by Larry Niven
It might also have landed here long ago, and then the crew had suffered some accident. The ship would have deteriorated—all but the indestructible hull—under the force of time. But how would this version account for the trees crushed under the bows?
No, to tell the full story, he needed a personal reconnaissance of the derelict.
"Navigator, break out full body armor for both of us," he ordered. "Weaponsmaster, you stay at post. Destroy any danger that may approach. We will neutralize this threat—if any threat remains here—before going on to take our prize." The two crew members growled assent and went about their tasks.
Body armor came in a single articulated piece, like a hinged kzinti skin. It fitted solidly across the back, double-folded at the sides, and clasped with a tight seam up the belly. It was not designed as an environment suit, however, and covered only the backs and outer periphery of the arms, the fronts and sides of the legs. The attack surfaces. By rolling into a fetal crouch, a kzin wearing this armor could make himself practically invulnerable. The substructure was hardened steel, the surface an ablative material that would shed a ballistic slug or energy beam with equal facility. Of course, in that curled position, it could still be blown apart by explosives or melted with sufficient heat. But what kzin would crouch and wait that long, when he could fight?
Powered joints and solenoid-driven claws—connected to the kzin's own muscles with feedback pads—increased the wearer's strength and speed fivefold. The helmet's visor was fitted with devices that increased the senses of sight, hearing, and smell; offered an air mask to protect against poison gases, dusts and pollens; and connected the wearer with his companions through laser and electromagnetic telemetry and communications.
The body armor offered wonderful enhancements for a warrior—at the cost of two disadvantages. Donning it, inside the cramped spaces of a Scream of Vengeance-class interceptor, required the skills of an acrobat. Maneuvering it into and through the ship's tiny airlock required those same acrobatics combined with insufferable patience.
But, once he got his head into the open air, Nyawk-Captain hardly needed the helmet's filter enhancements to answer his earlier questions. His head swam with the scent of a dozen different long-chain polymers, dissolved into organic soup. He knocked the filters' sensitivity back three notches and took shallow breaths.
While Navigator finished his contortions and cycled the lock, Nyawk-Captain approached the abandoned hulk. His eyes quickly adjusted to the forest gloom and began noting details: the position of various metal pieces, the indentations they left in the ground, other impressions. As he moved toward the hull, another complex scent came up, fainter than the scream of broken plastics. Dirt, sweat, pheromones. . . .
Humans! The ship had come here under a human crew. But Nyawk-Captain could smell no blood. So whatever had become of them, the crew had clearly survived the crash. He bent toward one of the marks in the ground and sniffed it. The odors clung to it, a human footprint.
Employing the suit's visual enhancers, Nyawk-Captain traced others of these marks. All of them had a certain formal similarity, just as all kzinti paws were made to the same design. But there were variations in the size and depth of the impressions. He counted four separate sets of these prints, matching them with their right and left curves.
"What do you—?" Navigator began as he came up.
"Stay back!" Nyawk-Captain waved him away.
Placing his own pads carefully, he walked in circles, tracking each pair of prints. They moved back and forth over the crash site, now pausing and sinking fractionally into the hardened forest floor, now skimming and scuffing lightly over the dirt. Eventually, however, each track ended abruptly—a digging in with the toes, and then gone. Nyawk-Captain looked up, up, into the treetops. He knew little enough about human physiology, but he could guess that not even the sons of Hanuman could make such a leap. But where else, then, would they be?
"This is an empty hole, My Captain," Navigator observed.
"But not too long empty. I can still smell them."
"Yes, but what of it? This ship—the only hard contact in this system—cannot interfere with us. We have nothing to fear from naked humans, wherever they may have gone. We should immediately retrieve the Thrintun artifact and then leave here."
"Well reasoned, Navigator, if not properly expressed for your superior officer's ears. We still have the question of what could have caused such damage to this hull."
"An academic inquiry, at best."
"Perhaps. Still, we shall—"
The sound came softly at first, through the aural enhancers. Nyawk-Captain thought it might be the creep of the forest floor under thermal stresses. Standing among the lattice pattern of upright trunks, he could not at first place it. He swiveled his helmet to scan the background.
"Weapons—!" he tongued the comm switch, then let the call die in his throat. A gliding white shape, easily three or four times the bulk of his ship, had loomed behind and settled over Cat's Paw. Its flesh would be blocking Nyawk-Captain's radio pulse. And besides, Weaponsmaster should already be aware of his predicament.
"Best we find cover," he told Navigator.
"Where?"
"In here," Nyawk-Captain replied, and sprang toward the nearest kzin-sized hole in the Leaf-Eater hull.
They crouched against the inside curve of the spindle, gasping in the waves of resinous vapor that assailed their noses until they could fasten their masks. At the same time, the carborundum claws extruding from their armored feet tried for purchase on the slick surface in an effort to keep them from slipping into the fuming liquid that sloshed in the bilges. Through a scar in the alien hull's outer coating, Nyawk-Captain watched the white mass writhing over his ship. He briefly caught the flash of a hard, crystalline edge under the Whitefood's bulk. Something dripped off that edge.
Whatever Weaponsmaster decided to do, it were best he acted quickly. Nyawk-Captain was beginning to understand what processes had eaten away everything but the hull of this human ship.
Suddenly, the huge pale body trembled, bulged upward—then blossomed outward in a mist of blood. Bright, red drops of it coalesced on the transparent surface through which Nyawk-Captain was looking. These were followed by strings and streamers of red flesh that slid and fell out of the blood cloud.
When the dripping and pattering of raw flesh stopped, Nyawk-Captain and Navigator climbed out of their hiding place. The stench of organic chemicals had disappeared in the aroma of fresh, warm meat. Navigator swung up his visor and mask, pulled a gooey strand off the outside of the Leaf-Eater hull, and sucked it off his fingers.
"Delicious!"
Nyawk-Captain, who had been studying the flank of Cat's Paw which emerged from the garland of meat and bones, stopped to try his own taste. After weeks of eating reconstituted meat and artificial proteins, the flavor was wonderful. Delicate, like grik-grik caught in mid-spring, so that the first flush of adrenaline barely touched it. Satisfying, like a haunch of oolerg that had been fed on grain and then run until the acids of fatigue had fully flavored the meat. Sweet as . . . It was, Nyawk-Captain decided, whatever flavor he wanted it to be. That was how the Whitefoods had been engineered to taste.
"Enough. We waste time," he told Navigator, then switched to the comm link. "Weaponsmaster? That was quick—"
"I abase myself, Nyawk-Captain!"
"Explain."
"In dislodging the Whitefood, I used too much force for proximity to such an inert mass. I have damaged our ship."
"Catalog the damages."
"Primary and secondary lifting plates, short-range weapons, long-range communications, navigational and sensory antennas."
"Can you effect repairs?"
"Eventually, if we carry the right spares."
"Can you defend against another attack by the Whitefoods?"
"With warning—and I shall guard against their approach—the long-range weapons should be more than effective."
"Begin working on the ship,
then. Navigator will assist you. Out."
"And what will you be doing while we repair the ship?" Navigator asked in a tone that bordered on insolence. "Sir."
"I will go after the Thrintun box."
"Yes, the box. That most important box. For which you have jeopardized our mission and put at risk an entire kzinti fleet!"
Nyawk-Captain felt his armor turning, almost of its own volition, to face this errant crew member. It was bending to assume a defensive crouch, conforming to his will almost without conscious command. "Do you have more to say?" he asked stiffly, fully expecting a shrill scream of challenge.
"No, Nyawk-Captain."
"Then understand this. If we are late for the rendezvous, all three of us will be whistling vacuum—unless we have a suitable peace offering for Admiral Lehruff. That box is now our life. Do you understand?"
"Yes, Nyawk-Captain."
"Good. You should start on your work. The ship must be ready to lift by the time I return."
The chastened kzin began the process of climbing in through the airlock.
Nyawk-Captain tongued his comm switch. "Weaponsmaster. Give me bearing and range to the second hardsight contact."
"Those systems are currently inoperative, sir."
"Curse it," Nyawk-Captain said mildly. "Can you rig a hand-held unit?"
"I can modify a ranging sight."
"Do so at once, and pass it through the airlock."
"Yes, sir, but I cannot guarantee its accuracy within a thousand cubits."
"It need only give the container's general direction and a sense of its proximity."
"You will have that, at least, sir."
While he waited for the new tool, Nyawk-Captain used the suit's claw to cut fillets from the ring of blasted meat girdling Cat's Paw.
* * *
Watching from his hanging point in the forest canopy, Cuiller almost cheered when the Bandersnatch slid over the dome of the kzinti ship. And he blinked back tears of rage mixed with envy when the kzinti weapons blew the creature apart. There, but for the few milliseconds that had padded Jook's reaction time, might stand Callisto, ready to fly.
Cuiller noted that one kzin remained on guard outside the ship, clad in efficient-looking armor, while the other returned inside on some business. Then the first retrieved something through the hatch and headed off through the trees.
Although Cuiller's sense of direction had suffered somewhat from remaining suspended in his spider harness, twisting among the branches, for almost an hour, he had no doubt what heading the kzin was taking. The Patriarchy possessed its own form of deep radar.
Time to begin thinking like a soldier, he told himself, instead of a tourist.
The first problem was to coordinate his team without radio transmissions or—given that the walking kzin's armor was probably enhanced—too much shouting. He dropped cautiously down through the leaf screen into the clear space below the canopy. The whirr of his winder motor must have signaled the others, for first Krater, then Gambiel and Jook, also dropped into view.
"Now what, Boss?" Jook asked conversationally.
"We're going to keep out of the Big Guy's way, aren't we?" from Krater.
"Not if we want to get that stasis-box," Cuiller answered, trying not to whisper.
"Get it—and take it where?" Krater asked. "And how?"
"First things first."
"What I can't figure," from Gambiel, "is why the Bandersnatchi on this planet are so hostile. It's not their pattern. And they can't evolve."
"You're assuming we've seen more than one specimen," Cuiller said. "The one the kzinti blasted down there may be the same that ate Callisto, coming back for dessert. Anyway, that's something to think about later. Right now, we've got a fully armed and alerted kzin on the loose. . . . Did anyone see climbing gear on that body armor?"
"He doesn't need it," Gambiel replied. "With his power-driven claws, he can go up one of these tree trunks at a dead run."
"How much does that suit weigh?" Cuiller asked.
"Seventy-five kilos."
"That means kzin and suit together mass almost three hundred kilos." Cuiller experimentally flexed his knees and pumped his back sharply—and bobbed like a toy on his almost invisible thread. "He won't have much mobility among these springy branches and vines, will he?"
"Then he'd better pick exactly the right tree to climb," Gambiel agreed.
"I have a decision to make," the commander announced. "Do we all follow Kzin One and try to find the stasis-box ahead of him? Or does some part of our force stay here, to keep an eye on Kzin Two and the ship? Opinions?"
"Kzinti Two and Three," Gambiel corrected.
"I thought this interceptor class was a two-man affair."
Gambiel shrugged, and started his own bobbing dance. "Someone had to fight off the Bandersnatch from inside. It wasn't done by automatics."
"All right, then it's three kzinti and a ship to divide among four pairs of eyes," Cuiller noted.
"I think we should stay together;" Krater said. "And go for the box."
"Reasons?"
"The other two kzinti wouldn't be going anywhere except to follow the first," she answered. "And the ship is staying put, too."
"How do you know that?" Jook asked. "The kzinti might know a lot more about this world than we do. Those two could have a dozen interesting places to visit and things to do. After all, Beanstalk might be their private hunting preserve, or something."
"Then the kzinti would have found the stasis-box long before this," Krater countered. "And they wouldn't have let the Bandersnatch surprise them. Anyway, that explosion damaged their ship."
"How do you figure?" Cuiller asked.
"Wouldn't that big a bang have knocked some widgets loose from our hull? And that kzinti sphere isn't even from General Products."
"Circumstantial evidence," Jook scoffed.
"Besides which, from where I was sitting, I saw some pieces hanging loose."
"I hate to interrupt this," from Gambiel, softly, "but while we chatter, Kzin One is getting away."
"Right," Cuiller said. He made his decision. "We'll all go. Fan out in line abreast, keeping a space of just one tree between each person. Stay hidden in the lower branches, if you can. And stay ahead of the kzin.
"We'll follow our original vector. At half a klick out, everyone start sorting through the branches around your assigned tree grid. The first to find the stasis-box, takes it. If Kzin One interrupts while you're doing that, kill him—if you can. Any questions?"
"Why don't we just shoot Kzin One from up here?" Jook asked.
"That's ablative armor," from Gambiel.
"Oh, right."
At Cuiller's nod, they all wound up on their lines to get a foothold in the canopy. Alone among the greenery, the commander readied his grapple in the launcher and fired forward along their path—which was also the kzin's. Around him he could hear the muffled chuff, flutter and thunk of similar activity.
Could Kzin One hear it too?
* * *
Swinging through the trees like a goddamn monkey! Trying to find the Slaver box by beating the bushes!
Angry thoughts swirled in Sally Krater's head as she balanced her feet on a leaf-cloaked branch and got ready to fire her launcher. She held it tightly, aiming along the course that she and the others had been following.
She could hear them around her, moving quietly through the overbrush, each making no more sound than the wind or any other animal up here. Now and again, she did hear the prolonged whirr of a winder as one of them dropped into the lower layers and peeked out to make sure Kzin One was still on track.
Everyone was trying to move quietly—except Jook. With his bad leg and his natural clumsiness, he bumbled through the leaves, missed his footing on branches, snagged his line and cursed softly while freeing it. Not softly enough to remain unheard by his fellow crewmembers, but maybe softly enough to go unnoticed by the pair of augmented kzinti ears moving ninety meters below them.
/> After a kilometer of travel, Krater knew Cuiller had angled his track to intersect Gambiel's and assigned the Jinxian to watch Jook's movements and help him be quiet. Krater herself, veteran of too many biologists' observation blinds, not to mention an early life in partial gravity, knew she was more graceful than any of them in this floating greenery.
But that did not keep the angry questions from buzzing about in her mind.
For instance, just how was any of them to know when they'd traveled the full two and a half kilometers to the Slaver box? Really! Cuiller was asking them to track accurately through the jungle while swinging around tree trunks and through shallow arcs, covering anywhere between twenty and fifty meters with each set of the grapple. In all that confusion, he expected them to stop within one or two trunks—a deviation of no more than fifty or seventy-five meters—from a predefined point. It couldn't be done! And that was just one sign of how badly this expedition had gone to hell. Ever since Jook had lost the ship . . . !
Krater angled her launcher at forty-five degrees above the horizon—or where she thought the horizon might be, much as she was bouncing around inside a blob of green leaves. She fired.
Chuff-CLANG!
The grapple had flown five maybe six meters, stopped dead, and recoiled. Now she could hear it slithering, falling through the branches, its monofilament cutting a vertical slice through the jungle before her. She jigged frantically with her upper body—as much as she could without falling off her branch—trying to jerk on the grapple's friction brake. If it failed to set, the grapple would fall all the way to the forest floor, signaling her presence to their clawed and armored shadow below. The monofilament caught and twanged on a stout branch. Krater could feel by the tension on the line that the brake had activated. She began winding in, breathing again.
What had the grapple hit up there? she wondered. Vine, branch, trunk, or "peekaboo" body part . . . anything in the projectile's flight path should have absorbed the point and snagged its tines. Only a rock or—
Krater wound the grapple up into her hand and reloaded the launcher. This time she aimed higher and shot.
