by Larry Niven
“What qualifications?” I demanded.
“You’re the only Belter with an advanced degree in astroengineering.”
Tom was holding something back. What was it? “You can’t be serious. It’s been ages since I did any engineering. And all that was design work, not fixing stuff. That can’t be enough.”
“It better be enough.” He hesitated then continued. “I know you singleship pilots. You brag about being able to fix anything with nothing. If you can’t, we’re dead meat.”
I interrupted, “But…”
“But nothing. Our only chance for life is if you can fix the ship.” Tom’s eyes pleaded with me as we stared at each other. I’m not sure if I believed him. Finagle, I’m not sure he believed himself I thought of something else.
“How many kzinti are on our ship?”
“Not many. Just the boarding party that was behind our shields when Jennifer started the drive.”
I interrupted, “But then can’t we reason with them or…”
“You can’t reason with them,” Tom interrupted. “They don’t think like we do.” Depressed silence filled the room, until it was broken by Tom getting up to leave.
“I’m going to go and let you get some rest. Twenty years of coldsleep can really mess up your endocrine balance. I’d like to have you spend a couple more days in the ‘doc to let it sort out your biochemistry. But the kzinti won’t let me do that. Hell, they didn’t even want to let me check in on you today.”
Tom handed me a small vial filled with orange pills. “Here’s some medicine that the autodoc made up for you. Take two every eight hours. They should help you get back to normal.”
His eyes tried to tell me more than his words could convey, but I couldn’t understand him. “Take your medicine and rest. It’s important. I’ve convinced the kzinti that you won’t be able to do anything for a day or so. I don’t know how long I can stall them.”
Tom turned and headed for the door. As he did I noticed he had a pronounced limp that I didn’t remember from when we’d left the solar system.
“Tom, what happened to your leg?”
Tom grimaced as he slowly turned to face me. He leaned against the wall and lifted the leg of his pants. Where there should have been a sock covered leg was a gleaming titanium stump that disappeared into his shoe and up his pants leg.
“The kzinti have short tempers,” he said. “Don’t get them upset.”
I spent the rest of the day resting, eating and sleeping. I set a timer to go off every eight hours and when it chimed I took my medicine. Those pills must have been strong because taking them made my head feel light and put my whole body on edge. I would have been worried, but all my life I’d been taught to trust the ministrations of the autodocs. In any case, I spent a lot of time dozing off, waking up only when my nightmares of overgrown cats and the forgotten art of war caused me to jerk upright screaming.
The next morning came too soon. Was it morning? My time sense was really out of kilter. I woke without assistance and found that there was a small autochef in the room, though many of its meat items were logged as being unavailable. (Should I blame that on the kzinti also?) I had just finished eating a breakfast of eggs, toast and coffee without sausage when the door to my quarters slid open and two of the kzinti walked in. The larger of the two had to duck his head down to get through the doorway, but the smaller, disheveled one was slumped down so far that he didn’t need to duck. I recognized the larger of the two kzinti as the one who could speak Standard. He started talking without preamble.
“I am ‘Slave Master.’ I will speak slave language until you learn Hero’s Tongue. First, prove your worth. Solve ship problem. Then we treat you as worthy slave.”
“And how would you do that?” I asked.
“You will live.”
I didn’t have any response to that comment and the big cat stayed silent for a moment. I looked into his face, but his emotions—did he have any emotions, I wondered?—were a complete mystery to me. What was the meaning of his twitching ears? And should I be worried that he was showing me his teeth, or was that just his idea of a smile?
The rat-cat (that was all I could think of while I watched his naked tail flick back and forth) snarled something to the smaller, disheveled kzinti who shivered and seemed to pull into himself. He reached down into a bag he was carrying and took out a syringe with a gleaming silver needle. His stare went from the syringe to the larger kzinti and finally to me. The larger kzinti snarled at him again, I’d swear I could sense disgust in his snarl, and the small kzinti plunged the needle deep into his forearm. He shuddered and seemed to pull into himself even more, almost as if he was going into a trance, and then he looked at me.
It was like he was looking straight into my soul. His eyes sparkled with a life that I hadn’t seen before but his body still shivered and shook. I heard a low moaning growl come from deep in his throat. I felt a pressure building in my head. It might have been nervous anxiety from my fear of the upcoming interrogation.
“Now talk.” Slave Master stared at me. Somehow I didn’t think this was the time or place for the quick rejoinder or smartass remark.
“Okay. We’ll talk. About what?”
“No. Not ‘we talk.’ You talk. Can you fix ship?”
I started to frame an evasive answer, when my head exploded in pain and disorientation. It felt like I was falling down an infinitely deep hole while being hurled up toward an ever unreachable sky. I felt like I was spinning rapidly while being completely immobile. If not for decades of freefall reflexes I would have spewed my breakfast all over the kzinti and the four walls of the tiny room. (I didn’t think that would be a good career move.) Slowly the sensation diminished but never completely went away.
The disheveled kzinti sat in a corner of the room. Glowering at me. His eyes boring through me, while his body shivered almost uncontrollably. He haltingly growled something to Slave Master.
The larger kzinti stared at me and I watched in horror as thick black claws sprang from his four fingertips. He raised his clawed hand above my head, as if ready to bring it down in one swift killing move.
“Truth only. No lies. I will know.” He paused. “Understand?”
It was clear as a bell.
“Yes sir.”
He raised his hand higher. His fur was pulled back and lying flat across his face.
“Use proper form of address. Not Sthondat form. I am Slave Master. Not sir.” He lowered his face close to mine. I could watch each whisker on his muzzle twitch. I could smell the fetid odor of dead meat on his breath. One wrong answer and my scent would be added to his breath.
“Yes si—Yes. Slave Master.” I tried to make it sound respectful. Fear for your life can do that.
Slave Master slowly lowered his arms. His fur began to fluff out, his claws retracting slowly as he lowered his arms. “Now tell of your ship knowledge and repair skills.”
And so I tried to tell them what I hoped they wanted to know. If I promised more than I could deliver I knew I would die, but if I didn’t promise enough I knew I’d never get the chance to be proven wrong. I let them know that I’d have to make an inspection of the ship’s systems before I could decide on a course of action. That I might need to thaw out someone else from coldsleep to help me. (They didn’t like this idea.)
Although Slave Master knew some Standard there were big lapses in his technical vocabulary and at times we had to stop and work out language problems. He had me visualize things and describe them until finally he understood me. And all through this the disheveled kzinti sat there staring at me while my head felt like it was going to explode at any minute. By the time we were finished I was totally exhausted. (I think they knew this, but they didn’t care.) Luckily for me they seemed to have gotten what they needed. I hoped I had bought myself a few days of looking for options. Time to find hope in a hopeless situation.
Slave Master looked me in the eye. “We go now. Discuss. Churl-Captain will decide. Inspect
ion and repairs later. Rest now. Eat. Prepare.” With that the two kzinti turned and left the room. The only thing remaining from their visit was the scent of sweaty grass and ginger and my fear of what would happen next.
I thought of staying up and planning, of plotting how I might work against them. But my head still ached. I thought it might have been from tension, but if it was, it was unlike any tension headaches I’d ever had before. It was nothing like that time when I was smuggling a shipment of luxury foodstuffs to a Flatlander science station on Enceladus and tried dodging a Goldskin patrol by hiding my ship in the braided ring of Saturn. By comparison that was a relaxed afternoon at Heisenberg’s Pub back at Ceres Base.
I stretched out on the waterbed to organize my thoughts and only ended up organizing my dreams.
Except that those dreams kept getting interrupted by nightmares where I was a mouse being chased by a tiger.
I woke up with my mind filled with half-formed imaginings and leftover nightmares. In my sleep I had imagined that our slowboat had been overrun by ferocious outsiders that looked like a fantasy image from an old flat film. (The kinds of films that the ARM thought they had suppressed, but which were popular humor among Belters in their singleships far from the patronizing protection of the ARM.) And then it hit me. This was no dream. These outsiders were real. And they weren’t a Saganesque fantasy of wise and peaceful creatures who wanted to guide us on the path to enlightenment. These were killers who thought of humans as nothing more than another race to be subjugated. I wanted to go back to sleep, to dream my way out of this nightmare, but I’d been sleeping too much the last couple of clays. (Why should I be so tired after spending twenty plus ship-years in coldsleep?)
I didn’t know how much time had passed since my last meeting with the kzinti, but I expected they’d be coming soon. Either to use me to repair the ship, or to dispose of me as a useless implement. In either case I needed to prepare myself. Breakfast was another meatless exercise in frustration but standing under the shower did more to refresh me than all of my sleeping from the last few days. I stared at my face as I dried off and thought about shaving off my beard and retrimming my hair into its Belter’s crest, but didn’t have the energy or inclination.
I didn’t have to wait long for my captors to come and fetch me. The door opened without warning and in walked Slave Master followed by the small disheveled kzinti. Slave Master growled at the smaller kzinti, who reached into his pouch without making a sound, pulled out his syringe and pressed it into his arm while staring at me. The look on his face made me want to take pity on him, but when I thought of what he and his kind had done to the crew of our ship, I hoped that whatever he was going to do was going to hurt him. Badly.
For a moment nothing happened. Then my head exploded in pain and disorientation. Slave Master looked at me without any concern for my condition and spoke without preamble. “You come now. Fix ship.”
“I need to go to the Command Deck so I can check out the ship first.”
The disheveled kzinti… I was going to have to come up with a name for him. Fritz. That would do. Fritz moaned a few sounds to Slave Master and then went back to glaring at me.
“We go. Obey or die.”
We went.
The ship’s curving corridors were empty as we made our way to the Command Deck. I hadn’t seen any other kzinti since the first day, but I knew they were around. I could smell them. And sometimes I heard their caterwauling sounds echoing down the air ducts as we walked through empty passageways scarred by burn marks and ragged holes.
The Command Deck was deserted, and its condition made it painfully obvious just how desperate our situation was. All around me was a scene of death and destruction. I remembered my friends who should be here, but who weren’t. I tried not to feel the pain of their absence. I didn’t do a good job of it.
The empty captain’s couch had a broken headrest, with long tears going down the sides of the couch with cushioning material hanging out in tatters. I didn’t want to bring myself to recognize the stains on the couch and the surrounding floor.
Many of the command and control displays were dark or showed digital static. Ragged holes in the control panels gave evidence that weapons of some kind had mindlessly destroyed the ship’s equipment. Rusty stains having little to do with iron oxide covered many of the panels. A few flickering lights on the consoles were the only sign that power and life still flowed through the controls. The kzinti paid no attention to any of this, but just stared at me. Waiting for me to do something. Slave Master growled something and I sat down at the Engineer’s station and went to work.
A few of the flat panel displays still functioned and I used them to bring up colored charts and rows of numbers showing the status of the ship’s systems. But the picture they gave me was simultaneously confusing, incomplete and over detailed. All I could access was raw data, with vast amounts missing, with no easy way to synthesize it into concise information about the ship’s status. If other people had been here we could have worked together to make sense out of this patchwork of data. But that wasn’t an option the kzinti would make available to me. I’d need to use the VR system to try and make sense of the jumbled data.
The data gloves and head mounted displays for the VR system were in a storage locker at the rear of the Command Deck. The kzinti didn’t do anything but watch as I got up and went to get them. They stiffened as I reached for the locker and Slave Master growled.
“I’m just getting some equipment I need.” I hoped they didn’t misinterpret my nervousness.
Slave Master growled over at Fritz, who stared at me. And my head wrenched in a fresh wave of pain. Fritz muttered something to Slave Master that sounded like a cat having a fit and the large kzinti appeared to relax.
I pulled out a set of data gloves and a head mounted display from the locker and carried them back to the Engineer’s station where I adjusted them to fit my hands and head. My custom gear would have fit better, but considering the situation these would do just fine. After I plugged them in they went through their diagnostics and beeped their readiness. I adjusted the audio volume to a level that would let me hear Slave Master if he spoke and the video display so it would leave a transparent image of the Command Deck overlaid behind the immersive VR display. I knew I couldn’t concentrate on the ship if the VR system left me wondering what the kzinti were up to.
Slave Master and Fritz were watching me intently. I don’t know if they had anything like VR. Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t, but in any case, they didn’t move to stop me as I slid my hands into the data gloves and nestled the display unit over my head.
The audiophones were a warm softness on my ears. I could hear the empty echoes of silence and the ocean wave sound of the blood flowing through my ears. The data gloves fit my hands like, well, like gloves. They provided a tight pressure on my hand and I could feel the resistance of the force feedback sensors as I flexed my fingers. The watching kzinti became pale ghosts as I lowered the half-silvered visors of the head-mounted display and activated the VR program.
Windows filled with data appeared and floated in the virtual space in front of my face, superimposed on the scene of destruction in the Command Deck with the two kzinti watching me. This two-for-one visual display was disorienting and it would get even worse when I went full immersive. Hopefully, my freefall reflexes would help keep the conflicting visual cues from getting me too confused.
I moved my hands and brought up a window filled with display options. I selected a synthesized view of the ship along with overlaid options for displaying the status of various systems. It was time to go for a virtual walk and check things out. As the VR system executed my commands, the image of the Command Deck faded and a “god’s-eye” exterior view of our ship came into focus.
The view I saw might have been synthesized, but that didn’t make it any less impressive. Our ship, Obler’s Paradox, with its eight-hundred-foot truss work spine and assorted modules, was hanging motionless in
space surrounded by millions of stars with a small orange craft attached to its side like a sinister parasite. A larger spherical ship hovered menacingly nearby.
Our ship appeared to be in surprisingly good shape, other than the obvious damage caused by the kzinti and the normal discolorations caused by solar radiation and thruster firings. At the rear was the fusion engine that could push us up to a good fraction of the speed of light and the magnetic field generators for the Bussard ramscoop. Directly ahead of them were a set of spherical tanks, used to hold hydrogen for use when we were moving at merely interplanetary speeds. Near the middle of the ship was the cylindrical pressurized module used to store the coldsleep tanks, as well as the equipment and supplies needed by the crew, along with a hydroponic garden that provided fresh vegetables and air. A rotating toroidal module provided a living space for the crew. Finally, at the front of the ship were the vacuum storage areas where we kept our singleships and other vacuum-safe equipment behind the flat micrometeoroid/thermal control panels. Covering everything were the smooth superconducting panels that protected the equipment and people from the effects of the drive’s intense magnetic fields.
As I studied the damage to our ship, I had the computer bring up data blocks and display them over the image of the ship. Gradually I built up my assessment of the ship. I zoomed in my view until I was staring at the field generators.
It looked like something heavy had smashed into them. Perhaps a small kzinti ship had been drawn into the field generators when Jennifer had activated our drive. Those field generators developed magnetic fields that were strong enough to draw in ionized hydrogen from hundreds of miles away when we were moving at a good fraction of the velocity of light. Careful tuning of the fields shunted aside anything that wasn’t interstellar hydrogen, but I doubt the designers had considered having to deflect something as large or as close as one of those kzinti spacecraft. If they contained anything remotely susceptible to magnetic fields they would have been grabbed and pulled directly into the field generators.
