Man-Kzin Wars V

by Larry Niven

  With his heavyworld muscles, of course, Gambiel went up and down like a monkey.

  Krater, who had the advantage of height and not much mass to go with it, seemed to step from the ship to the ground.

  Cuiller, despite Beanstalk's lighter gravity, still found it a workout.

  "What's wrong with this picture?" Krater asked, looking around when they had assembled under the bow. Gambiel scuffed the soil with the side of his cabin moccasin. The ground was smooth and crusted, like a section of sun-baked clay in exposed terrain. He turned over no ground cover, no dead leaves, no animal droppings or pieces of bark, nothing. They found no undergrowth, either, not even around the tree trunks. None of the vines that wove through the canopy reached down to the forest floor.

  Cuiller walked over to the nearest trunk. It was at least two meters in diameter with a hard, scaly bark. He pried at the bark with his fingers but could not break off a piece. No room for invading insects, small birds, or snakes.

  He looked up. The overhead leaves were as still as the underside of a green cloud. Of course, if any wind were stirring in the treetops, the sound and movement were cushioned by 30 meters of netted foliage.

  Cuiller squatted down to examine the trunk's base. The bark was scraped and scarred raw there, at least on the side facing him. The wounds went a third of the way around the bole and extended more than a meter up from the ground. They wept a thick, ruddy sap. He duck-walked along the trunk's circumference and discovered that the cuts faded out into white, scraped wood, which looked almost dead. Beyond that, by another third of the circumference, was a patch of new, green bark—but even there he could see a pattern of parallel scrapes and gouges. Areas of sap, clean wood, and new growth alternated around the trunk.

  Something had been abusing this tree on a regular basis, coming at it from all sides.

  Cuiller stood up and walked toward the next tree, counting his paces as he went. He knew his stride was just less than a meter. Factoring the correction into his count gave him a distance of twenty-five meters between the two trees. He examined that base and found the same pattern of abuse.

  He walked on to a third tree—again, covering just twenty-five meters—and saw the same thing. And he confirmed that the three trees were growing in a line.

  On a hunch, he walked back to the second tree and sighted to the third. A patch of white wood there matched a similar patch here. In the same way, running sap faced sap on a tree sighted 120 degrees around the trunk's circumference. Green bark matched green bark on yet another facing tree.

  Cuiller went from tree to tree, always twenty-five meters, and found the same pattern of parallel scars.

  Logic said that something 25 meters wide was being dragged through the forest here like a rake. And whatever it was, it swept up leaves, scored the tree trunks, clipped any undergrowth, and scoured the soil bare, compacting it to the consistency of a mud brick.

  "Did you bring radios?" he asked Gambiel.

  The weapons officer handed him a palm-sized unit. Cuiller tuned and spoke into it.

  "Hugh?"

  "Right here, Jared. I can even see you through the window, sometimes."

  "How's the knee?"

  "Painkillers are kicking in."

  "Can you get up to the deep radar?"

  "Not without a climb, but I can work the repeater at the comm."

  "Right. Give us a bearing to the return image, would you?"

  "Just a sec. . . . Ten degrees off the port bow, still at a range of two and a half kilometers. And, Captain—it's above us now."

  "I know. In the treetops, right?"

  "Well, the angle is right for it, anyway. But how would—?"

  "I think we're going to find that everything interesting on this planet—which Sally has named 'Beanstalk,' by the way—is up in the forest canopy."

  "All right. You're leaving me with the ship?"

  "Can you lift if you have to?"

  "So long as you all are clear of the area, I can punch up the main ion engine, have her hot in ninety seconds, and scoot."

  "Do that, if you see anything."

  "What am I going to see, down here?"

  "Somebody's keeping the grounds swept nice and clean. Watch out for whoever it is."

  "Sure thing. Do you explorer types have weapons?"

  Gambiel overheard that. He turned his right hip toward Cuiller, exposing three hand-fitted variable lasers clipped to his belt. Over that same shoulder he carried a brace of laser rifles, which had a wider aperture and a longer beam pulse.

  "We've got them."

  "What about food, water, thermal—"

  "I've got my field test kit," Krater spoke up. "And we're all carrying a foodbar or two for snacking. Quit nagging, Mother-Hugh. We've only got two klicks of ground to cover."

  "Okay. Be back soon."

  "In two shakes," Cuiller agreed and clicked off.

  They headed out, walking easily between the trees on the bearing Jook had given them. After half a kilometer of parklike open space, they came upon their first patch of undergrowth. Green shoots, bushes, and saplings grew up in an uncleared area that was shaped like a pentagon. Cuiller noticed immediately that its points were anchored by five of the mature trees.

  "Wait here," he ordered, and began to wade into the greenery.

  "Captain?" Gambiel called. When Cuiller turned, the Jinxian checked the charge on a hand weapon and tossed it to him.

  Cuiller accepted it with a nod.

  He pushed his way into the secondary growth, bending stalks and branches aside and wishing they had brought along a few simpler weapons, like machetes. Twenty-five paces in from the nearest tree, he found what he'd been expecting: a broken stump two meters wide and a fallen section of trunk. He looked straight up, hoping to find a patch of sky. The green vault was thinner here, perhaps lighter in color, but still unbroken. Most of the saplings around him, he noticed, had tough, straight boles with flat, branching crowns.

  He thumbed the radio and spoke into it. "Hugh, watch out for the groundskeepers. They're definitely intelligent."

  "How do you figure that?" Krater cut in, having caught him on the same channel.

  Cuiller described what he saw. "Whoever it is that's dragging the forest floor also knows enough to let a downed tree replace itself," he concluded. "Otherwise the canopy would thin out and fall within a generation or two. This forest is being managed, and that smacks of intelligence to me."

  "You're leaping ahead of yourself," she said, putting on her professional xenobiologist's hat. "A lot of natural phenomena could explain what you've got there."

  "Well—" Cuiller was unsure of his ground.

  "I like Jared's interpretation," Gambiel said. "Anyway, let's be prepared. Err on the side of intelligence."

  "Sounds good to me," Jook put in, from the ship. "I'll watch for them."

  "All right," from Krater. "Have it your way. But don't be disappointed if it's a pack of grazing animals with picky appetites, some kind of stream flow, a toxic groundwort, or something."

  "We can deal with those," Gambiel said.

  "I'm coming out," Cuiller told them, turning around in the patch of groundcover.

  "Let's start considering options," the commander said when he was back on the swept floor with the others. He pointed at the spider rigs on the Jinxian's shoulder. "How do these things work?"

  Gambiel unslung them, laid two on the ground, and spread one in his flat hands.

  "This is an adjustable five-point harness. Over the shoulders, around the waist, between the legs. The takeup reel with motor winder clips on here." He thunked himself in the chest, just below the sternum. "The hand unit—" He picked up a gun-shaped object. "—launches the grapple with a gas charge that vents backward to stabilize your reaction. That's because this rig was designed for freefall, remember,"

  Cuiller picked up the grapple. It had a point and three spring-loaded tines—all sharpened. "We'd use a thing like this around vacuum gear?"

  "The origi
nal head has a suction pad and magnets. This is a terrestrial modification."

  "Right."

  "What about drag from the trailing line?" Krater asked.

  "For one thing, it's all monofilament. Weighs about three grams to the kilometer. But you got to watch out: put it under tension and it'll take your fingers off. Handle the line only with the winder, or with steel-mesh gloves.

  "The other thing is, the line goes with the grapple, paying out from a cassette." Gambiel showed them, taking one from his pocket. He fitted and locked the spindle-shaped cassette into the base of the grapple, drew out a meter or so of the nearly invisible line from its end, and clicked the grapple into the gas gun. "Attach the free end to a spare reel on your winder." He took that from another pocket. "Fire the gun—" He pantomimed shooting up into the trees. "—and when the hooks are anchored, jerk it once to set a friction brake on the cassette. Then reel in and up you go."

  "What happens when all your line is wound in on the takeup reel?" Cuiller asked.

  "You retrieve the grapple, discard both the old reel and cassette, fit new ones, take aim and fire again." Gambiel shrugged.

  "How much line in one setup?"

  "Ten kilometers."

  "Okay. Simple enough. Let's get into those harnesses now."

  "Why?" Krater asked, her eyebrows coming together.

  "Evasive action," Cuiller answered. "If we meet anything down on the ground here, we may not be able to outrun it. Or outfight it. Our best course might be to disappear. Up into the treetops."

  The Jinxian nodded. "When you shoot, try to put the grapple as close to a main trunk as you can. Thicker branches there—more likely to hold your weight."

  "But the canopy held our whole ship pretty well," Krater observed. "For a while."

  "True," Gambiel said. "So, suit yourself."

  Cuiller stepped into the harness, found the adjustment points, and pulled them snug. He fitted the winder motor to his chest, figured out the simple lever controls for its reversible gearing, and clipped the first empty reel onto it. He put a cassette in the grapple, fed out a meter of the silk-like line, and found a loop at the harness belt's left side to hold the grapple. The gun fitted into a flat holster on the right. The three of them divided up their supply of gas cartridges, cassettes, and reels.

  "What happens when these run out?" Krater demanded, counting her share with her fingers.

  "We won't be here that long," the commander said. He looked to Gambiel. "We still walking that way?" Cuiller pointed the direction, angling his hand around one side of the pentangle of underbrush.

  The Jinxian paused, considered some inner sense, and nodded.

  They walked along, deviating from a straight line only to pass around any trunks in their way.

  "Whoop!" Krater shouted.

  She suddenly floated away from Gambiel's other side. Cuiller caught a glance of her white jumper flashing past and in front of them as she soared into the trees. She covered the ninety vertical meters in about twenty seconds, moving so quickly that at the end of her arc Krater barely had time to cock her feet up to reach for a toehold. The lieutenant disappeared into the canopy with the barest rustle of leaves.

  "Serve her right if she cracks her head on a branch," Gambiel said. "Should we follow her up?"

  The commander pointed ahead. "Our goal is over that way. We'll reach it faster walking on the ground."

  "We might lose her."

  "We've got visibility of what—?" He looked around. "A hundred meters down here? And less than ten meters up there in the leaves. If she gets lost, she can always drop down and we'll spot her."

  "If we're looking in the right direction."

  "She'll probably scream or something," Cuiller said.

  "Yeah, she probably will."

  The two men walked on through the trees.

  * * *

  The sound came from Navigator's panel. It was a strange burring—full of enough sonics to make a kzin's neck ruff stand out from his chin. Nyawk-Captain searched his memory for a sound like it and finally decided it was not part of normal ship's operation. Perhaps a malfunction? A small, fast motor vibrating out of its bearings? But coming from inside the solid-state circuitry of the panel . . . ? Then a wrinkle of memory surfaced, a significant detail from his early simulator drills with the Vengeance-class interceptor.

  "You have a return from the hardsight," he snarled over his shoulder.

  "Wh-what—sir?"

  "Wake up, root breath! Your station is active—and signaling you."

  "Ah, yes, Nyawk-Captain. I see that now. Sorry, sir."

  "Vigilance, Navigator. Now, describe the sighting."

  "It is still several light-hours distant . . ."

  "Wake up, damn you! Give me facts in the order I need to know them. Is the anomaly along our prescribed course? Or somewhere off in the starfields?"

  "The sighting's deviation is . . . fourteen degrees from our projected—"

  "So we would not otherwise have walked across it. Describe the contact."

  "Contact?"

  Navigator's surprise was genuine, because kzinti battle referents were precise. Passive objects might be "sighted." Enemy vessels were a "contact."

  "What does your training say?" Nyawk-Captain replied. "This ship was designed to cruise with its hardsight range detector automatically probing along our forward path. Why else—if not to detect the Leaf Eaters' improbable hulls?"

  "To seek out Thrintun boxes?" Navigator replied brightly.

  "Fool!" Nyawk-Captain spat.

  "A witticism, sir! I abase myself."

  "For a Navigator who sleeps at station, you should have no comedy available to your mouth."

  "I humbly abase myself."

  "Describe the contact."

  "The hardsight return is in close proximity to a star, but not within its photosphere. So the contact is either in orbit itself or lodged on a planet—although the surrounding return is too weak to show such a body. There is one object . . . No, correction. At extreme gain I observe two contacts. One is sharp. The other is fainter and . . . fuzzy. It may be merely a reflection of the first. It certainly is close enough for that."

  "What are the dimensions?"

  "At this range, Nyawk-Captain . . ."

  "Is either one big enough to be a hull?"

  "One of the reflections may be, but the distance . . ."

  "Very well. Bend your fullest attention to refining your observations."

  "Shall we alter course? If we could draw nearer . . ."

  "I will decide, when you give me further useful information."

  "As we move to pass that system, it's possible that the two signals might show some degree of separation. From that we may learn—"

  "Provide me with facts, Navigator."

  "Such is my only objective, Nyawk-Captain."

  "Very good. Be vigilant—and wakeful!"

  * * *

  Sally Krater hitched her feet up, pivoting about the liftpoint at her solar plexus, where the takeup reel whined and throbbed. After the soles of her moccasins broke through the leaf veils of the lower canopy, she slipped the clutch on the winding mechanism. The pull against her chest halted abruptly, but her mass continued to rise in a flattened arc. With Beanstalk's reduced gravity, she slowly topped out, pitched forward to the length of her remaining line, and fell gently back through the leaves, swinging on the grapple anchored above her.

  Krater suddenly realized that her back could be shattered against any heavy tree limb coming up behind her. She immediately dragged with her heels through the leaves, trying to kill her momentum. At this level, the greenery was dense but not cloying. The leaves were flat and veined, each about the size of her open hand. They clustered in billows around her, supported on springy whips that were either tiny branches or vines—she couldn't yet say which. As Krater swung, her head, arms, and legs batted through masses of these leaves, stinging where her skin was exposed but not otherwise hurting her. When she looked down between h
er feet she could see random patches of brown ground. At the end of her last rising swing, she glimpsed in one of these patches two pale dots that might be Cuiller and Gambiel, far below and looking up.

  Once her momentum was stopped and she hung straight down, she began to reel in slowly, rising meter by meter through the canopy. Within five meters she had reached the grapple, which had fallen across the first stout branch she had seen—up in what she wanted to call the canopy's mid-level. She twisted slowly on her monofilament, conscious that the invisible strand ran just centimeters from her face. Any sudden motion, she realized, might clip her nose or an ear. She wondered how close she had come to cutting her own head off when she topped out and pitched after that first upward rush.

  Krater's thighpockets held a rescue kit, and from it she took a packet of fluorescent dye, suitable for marking a water landing. She broke it open and ran the exposed sponge lightly up and down the line, until it became a bright purple steak before her, like an etching laser flashing through smoke. With the remaining dye she reached up and soaked the line spindled in the grapple's socket, then the slack taken up on the reel at her chest. She made a mental note to suggest this to Gambiel, when they got together again.

  As she hung there, her mass started to spin lazily, and she put a hand against the branch above her to stop it. The sudden pressure dislodged something up there, and a stream of liquid cascaded down. It splashed off her shoulder and struck a bunch of leaves below and off to her left. She carefully tasted the drops clinging to her uniform: water; sweet and cool.

  From her other pocket, she took out her field kit. It popped open and she keyed up the gas chromatograph and amino acid analyzer. The only samples within reach were that water and the leaves around her. Although she had no immediate plans to eat the leaves themselves, they would provide a clue to the nature of indigenous life on Beanstalk. The flora would reflect any general tendency toward toxins, heavy metals, or wrong-handed molecules. Balancing the kit on her raised knee, she tore a nearby leaf into bits and pressed them against the first sensor mesh. She dabbed a few of the drops that remained on her shoulder into the second mesh.