help,” Tyra said. “I…need to.”

  “No, you don’t,” Saxtorph told her. “At least, not right off. Report to the saloon. What I need help with is downing two or three large schooners.”

  She smiled forlornly as he entered, but she did smile. Quickly, before the rest arrived, he took both her hands in his. Their eyes met and lingered. Hearing footfalls, they let go. He felt a little breathless and giddy.

  Either Tyra put tension aside and cheered up in the course of the next eight hours, or she did a damn good job of acting. The party wasn’t riotous, but it became warm, affectionate, finally sentimental. After they started singing, she gave them several ballads from her homeland. She had a lovely voice.

  Chapter XV

  Effort upon effort succeeded ultimately in getting through. The first partial, distorted reply croaked forth. Dorcas heard and yelled. She, who had the most knowledge of kzin xenology, was prepared to speak through a translator for her band. What she would say, she could not foresee; she must grope forward. Could she bargain, could she threaten? To her husband sh
e admitted that her hopes were low. He agreed, more grimly than the situation seemed to warrant as far as they two were concerned.

  She was not prepared for human words.

  “Sind Sie wirklich Menschen?” And what must be Tyra’s own dialect: “Gud Jesu, endelig! Hvor langt, hvor langt—” Interference ripped the cry asunder. Static hissed and snarled like a kzin.

  “Hang in there,” Saxtorph said. “I’ll be back.” He scrambled from his seat and out of the cabin. Dorcas’ gaze followed him.

  Nobody else had been listening. To endure repeated failures is mere masochism, if you yourself can do nothing about them. Saxtorph pounded on Tyra’s door. “Wake up!” he bellowed. “We’ve contacted your father! He lives, he lives!”

  The door flew open and she stumbled into his arms. She slept unclothed. He held her rightly until she stopped weeping and shivered only a little. She was warm and firm and silken. “We don’t know more than that,” he mouthed. Did desire shout louder in his blood than compassion? “It’s going to take time. What’ll come of it, we can’t tell. But we’re working on it, Tyra. We are.”

  She drew herself free and stood before him. Briefly, fists clenched at her sides. Then she remembered the situation, crossed arms over the fairness above and below, caught a ragged breath and blinked the tears away. “Yes, you will,” she answered before she fled, “because you are what you are. I can abide.”

  She did, calmly, even blithely, while three daycycles passed and the story arrived in shreds and snatches. When at last the whole crew met, bodily, for they needed to draw strength from each other, she sat half smiling.

  Saxtorph looked around the saloon table. “Okay,” he said with far more steadiness than he felt, “Peter Nordbo is alive, well, and alone. Two years alone, but better that than the company he was keeping, and apparently he’s stayed sane. The problem is how to debark him. I can be honest now and tell you that I don’t expect any navy will do the job, nor anybody else that may have the capability.”

  “Why not?” Carita asked. “He’s got important information, hasn’t he, about the black hole? That expedition checked it over as thoroughly as they could.”

  The captain began filling his pipe. “Yah, but you see, their information’s in the radio beam the ship was transmitting till he took over. A hell of a lot quicker, easier, and safer to recover than by matching velocity and boarding. Oh, I daresay what he’s gone through and what he’s done will stir up a wave of public sympathy, but unless it becomes a tsunami, that probably won’t be enough.”

  “Among the considerations,” Dorcas added in an impersonal tone, “Sherrek is approaching kzin-controlled space. Kzinti hyperships are bound to be sniffing about. A few of their kind did have valid reasons, from their viewpoint, to flee Alpha Centauri twenty years ago, rather than die fighting or get taken prisoner. The kzinti will search for any, as well as exploring on general principles. I agree the chance of their spotting Sherrek’s trail by accident is small, but it is finite, and every month that passes makes it larger. I can well imagine political objections to risking an unwanted incident, on top of every other argument.”

  “We can go home, report this, and agitate for help,” Saxtorph said. “It’s the sensible, obvious course. I won’t veto it, if that’s what you want.”

  Tyra gave him a sea-blue regard. “You have a different possibility,” she said low.

  His grin twisted. “You’ve gotten to know me, huh?”

  She nodded. Light sheened across her hair.

  “It’s a dicey thing,” he said. “Some danger to us, a lot to your father. But if it works, you’ll have him back in days.”

  “Else years,” she replied as softly as before, “or never.” Only her fingernails, white where she gripped the tabletop, revealed more. “What think you on?”

  “We’ve, uh, discussed it, him and Dorcas and me. In the jaggedy fashion you’ve observed. We didn’t want to announce this earlier, because we had to do some figuring and would’ve hated to…disappoint you.” Saxtorph put fire to pipe. “Yon ship carries a pair of flyby capsules, unpowered but made to withstand extremely heavy radiation. As much as you’d get at one-half c. He can get inside one and have its launcher toss him out.” He puffed forth a cloud.

  “You believe you can recover him,” she said, and began to tremble ever so slightly.

  “Yes. Our new grapnel field installation. If we get the configuration and timing just right—if not, you realize, he’s gone beyond any catching—if we do, we can lock on. Rover has more mass by several orders of magnitude. We estimate that the combined momentum will mean a velocity of about 200 klicks per second, well within our delta v reserve.”

  “Down from…that speed? I should think—” she must struggle to utter it—“the acceleration overcomes your polarizers and tears your grappler out through the hull.”

  “Smart girl.” How ludicrously inadequate that was for his admiration. “It would also reduce him to thin jelly. We can do up to fifty g. The capsules have interior polarizers with power to counteract a bit more, but we want a safety factor. Our systems can handle it too. Do you know about deep-sea fishing? Your dolphins may have told stories of marlin and tarpon.”

  She nodded again. “I saw a documentary once. And in the Frisian Sea on Wunderland I have myself taken a dinotriton.” Ardor flamed up. “I see! You let the capsule run, but never far enough to get away, and you play it, you pull it in a little at a time—”

  “Right. The math says we can do it in three and a half daycycles, through a distance of 225 billion kilometers. In practice it’ll doubtless be harder.” He had to have a moment’s relief. “Anderson’s Law, remember: ‘Everything takes longer and costs more.’”

  Awe struck her. She sagged back in her chair. “The skill—”

  “The danger,” Dorcas said. “At any point we can fail. Rover may then suffer damage, although if we stand ready I don’t expect it’ll cripple us. But your father will be a dead man.”

  “What thinks he?”

  “He’s for it,” Saxtorph replied. “Of course a buck like that would be. But he leaves the decision to us. With…his blessing. And we, Dorcas and I, we leave it to you. I imagine Kam and Carita will go along with whatever you choose.”

  Abruptly Tyra’s voice wavered. “Kam,” she said, “you have taught me a word of yours, a very good, brave word. I use it now.” She leaped to her feet. “Go for broke!” she shouted.

  The Hawaiian and the Jinxian cheered.

  Thereafter it was toil, savage demands on brain and body, nerves aquiver and pulled close to breaking, heedless overuse of stimulants, tranquilizers, whatever might keep the organism awake and alert.

  No humans could have done the task. The forces involved were immensely too great, changeable, complex. Nor could they be felt at the fingertips; over spatial reaches, the lightspeed that carried them became a laggard, and the fisher must judge what was happening when it would not manifest itself for minutes. The computer program that Dorcas wrote with the aid of the computer that was to use it, this held the rod and reeled the line.

  Yet humans must be in the loop, constantly monitoring, gauging, making judgments. Theirs was the intuition, the instinct and creative insight, that no one has engineered into any machine. The Saxtorphs were the two best qualified. Carita could handle the less violent hours. The main burden fell on Dorcas. Ryan and Tyra kept them fed, coffeed, medicated. Often she rubbed a back, kneaded shoulders, ran a wet washcloth over a face, crooned a lullaby at a catnap. Mostly she did it for the captain.

  From dead Sherrek, the cannonball that held the living shot free. Unseeable amidst the light of lethal radiation, a force-beam reached to lay hold. Almost, the grip failed. Needles spun on dials and Dorcas cast her man a look of terror. Things stabilized. The hook was in.

  Gently, now, gently. Itself a comet trailing luminance, the capsule fled. The grapnel field stretched, tugging, dragging Rover along, but how slowly slowing it. As distance grew, precision diminished. The capsule
plunged about. The Saxtorphs ordered compensating boosts. Ideally, they could maintain contact across the width of a planetary system. In feet, the chance of losing it was large.

  They played their fish.

  Hour by hour, day by day, the haste diminished, the gap closed. Worst was a moment near the end, when the capsule was visible in a magnifying screen, and suddenly rolled free. Somehow Dorcas clapped the grapnel back onto it. Then: “Take over for a while, Bob,” she choked, put head in hands, and wept. He couldn’t recall, at that point, when he had last seen her shed tears.

  Ship and sphere drew nigh. A cargo port opened. The catch went in. The port shut and air roared into the bay. Some time yet must pass; at first that metal was too cold for flesh to approach. When at length its own hatch cracked, the warmth and stench of lifelong confined billowed out.

  A man crept after. He rose unsteadily, tall, hook-nosed, bushy-bearded, going gray, though still hard and lithe. He climbed a ladder. A door swung wide for him. Beyond waited his daughter.

  Chapter XVI

  The song of her working systems throbbed through Rover, too softly for ears to hear anything save rustles and murmurs, yet somehow pervading bones, flesh, and spirit. In Ryan’s cabin Carita asked, “But why are we headed back to the black hole? Add a week’s travel time at least, plus whatever we spend there. I’ve seen the damn thing. Why not straight to Wunderland?”

  She had been asleep, exhausted, when her shipmates made the decision, and had only lately awakened, to eat ravenously and join her friend. The rest had spent their remnant strength laying plans and getting on hyperspatial course. Ryan took the first mass detector watch. Tyra had it now, drowsily; when relieved, she would doubtless seek her bunk again.

  “We thought you’d agree, and in any case wouldn’t appreciate being hauled out to cast a vote when the count could just go one way,” Ryan answered. “Wherever we picked, it was foolish to linger. Nothing else to gain, and a small possibility that a ratcat moku might suddenly pop up and shout, ‘Boo!’ Care for a drink?”