06-Known Space Page 5

  “Ancient people approached each other holding up empty hands,” he went on. “So civilization started. I’m sorry we haven’t an historian to tell us more... Six in the boat and six in suits. That leaves eight on board to control all essential systems and the major comm-links.”

  There was a murmur of agreement.

  Paul and Rick turned to Selina again. “You won’t want to come, of course.”

  “I certainly do want to come,” said Selina. “You’ve convinced me.” Get off the major target! The voice was screaming far in the back of her mind.

  The crew of the Happy Gatherer scattered with final instructions.

  Selina’s Space-suit was standard issue, geochronically linked to the ship’s planar logic lattices, with large pockets in the arms and legs. There was nutrient under high pressure in waist-cylinders, boot-caches and other compartments, and the suit recycled moisture. The lonely Belter rock-jacks might have had it differently, but in Earth’s history of this sort of Space-flight such things had seldom been needed: in an emergency you were usually near help or dead. She could think of nothing more she needed to take. She slipped her good-luck charm, the model ship, into one pocket.

  Gutting Claw

  Space-suited figures were leaving the enemy ship. Further magnifications brought them into clear view. A port opened and a boat put out. The monkeys made no attempt to conceal their approach. The enemy ship in arrogance or threat was actually shining lights upon them.

  The EV aliens moved towards Gutting Claw with small reaction jets. One, who I felt Feared Zraar-Admiral mentally marking with his own urine, was ahead of the others. Unless there was something very peculiar about those compact, long limbed bodies, they carried no weapons.

  “Telepath! What is happening!”

  “Sire, I detect no warlike intent. But if Tracker was somehow deceived, I cannot be sure...”

  “A-T! What sort of tactic is this?”

  “I don’t understand it, Feared Zraar-Admiral.”

  “Are they going to attack us with those jets.”

  "Feared Zraar-Admiral, I do not know, but they are far too small to do any damage to the hull. They are maneuvering jets only. That boat is powered by chemical rockets on the same principle. We detect no radio-actives in it. They still appear to me to be completely unarmed.”

  Fight them! I caught Weeow-Captain’s mind. What are you waiting for, you old fool? Kill now! Then a blur. Noyouaremymentoroldfriend... I broke that very perilous contact.

  “They are small creatures.”

  “And the creatures that killed Tracker were also small. Telepath!”

  “Sire, still all my skills tell me they have no weapons.”

  “Do they seek to take us prisoner?”

  “They seek to meet us. Sire, that must be the reason.”

  “I want live specimens,” Zraar-Admiral said. “Telepath, is there anything useful in that ship?”

  “No, Dominant One. In general the technology is primitive. The creatures have a number of gadgets and devices we do not possess, and their reaction-drive technology is of course developed, but that is all in their minds and can be extracted. The drive is inferior to ours and the materials are insignificant.”

  He turned to Weapons Officer.

  “Destroy the ship as soon as the EV kz’eerkti and the boat are far enough away not to be involved. Watch sharply for monkey-tricks!”

  The battle proved kittens’-play. Under the converging beams the enemy ship’s life-system area melted almost at once. Its fusion plant should have destabilized with a major explosion but the drive was idling and probably some monkey used its dying moments to shut off the fuel-feed in an attempt to save its fellows. Cowards. We knew little of such drives but knew a Hero would have pointed the ship at his enemy and turned off the fusion-shield. I thought of Lord Dragga-Skrull and his last historic order: “The Patriarch knows every Hero will kill eights of times before dying heroically!”

  The weedy creatures made no attempt at attack, resistance, or even evasion. The final explosion was visually fierce but of no consequence. Gutting Claw was heavily shielded.

  Watching the blue-white glare fading on the screen Zraar-Admiral regretted that the business had been so easy. There had been relatively little honor gained. Whatever had happened to Tracker, these omnivore apes, like previously-encountered aliens, had nothing to match Kzin weaponry. But that disappointment also held rich promise—of worlds ripe for the taking by his squadron alone.

  “Weeow-Captain!”

  “Sire!”

  “You have the enemy ship’s course recorded?”

  “Indeed, Sir!”

  “It is, I declare, a Patriarch’s Secret. When we have avenged Tracker we will follow that course to its home.”

  “Yes, Sire. They came in a straight line from their first appearance. They seem to have made no attempt to hide their point of origin, if they have changed course since their original take-off Telepath will take the course from their minds.” They took it for granted that I could do such things, and that I would, at whatever cost to myself. “In any event there will probably be records in the surviving boat.”

  “They will have destroyed those by now.”

  “I wonder. Their behavior is so strange... perhaps they are a death-worshipping cult…“

  “Telepath was not deceived.” Zraar-Admiral did not try to hide the contemptuous rage in his voice. He knew all his officers shared it. “They can’t fight at all.”

  Perhaps, despite the similarities in her Telepath’s report and my own, Tracker had encountered something different to these leaf-eaters. That led to another consideration: as a matter of honor, Zraar-Admiral could not turn aside from the pursuit of an enemy known to be dangerous, and against whom vengeance was owed, to attack the soft targets of this monkeydom. We were on the trail of Tracker’s killer and that account would have to be settled first. That should not take long, however. Zraar-Admiral turned to Weeow-captain.

  “When the prisoners are inboard I shall look at them. Bring my gold armor”—this was hardly a ceremonial occasion but it was what the protocol of Fleet Standing Orders declared for first meetings with conquered prey—”detail two more infantry squads for my escort.”

  The monkeys had been secured and breathed Kzin air. So we could breathe their air. The monkeydom extended, as I had reported, over several industrialized worlds. Feared Zraar-Admiral could claim the biggest continent of the homeworld for himself. And a Full Name, certainly. A Full Name for Weeow-Captain, too. Partial names for others. Many others, if Zraar-Admiral indulged. Vast fiefdoms. Smells of names, riches, glory, conquest! Perhaps some of the monkeys’ less-advanced sub-species would put up a fight on the ground. If so, there could be rich rewards for the most Heroic and ferocious of the infantry troopers. Partial names and estates might not be beyond the claws of outstanding Sergeants.

  Nothing, of course, for Telepath. Except burn-out.

  Twelve humans and thirty-four Kzin stared at each other in the ruddy light of the great hangar-deck. One squad of eight flanked the prisoners. Zraar-Admiral, with Telepath at his feet, stood at the head of his Guard squads.

  Zraar-Admiral saw Simianoids with considerable variations of skin-colors and strangely limited and irregular hair-growth. Their general morphology at least suggested the theory of common life-form seeding by the Ancients. They stood two-thirds of his height and would carry, he judged, a third of his body-weight or less. Some were leaking red liquid, presumably circulatory fluid, where marines had torn their skin in stripping away their space-suits. Frail as well as ugly, he thought. Spindly limbs with puny muscles, branch-grasping monkey-hands, with those five long fingers and tiny, useless horny tips that could not be called claws. Foreheads higher than many kz’eerkti species on Kzin, which was only to be expected. No tails, oddly enough. How did they counter-balance when running on branches or leaping between trees?

  They would be able to climb trees too slender to bear the weight of Kzinti. Sport there
perhaps. On Kzinti worlds the cunning and agility of the beasts made kz’eerkti -hunts enjoyable as well as useful training for the young. The odd distribution of body-hair on these specimens suggested an ancestry with aquatic episodes, so perhaps they could also swim. There were two large, grotesquely red-centered, teats on the females. Zraar-Admiral wondered why the males had put the females into Space-suits and led them outside the vehicle. Were the monkeys in continual need of copulation? The gross external sexual organs of the males at least suggested it.

  Some of the male monkeys were holding the slightly smaller and generally longer-haired females in a manner that suggested they were either trying to groom them or lay claim to them. Evidently the females had belonged to more than one dominant monkey. Several harems in the one ship? Kz’eerkti and other arboreals on Kzin behaved in such ways... but the arboreals of Kzin did not have Space-ships. Two were on their knees in an awkward posture. Some were waving their forelimbs and hands as if tantalizing the guards to break ranks and pounce. liquid was running from the eyes of some, and one, a female with oddly-patterned red hair, gave an unpleasant prolonged high-pitched cry and defecated as Zraar-Admiral watched, in what the Kzin took as a gesture of willful obscenity. A guard snarled and stepped forward. The monkey screamed and rushed at him, fingers extended as though trying to attack the guard’s eyes. The guard swiped at the monkey’s head with instinctively-extended claws, tearing it partly off. The monkey’s body flew across the compartment spraying fluid to hit the wall and fall in a puddle. The other monkeys screamed and jumped about, though no more tried to attack. Some covered their faces and wailed. The guards snarled in the Menacing Tense and most of the wailing stopped. The body of the rude monkey soon ceased to move and seemed plainly dead.

  They are even more fragile than they look, Zraar-Admiral noted. A proper kz’eerkt would have put up a better fight than that. He would not, he though, punish the guard, who was now looking at him somewhat apprehensively, too heavily. He had used no more than reasonable force. Still, it was all rather disgusting.

  He could see Telepath was in no condition to do more at the moment. When he recovered he should be able to discover a lot more with them face-to-face. Their resemblance to Kzinti life-forms suggested they were meat, but proper dissection would put the matter beyond doubt.

  Zraar-Admiral returned to the bridge. He ordered the monkeys to be confined separately from one another. After Telepath had gone through their minds thoroughly he would turn a few loose in his miniature hunting preserve to see what sort of running they made. He turned to Weeow-Captain to outline his thoughts.

  “When we have avenged Tracker it will take us at least eight and three years’ real time to get back to Hssin, more time for a fleet to be assembled. Then we have the journey to the monkey-systems.”

  “Yes, Dominant One.”

  “But you are thinking that is a long time? Even in sleep?”

  “Urrr.” Weeow-Captain gestured assent. They had been together a long time and thought they knew each other well. Zraar-Admiral believed Weeow-Captain was not so brilliant as to be a threat to him, which was one reason he was there. He also believed him to be a completely efficient and reliable officer, which was the other reason. Ambitious of course, like any healthy Kzin. They had fought side by side on the ground and won scars together. Weeow-Captain met his gaze.

  “If it is necessary we must take the time, Sire, but...” That “but” said it all.

  “Obviously that is what we should do, if the aliens were fighters, despite any loss of time involved,” Zraar-Admiral told him, “but since it is plain they are not, I say we should leap on with this squadron alone. I will send dispatch vessels to Kzin and Hssin with the operational diaries.”

  It was phrased in the Equal-acknowledging tense, a request for comment as much as an order. The squadron riding in Cutting Claw was already small for its task, but there was no help for it. Radio or lasers were both too unreliable over such distances and too insecure in what might, after all, be a sort of combat situation, disappointing as the kz’eerkti were in that respect. Security was more important to prevent a rush for spoils should other Kzin become aware of them. If what he had seen was a fair sample, even a reduced squadron would be more than enough for the monkey-worlds. Let other prowlers like Chuut-Riit find their own. Weeow-Captain’s eyes flared with eagerness.

  “A Hero’s leap! Yes!”

  There was nothing unfeigned in that delight. He is a good companion thought Zraar-Admiral. They had dreamed together of such actions.

  Alone in his quarters Zraar-Admiral meditated upon Conquest and its implications. Honored Maaug-Riit might not like such independent action, but surely the monkeydom would produce gifts to appease the Fleet Admiral and other high nobility. Besides, Zraar-Admiral guessed, the Patriarch would not be too displeased to see a relatively minor noble like Zraar-Admiral improve his position relative to a Fleet Admiral of the Patriarch’s own house who had grown very mighty indeed.

  I shall have to start culling my sons more rigorously, Zraar-Admiral thought. Um-For more than an Admiral’s inheritance.

  Suddenly Zraar-Admiral knew that the monkeys might be leading him on the most dangerous hunt of his life. What if this, instead of being a simple leap to glory, turns me into a politician? His tail curled. Now he would have to do something about Telepath.

  Zraar-Admiral had power of life and death over every creature aboard—any Kzin commander did—but the Patriarch’s family would have other ears and noses. To wantonly silence any Telepath would be highly suspicious. He was confident that even if he was a spy for Honored Maaug-Riit, Telepath could not read his own mind, with its inculcate Authority, but those of his officers were naturally weaker.

  He thought of killing Telepath and disguising the act, but banished the idea immediately. To murder Telepath would be shameful, a violation of the honor which to a Kzin commander was virtually a physical reality. He would have Weeow-Captain put him in charge of guarding the apes. It was a logical job for the little Kzin when his special talents were not required on the bridge. Already, with the battleship not having such luxuries as eunuchs, Telepath had shown himself a reliable tender of the small harem, which Zraar-Admiral had had little time for recently. No fighting Kzin would want the degrading task of herding plant-eaters and he could continue extracting information from their minds.

  Both Telepath’s investigations so far and the first quick dissections of a couple of specimens showed the monkeys were omnivores. That was not unexpected. Pure herbivores had never been found in Space. There seemed no strictly logical reason why the evading of hunters should not have led to intelligence as great as, or greater than, that of the hunters themselves —one, after all, was running for its meal, the other for its life— but it would be blasphemous to suppose herbivores could dominate their environment or defeat and subjugate carnivores! At some time in the past the monkeys had fought and killed.

  The two large teats on the females (if that was what they were) were significant. The number indicated small litters, and the bizarre size of the teats suggested prolonged lactation. That in turn suggested the apes’ get must survive a lengthy and helpless kittenhood. How numerous must they have become before they controlled the resources to build a Space-ship?

  Telepath had said that on their home-world they numbered in billions. So they evidently had no enemies that were a major threat there. Though lacking significant teeth and claws they had some characteristics of a dominant animal—heiin [sic], they had Star-ships. They would have had to fight sometime in the past to accomplish that, presumably against real carnivores. The larger size of the males, though nothing like the degree of sexual dimorphism in Kzinti, indicated competition for mating privileges in their history.

  Their small teeth were a typical omnivore mixture.

  Telepath said their meat had come from automated kitchens, partly burnt in a disgusting manner. Perhaps it was grown from cancers in vats like infantry rations.

  Presumably
the monkeys’ ancestors had been scavengers, and had become used to burning carrion to kill toxic microbes rather than eating their own fresh kills. They must have fought for carrion against large predators, wielded clubs and thrown stones to make up for their deficient teeth and claws.

  And ended up with a drive that collected hydrogen atoms from interstellar Space to carry them between stars.

  Or had these got their ship from somewhere else? Surely no-one would recruit monkeys for mercenary warriors as the Jotok had once been foolish enough to recruit on Old Kzin.

  There was a story of a kz’eerkt-band on Kzin that had once seized a Space-craft and performed outrageous tricks and monkey-shines to the discomfiture of certain overly-confident Heroes.

  But that was a fable, a joke, an exercise in poets’ ingenuity! A piece of entertainment set down by the Conservors to smuggle germs of wisdom into the hot livers of adolescents. It did not seem possible in the real universe. Space-craft were complicated. An idea flicked away from him. Like a kitten chasing the tip of its own tail he sensed something maddeningly just out of reach. Something about monkeys and Telepaths and Kzinretti. Once or twice behavior by Telepath, and also by some of his harem, especially Rilla, the lithest, and Niza who had the biggest vocabulary, had struck a note of inconsistency and puzzled him as the monkeys did. Was the common factor a conditioned species showing less than perfect conditioning. No knowledge of weapons... Was monkey pacifism conditioned? Had their tails, surely indispensable to free-roaming arboreals, been amputated in connection with their conditioned status?

  Were the monkeys slaves of a race that no Kzin except perhaps the late crew of Tracker had met so far? The glandular rush he felt at that idea had no fear about it, only exhilaration. Postulate a race that had conditioned the monkeys, and riddles disappeared! It remained only to find the Conditioners, and leap upon them with the Fleet. The ship they were pursuing was the obvious place to start.