Man-Kzin Wars 9 Read online

  “This is appalling.” Raden sighed. “Well, evidently the attitude is a common one. We’d better drop the subject.”

  “Yes,” she said coldly. She knocked back her beer and rose. “Thank you for the drink.” She left him.

  The relationship continued amicably, but warmth had gone out of it.

  6

  While Freuchen accelerated sunward, the first observer probes shot forth from her and began transmitting their readings and images. When a synthesis of the sights was ready, everyone aboard crowded into the wardroom to see it on the big screen. Excitement swiftly became awe.

  In itself the star was nothing unusual, a type G dwarf. It had formed from the primordial cloud only about a billion years ago, and as yet shone with only about 65% the luminosity of Sol or half that of Alpha Centauri A—fierce enough! Though not naked-eye visible, material was still raining into it in vast quantities. Optical programs, selectively and suitably taming fieriness, showed it wildly turbulent. Spots swirled in flocks, flares and prominences fountained, corona shimmered as far as a million kilometers outward.

  Six planets went about it in eccentric orbits. The inmost would not survive much longer.

  It had formed at a distance where the growth of a gas giant was possible, and it became one in truth, a mass of ten Jupiters. But already the unbalanced gravitational forces of an irregularly distributed proto-system had been spiraling it inward. Its pull on itself remained so strong that it lost little or nothing as it neared the sun and temperatures soared. The atmosphere distended, though, until now an ovoid 280,000 kilometers long glowed furnace hot, chaotic with storms that could have swallowed Earth or Wunderland whole. Friction with the thick interplanetary medium had almost circularized its path, and worked together with resonances to make this ever shorter. Stripped of moons, it raced through the coronal fringes a million kilometers from the stellar photosphere, around in eleven and a half hours, each time faster and faster. Rotation had been slowed by the huge tidal bulges until cloud whorls needed fifteen hours to face out to the dark again.

  Such were the facts and figures. The reality was roiling, seething, terrible magnificence. It was as if the bloodbeat in the ears of humans struck dumb by the sight faintly echoed those surfs, eruptions, hurricanes, and violences.

  After many minutes of silence, Raden said very quietly, “Yes, our luck has held, barely. I got the latest computation earlier this watch. The planet’s practically at the Roche limit. It’s due to start breaking up.”

  “When?” asked Captain Worning.

  “Not quite certain. Maybe as soon as two weeks, maybe as much as five or six. What will happen then and how—we don’t have an adequate model to predict. We need more data, endless data.”

  “What we also need is names for those…bodies,” said Lili Deutsch. “Catalogue numbers are too unhandy and hard to remember.”

  “Yes,” agreed Toyo Takata. “And they are a mockery of this.” She shivered. “It is not well to mock the elemental powers.”

  She’s not superstitious, thought Tyra. She’s right.

  “Some of us have been talking about that,” put in Ernesto Padilla. “What of Hell for the star and Lucifer for the planet?”

  “No,” replied Maria Kivi. “Lucifer brought his fate on himself.”

  Words, words, a shield against the overwhelming mightiness yonder. Tyra raised a hand. Eyes turned toward her; she seemed to feel the touch of Raden’s. “I have been thinking too,” she ventured. “I—I suggest Pele and Kumukahi.”

  “Who the devil would they be?” barked Marcus Hauptmann.

  “From Hawaii on Earth,” Tyra told them. “A myth they remember there. Pele was the volcano goddess. Kumukahi was a young chief who unwittingly insulted her. She destroyed him.”

  Kamehameha Ryan had related it, back in Saxtorph’s Rover. She had tried to keep him out of her mind. Through no fault of his own, memories of him hurt. Maybe that was why this came back to her in a sleepless nightwatch two daycycles ago.

  “Splendid!” Raden exclaimed. “Perfect! You’ll know names for the other planets too, won’t you? Thanks a thousandfold.”

  “I don’t remember much more. Not enough to go around, certainly.”

  Takata said, “But I can supply some. I have family in Hawaii, and works on folklore they sent me are in my personal database.”

  “M-m, well, all right by me, but not official,” Worning rumbled.

  “Leave that to the officials. I’ll undertake to overbear them if they get stuffy.” Raden carried the rest along on the tide of his enthusiasm.

  As if this really mattered, Tyra thought. Oh, it does, in a way, but that much? To him?

  Because it came from me?

  Congratulations surrounded her. Raden beamed and waved above the heads. “We’ll have a drink on that, Tyra, as soon as may be,” he called.

  I’m forgiven, she thought. Not that I suppose he was ever angry with me, just with my attitude…The anger was mainly mine, and unreasonable.

  He’s not going to let me stand aside from him if he can help it.

  The knowledge was at once a gladness and an alarm signal.

  Raden turned to the captain. “I’ll take the boat out for a closer, personal look tomorrow.”

  “What?” protested Worning. “We won’t be in our orbit yet.”

  “She has delta vee to burn. Not that I’ll waste any.”

  “She’s our one auxiliary until the hyperwave gang rejoin us.”

  “Samurai will be close, with several, in case of emergency. Which is ridiculously improbable. And you know I’m a qualified pilot.”

  “Why, however, when our probes are not even all deployed?” the captain asked.

  “Precisely for that reason. A live brain, a trained eye, alert for the unforeseeable. Which, at present, is virtually everything in and around Kumukahi. I’ll wager you a month’s pay we’ll be rewriting the robots’ programs immediately after my first excursion.”

  Worning scowled. “I do not take the bet, because I will not allow this. It is reckless.”

  Affability and persuasiveness flooded over him. “Captain, with due and considerable respect, I beg leave to prove to you that it isn’t. Instead, it’s the best investment we can make. Time is short. We can’t afford to miss a single chance of learning something. It’ll never come again.”

  He’ll win, Tyra knew, and go cometing off, laughing for sheer joy. He will return like a knight of old from a joust with giants.

  She could well-nigh see plume and pennon flying in the wind of his gallop.

  7

  She had planned to conduct some interviews aboard Samurai, but it was an astonishment to be invited, virtually bidden, over there just four days after Freuchen took orbit. A naval auxiliary with a tight-lipped pilot flitted her quickly across the few hundred klicks between, and she was conducted directly to a communications-outfitted cabin. Captain Bihari sat alone at a desk, confronting a screen live but blank. The door slid shut behind her.

  “Be seated,” was the brusque greeting. However, when Tyra had taken a chair opposite, the officer said with a grim smile, “This should give you quite an interesting story.” The tone was serious. “For my part, I want a responsible outside observer, to report the truth afterward. Already we’re having a crisis with the kzin. Please stay where you are and keep silence while I am transmitting. You will note that you can see what goes on but are not in the scanner field. I don’t suppose these ones would recognize you and recall the part you played against their kind, but if any of them did, matters could get entirely out of hand. The situation is bad enough without taking the slightest added risk.”

  “I could have stayed aboard the Freuchen, patched in,” Tyra said.

  Bihari frowned. “Too many others could eavesdrop. I don’t call them untrustworthy, but—different people interpret things in different ways, and soon rumors run wild.” She sighed. “The political balance on Earth is such that we have to—we have orders to avoid any unnecessary word
or action that might conceivably be taken as ‘aggressive’ or ‘provocative.’”

  Tyra stiffened. “Really? Well, ma’am, you must decide what is necessary, mustn’t you?”

  “Yes, and justify it, here and at home. I wouldn’t put it past certain parties to claim we falsified our databases. Easy to do, after all.”

  No, Tyra thought, Craig would never be so paranoid. He simply, genuinely wants peace—what decent human being doesn’t?—and believes we can have it if we try. “I see, ma’am. I’m your impartial witness.” Is that possible for me?…I’ll have my opinions, but I won’t write lies.

  “You’ve come barely in time. I have commenced conversation”—again the wolf’s grin—“as the diplomats say, with Ghrul-Captain aboard their mother ship. His response to my complaint, as the diplomats would also say, should arrive shortly.” Eight or nine minutes either way for radio to travel between the vessels circling Pele.

  Dismay: “It’s about Birgit and the Dalmadys, isn’t it?”

  “Who or what else would it be?”

  The fact jabbed through Tyra. Eisenberg had piloted a boat carrying the biological team to the third planet, Kama-pua’a. The second was less favorably positioned at present; though the third orbited farther out, it wasn’t much more than thirty hours off, at one gee with midpoint turnover. If something unexpected began happening to Kumukahi, which it might at any moment, the boat would be wanted back straightaway. Meanwhile, husband and wife could do science yonder.

  “But—they weren’t going to land where the kzinti are,” Tyra protested.

  More remembrance. Kama-pua’a was another giant, with a swarm of moons. The two biggest had thin atmospheres. They were close enough that tidal flexion, as well as whatever internal heat remained, kept them warm enough that life was perhaps, barely, germinating on either or both. Its origins were so various, probably many of the possibilities still unknown…The boat had sent images back, a great spheroid banded with clouds and storms, the craggy surface of Moku-ola ahead, the joyful expectations inboard…

  The kzinti had established their bases on the small outer satellite the humans called Poliahu, obviously mostly ice.

  “You know and the kzinti know what sensitive instruments can do, especially at short ranges like that,” Bihari said. “Frankly, I would have liked very much to send some of ours along, but my orders—Hold.”

  The screen filled with a tigerish countenance. The voice rumbled with a menace and—glee?—that the flat English of the translator had no need to convey. “Your words are insolent. No Hero can tolerate such. You will make amends for the intrusion, amends which I will specify, or your spies will suffer the consequences that they have earned.”

  Bihari kept her tone level, steeliness only in the dark face. “I deny again that they are spies and that your gang had any right whatsoever to seize them. They will be returned promptly, unharmed, or there will indeed be consequences. However, as a point of information, what demands have you in mind?”

  She ceased transmission pending the reply, turned to Tyra, and said, “This is preposterous, as I think even a kzin must realize. They can scarcely be carrying on military work there.”

  “No,” Tyra answered. “Not exactly. I can guess what it is.”

  “Tell me.”

  “They used a special kind of tug at the old red sun where Captain Saxtorph surprised them. It could fly close, to nudge ferriferous objects into trajectories for collection. The crew survived those passages because the craft, besides having big reflecting surfaces, was heavily loaded with water. Vented to space, the water cooled it during the time of exposure. I think these kzinti have one like it along, though it must be smaller.”

  Bihari nodded. “Yes, of course I remember the reports, but thank you for reminding me.” She stroked her chin. “Our own long-range observations do show large excavations, and structures that may well be prefabricated facilities for purification and transfer…Yes, I feel sure you are right. Thank you again. You have done us a service.”

  Our instruments are all directed at Pele and Kumukahi, Tyra thought. “They can’t claim that’s military.”

  “Not logically. If it were, it would be a violation of the peace treaty. But—proprietary processes—I can’t predict how an Earthside court would rule. I suspect dear Ghrul-Captain was rather well briefed before he left home. The kzin may be mad, but they are not stupid; and…there have been humans eager to inform them. There doubtless still are.”

  “Civilian, military, no difference to them anyway,” said Tyra with a bitterness that the memory of her brother redoubled.

  “You understand.”

  “He’s been on the lurk for an excuse, any excuse, to make trouble for us. What can we do?”

  “That will be seen,” said Bihari.

  They spoke little more but sat each with her thoughts until the kzin face came back.

  “Your two ships will move to hyperspacing distance,” stated Ghrul-Captain. “When they have done so, we will allow the three creatures we hold to rendezvous with you. You will then depart.”

  “And leave further discoveries to you,” Bihari retorted. “Sir, you know how underequipped you are. Priceless knowledge will be lost, which it is our mission to obtain.” She paused. “Very well, you have made your—initial offer, shall we say? Mine is that you release our people and their boat immediately, unconditionally, and unharmed. In return, we will consider this a misunderstanding which, fortunately, was resolved by mutual reasonableness. I expect your decision as quickly as transmission lag allows.”

  The screen blanked.

  “What next, ma’am?” Tyra whispered.

  “We have about a quarter of an hour. Ample time.” Bihari activated an intercom and ordered battle stations. Tyra heard running feet and clashing metal. In minutes, a monitor screen showed assault boats leaping from their bays, spearlike athwart the stars.

  It thrilled in her. Yet what would Craig think?

  When Ghrul-Captain’s image reappeared, he must have known what his radars and other detectors were revealing. Tyra wondered whether that smoothed his arrogance a little. It certainly did not quell him. “If you do not wish me to send the command for the execution of your agents, you will not try my patience further. I make this much concession in the interests of peace. You will turn your hyperwave transmitter over to us, with complete instructions for its use. I am prepared to consider that a barely sufficient atonement.”

  Yes, Tyra thought at him, and after that you can do anything you think you might get away with. You aren’t armed like us, but—Robert wiped out your red-sun base by crashing an asteroid on it. Your ice tug? I don’t know. But I can hear that you don’t gag on words like “peace.” Was this what you were after all along?

  “Ghrul-Captain,” said Bihari glacially, “what I will consider barely sufficient atonement is the liberty of our people. My command is in attack mode, as I trust your instruments have verified for you. If we do not hear from those people in minimum transmission time that they are coming safely back to us, we will destroy you. Yes, they will die too, but a Hero understands what honor demands. I require your immediate response.”

  Blankness.

  “Whew!” gasped Tyra.

  “Now the burden falls on you,” Bihari told her gravely.

  “What? How?”

  “To make them see at home that this has been the only way.”

  “But, but you may lose your whole career—”

  “Much worse, the movement for preparedness and a firm stance will suffer. And so a new war will become all the more likely. I think you can help make that clear to the human race. Will you?”

  “I’ll t-try my damnedest,” Tyra promised. Whatever it may cause between Craig and me.

  Bihari smiled. “I haven’t misjudged you. Nor do I think I have underestimated you.”

  They waited in silence, together.

  Ghrul-Captain snarled while the translator gave: “So be it, then. To treat with your hysteria would b
e unworthy of Heroes. Your wretched slinkers may return to you, and good riddance. But beware of coming near that planet again.”

  Bihari nodded. “We grant you that. The third planet will be off limits for us, within a ten-million-kilometer radius. Please note that nothing else in the system, except your vessels, will be. Let this agreement be made in full honor, and our original terms of relationship continue in force. As soon as I learn that our people are bound back unharmed, I will take my command off battle footing. Please acknowledge.”

  The screen blanked anew.

  Tyra felt and smelled that she had been sweating. A chill passed through her. Fire followed. “That was wonderful!” she cried.

  Bihari smiled as if unperturbed. “Thank you. They’ll be nearly out of their skins with rage, driven to do something or other showing they actually are superior to the monkeys. Let us hope it won’t be too dangerous—to us, at any rate.” She leaned forward. “I also hope, and I believe you can, when you tell the story, you will soften it, make it seem as minor an incident as possible.”

  “Yes,” Tyra murmured, “that would be best, wouldn’t it?”

  8

  Every deployed robot and observatory, every probe, each of the boats when sent forth, transmitted continuously back to Freuchen. The computers printed ever-changing displays and images. Aboard, Tyra could follow moment by moment.

  “Yes,” opined planetologist Verwoort. “The catastrophe will begin any day now.”

  Kumukahi writhed, distorted and in torment. The night side flickered with enormous lightnings, shimmered with their glare cast back from roiling clouds the size of Earth or greater, flashed with the red sparks of explosions, or whatever it was going on in the upper atmosphere, all above a dull glow of sheer heat. The day side seemed afire. Bursts of incandescent gas leaped from it like flames. Some broke free and whirled off, vanishing as they dissipated, toward the sun. Storms mightier than Jupiter’s Red Spot, and perhaps of greater age, fought to keep their structure as they poured along the steepening slope of the inner tidal bulge. A segment of Pele’s disc, dimmed by the imagers to seething purple, filled the right edge of the big screen.