Man-Kzin Wars IX Read online

  A hundredth of Pele's mass skimmed around it and had begun to rain down into it. Incandescent tides raged, brewing maelstroms that crashed together and spouted monstrous plasmas; blaze scudded like spindrift; invisibly, magnetic lines twisted around each other till they snapped and energies exploded that dwarfed whatever mortals knew to touch off; the deeper layers roiled, and maybe certain atomic nuclei were fusing in strange ways: mystery, mystery, unfolding in fury.

  The sun was not shaken to the core, Raden said. These were transient effects. In the course of the next century or two, they would die down, leaving little other than a slightly changed chemical composition and thereby, perhaps, a main-sequence evolution slightly hastened. Nor was this present chaos quite akin to a storm such as humans knew. However mighty it appeared from afar, it was gases in a soft vacuum. The deadliness lay in the radiation, charged particles, searing infrared, blinding light, lethal X-rays. Heavily protected, a spacecraft might still pass quickly through unscathed.

  Might. Nobody knew. Nobody before them had been this close to this kind of catastrophe.

  Tyra's mind dwelt more on Kumukahi. A planet, no matter how huge and alien, was closer kin to home than any star. Whenever it swung into view and she had the use of the screens, she strained at the magnified image, gripped, half terrified.

  Pele had drawn the spheroid into a teardrop, but a living and throbbing one. The extended tip seethed and surged like a monstrous, fluid volcano. Hydrogen-helium smoke poured as from a nozzle, redly and restlessly aglow with fluorescence. It rushed ahead, girdling the planet's slayer with a ring that wound into a spiral whirling ever inward. Sparks and gouts flew free, knots of momentary concentration, like lava bombs. The titanic outpouring shuddered, shifted, ever changeable, spurted lesser eruptions of moon size, wrapped itself in clouds that then boiled away to give sight anew of the cataract streaming upward. Everywhere else churned chaos. All was red, a thousand shades never the same for two instants, from murky roan through carmine to blood damasked with blue-white.

  Kumukahi's dying in style! thought Tyra once; and then: That's how Robert would put it.

  She dismissed the pain, which had become small, and went back to what she had gained.

  12

  The rage toward which Ghrul-Captain rushed filled heaven. The air in which he crouched recalled to him an equatorial desert on Kzin. An overloaded cooling system gusted and whined. It was time to go into sundiver mode.

  Firehunter could have done so automatically. This, though, was his flight. Whether or not any other Hero ever knew, each thing he did raised his honor, was a blow he himself struck at the enemy. He stabbed the manual override. "Hro-o-o!" His roar echoed through his cave.

  Steam vented from a thousand pores in the metal shell that enclosed the hull. The optics did not show it to his eyes, but the instruments did. The craft must take care of this for him, sensors gauging moment by moment how much to release. Calculation had shown that, given close control, there should be enough, just enough, to see him through the danger zone—if the calculations and the data upon which they drew were nearly enough correct. He had to trust them as he trusted his weapons. A Hero did.

  And he was still the master of the wild hunt ahead. Again the control displays showed him what they would do of themselves and when. He heeded them as he would have heeded the scent of a quarry. But again it was he who cut off the drive.

  Now let the planet sling him halfway around itself and cast him forth at more than cometary speed. For those three and a half hours, while the instruments drank down what knowledge they could, he must watch and wait—only that, if all went well. If not, he must choose what to do and do it. Nobody could have programmed for every unforeseeable violence. The fact brought no sense of helplessness. He had the heat to fight, with copious drinks and his own endurance. Meanwhile, he lurked watchful, as if in ambush.

  Nevertheless awe came upon him. Under these conditions, optics were altogether inadequate, yet he saw, however partially and blurrily, he felt, he defied.

  Firehunter flew between two walls that towered and reached beyond sight, one red-hot, geysering in mountainous lightning-shot clouds, shuddering beneath them until he imagined he could feel the thunders in his bones, the other a white-hot furnace out of which licked crimson tongues of flame. A thin opal haze shimmered everywhere around the spacecraft, fantastically writhing, where long livid arcs leaped and knots exploded into bursts of gigantic sparks. Ghrul-Captain sailed amidst a wreck of the gods.

  Over and over again he roared at it, his challenge, his triumph.

  A crash smote his hearing. Firehunter reeled. The noise became a hailstorm that dashed against metal and rang in his cave.

  That smote through!

  Ghrul-Captain saw the brief cloud gush out. Immensity swallowed it. An alarm keened. Readouts raced crazily over the pilot panel. Ghrul-Captain knew himself for a warrior suddenly stabbed.

  Something had riddled the outer hull. It had not pierced the inner, but the water cells were ruptured and the fluid of life boiling away.

  The bombardment ceased. He had passed whatever it was, or it had ended. No matter. It had slain him.

  "No!" he bellowed, and snatched for the override. Start the drive. At full boost, he might break free before he baked.

  Weightlessness took him, like a falling off an infinite cliff. Lights still shone, ventilation whispered. But nothing responded to his claws. He glared at the panel. The gravity polarizers were dead. He had no thrust.

  How? flashed through him. An integrated system, well armored— But the damage to the massive water circulators and everything that regulated them, the escape of those tonnes, vibrations, resonances, yes, the plunge in temperature—he was breathing air gone wintry—yes, that could have disrupted critical circuitry. Then safety locks cut in and the fusion generator shut down. Nothing was left but the energy reserve in the accumulators.

  That's as well, he thought starkly. Radiation from reactions running free would have killed me in minutes.

  Which would have been better. Easier.

  "No!" he snarled. A Hero did not surrender.

  He was on trajectory, outward bound. The chilling gave him a short respite before temperature mounted. It might level off, as he receded, before he was cooked dead.

  If he survived, it would be an exploit unmatched in history. None could then deny him his birthright, and more, much more.

  If not, this remained his deed, wholly and entirely his, which nothing could ever take from him.

  13

  "Oh-oh," said Raden very softly. "I don't like this at all."

  Tyra's pulse jumped. "What is it?" Her voice sounded shrill in her ears. It must involve the kzin sundiver. Freuchen and Samurai were peering with high-tuned instruments, as the thing came out of Pele's blinding glare and deafening plasma. But they were almost two light-minutes farther away than Caroline had ventured. They had sent their request that the boat likewise keep watch. Orbiting ahead of them, the kzin mother ship currently had the sun between it and its explorer. Whoever was in command there had not deigned to respond to the human offer to relay information as soon as it was received.

  Raden gestured. "Look."

  Tyra peered over his shoulder at the viewscreen before which he sat. Magnified, chosen wavelengths dimmed or amplified, the image was hardly more than a schematic. To her eyes, a small segment of Pele was a purple rectangle filling a slice along the left side of the screen. Prominences were tendrils, the corona a ghost-shimmer. A starlike speck gleamed nearby. That must be the best that the boat's sensors could do at this remove, lacking interferometry, she thought almost mechanically. Raden's finger pointed at the displays and readouts beneath the video.

  "The spectroscope gives no hint of water molecules or OH," he said starkly. "She ought to be venting yet, to maintain an endurable temperature till she gets clear of the peristellar zone. Instead, the infrared emission is like an oven's, or worse. And doppler shows she isn't boosting to escape. Hyperbolic
trajectory, slung off by the planet at terrific speed but not fast enough. Something's gone terribly wrong."

  It would be obscene to rejoice. However, Tyra could not find pity in her heart. "What may have happened?" she inquired.

  "God knows, at this stage. Close examination ought to give an idea or two." Raden turned his head to stare at her. "Meanwhile, though, the crew are being baked alive!"

  "If they haven't already. Or he. Whichever. What do you want to do?"

  "Try saving them. Nobody else possibly can."

  "How can we?" The figures he had mentioned to her spun through her head. If the sundiver's periapsis grazed through the significant fringe of Kumukahi's distended atmosphere—and what other course would a kzin plot?—the planet had hurled it forth at more than a hundred KPS, far over stellar escape velocity, bound for the stars. . . . But the plan must have been to decelerate till the craft could swing around to rendezvous with its mother.

  Raden swiveled about in his seat. His fingers danced across a keyboard. Meanwhile he voice-activated transmission. "Caroline to Freuchen and Samurai. By now you'll have seen that sundiver's in trouble. The other kzinti can't match velocities and lay to till long after the ones aboard are dead. I propose to make rendezvous and rescue them if they aren't, yet. If this craft has the capability. That's being checked. Assuming a positive answer, we'll need to skite off immediately. I'll await your response."

  Three or four minutes— "Have you gone crazy?" Tyra protested.

  He gave her a lopsided grin. "No, in my opinion I'm being more sane than most. If the computations tell me what I hope they will . . . Ah!" He swung his chair again to stare at the readouts. She stood above him, behind him, helpless, listening to his monotone. "Yes. Just barely feasible. Killing our present vector, boosting to match while approaching, yes, it calls for accelerations up to ten gee. Within stress limits for our craft, though an engineer would probably shake his head a bit. The thermostatic system will be overloaded too, but not overwhelmed if we're quick. And we'll squander energy. We should have enough delta vee left afterward to make it home. If not, the difference by then will be slight, and Samurai has a tug plenty well able to meet us and haul us back. We can do it."

  Abruptly his tone rang. "Therefore we must."

  The comscreen lightened, view split to show two faces. "This is lunacy," growled Worning. "No!" and Bihari, quietly, with her ironic smile: "The kzinti aren't noted for gratitude. My recommendation is a decided negative."

  "Ma'am and sir," Raden replied, "let me respectfully remind you that while this vessel is in free space, I'm in command, with discretionary authority. If I'm mistaken, a board of inquiry will pass judgment later. Now I've no time to lose. We're on our way."

  He rapped his piloting instructions. In a moment or two the boat left free trajectory. The interior gravity polarizer field kept weight steady under Tyra's feet, but she saw the stars whirl into a new configuration and felt a brief surge of power fully aroused, a shiver in the deck and through her bones.

  "Well, you are within your legal rights," Bihari said. "I am not so sure about the moral ones. You understand, do you not, that we can do nothing to help you until much later in this game."

  "And the devil knows how the kzinti will react," added Worning.

  "Contact them, of course," Raden answered. "Explain the situation. That I—we—have no intention of more than a rescue attempt, and we'll lay no salvage claims or anything like that. In fact, I promise to leave whatever kind of black box they have, the data this flight gathered, alone, for them to retrieve. Let me suggest you offer them any other help you can give. That's traditional, after all."

  He laughed. "Don't worry about us. We're within our safety factors. Quite an adventure!"

  He cut off transmission, pending further reception, rose, looked into Tyra's eyes, and reached for her hands. She withheld them.

  His smile was gone. "There will be hazards," he said low. "Aren't there always? I rejoiced to have you along, darling, but now I'd sell my chance of having an immortal soul—no, that's too cheap a price—I'd give everything I own for you to be safely back aboard Freuchen."

  Every material thing, maybe, she thought. The bank accounts, the royalties, the vacation home, the sailboat, whatever. But how could you divest yourself of your reputation, your fame? This deed can only add to them.

  Her bitterness shocked her. It wasn't reasonable. Was it? "Well, I'm not there," she said, "nor sorry."

  As if to reinforce her, the comscreen brought Worning and Bihari back. "Playing the noble knight may be very well, Raden," Worning snapped. "But you're spending the resources of our expedition, and putting critical assets at risk, for no other gain."

  "Oh, God, can't you see?" Raden exclaimed. "That's a living, sentient being yonder, maybe two, with a ghastly death ahead of them. Could you stay idle in my circumstances and still call yourself a man? I don't believe that, Captain Worning. I don't believe you would."

  This time he left transmission going while he appealed to Tyra. "Nor would you." With a quick, wry grin: "And call yourself a woman. Which you are, incredibly much."

  "I think you're confused about the issue," she told him out of the ice within her. "A human being, or a—a dog, yes. Kzinti, no. They're something else."

  He seemed appalled. "You can't be serious!"

  "Yes, they're as intelligent as we are, in their fashion. Maybe they can feel pain as much, in their fashion. But it doesn't mean the same to them. They have nothing like sympathy, compassion, anything we humans have had such a struggle to keep alive in ourselves. Craig, I've seen what they do. I've lived with it."

  Dada-man, snatched away from everyone he loved and who loved him. Mother, dying of grief, unjustly disgraced. Ib, betrayed into dishonor. The endless years of the occupation, friends killed, crushed, hunted down like game animals, eaten. The murderous assault at the black hole . . . And those were merely things she had witnessed or heard of at firsthand. She knew of too many more.

  She heard the shock: "But this is racism. The old horror. Jews made booty of, Amerindians massacred, Africans enslaved . . . I grant you, it's a horrible culture, but they can learn better. The Mongols were once the terror of half a world. They became one of the most peaceful people on Earth—"

  "If you please," interrupted Bihari, answering Raden's reply to Worning, "I daresay you suppose you're making a goodwill gesture, which will go toward improving relationships. I have my doubts, but since you are on your way and not open to argument, we will communicate with the kzinti, fully and frankly, and stand by to render any assistance we can that they will accept. We will keep you informed. Meanwhile, we shall be on alert status."

  "Ja," rumbled Worning. "Good luck. You'll need it."

  The images blanked. Neither captain meant to nag, nor would they allow anyone else to stammer best wishes.

  "We've got a couple of hours to make ready," Raden said. "First aid, for openers. A very near thing at best. Prepare for unpleasantness, Tyra. A cooked corpse or . . . worse."

  "I've known worse."

  His expression, stance, voice pleaded. "Do you really feel we're altogether wrong to do this?"

  It was not simply that she happened to be with him and got no choice, it was that she was with him, for as long as might be. Maybe for life. "No," she made herself say, and confessed inwardly that he did have a certain logic, that without some forthcomingness—which could only begin on the human side—the hatred and slaughter might well go on until one race or the other went extinct. "I'm with you," and now she took his hands and presently returned his kiss before they got busy.

  She refrained from wishing aloud that they had a firearm along.

  14

  "We have still received no response from the kzinti," Bihari reported. "Among other things, that means we don't have the code for opening any of their airlocks. Since you are closing in, I have ordered a naval `key' program sent to you. I suppose you know it directs phased currents through your contact module and analyz
es the reaction to each set of pulses. A search pattern conducted at electronic speed. It ought to determine the unlocking sequence within a few minutes. The program is classified information, but merely at `confidential' level, and may be shared in emergency. Instructions will accompany it. Prepare to download."

  Raden nodded. "I rather expected this," he told Tyra. "I didn't think the captain would leave us to cut our way in with laser torches. Dangerous, as well as slow. No doubt she'll order the program wiped from our database after we return, but actually, one relies more on interstellar distances and infrequent contacts to keep such things from spreading. All colony worlds have similar tools, civilian as well as military, and many spacecraft carry them. You might need to get into a friendly ship, too—a Crashlander, say—when for some reason the crew couldn't just let you in. Or any of all the other unpredictable situations."

  He spoke rapidly, dryly, as if he were lecturing to a class. Tyra listened, though she already knew most of it. This must be a way for him to release some tension. Mainly he directed himself toward the keyboard.

  Sweat gleamed on his brow. Tyra felt it on her own face and soaking her armpits. She wondered how much of it was due to excitement—fear?—and how much was the body trying to maintain temperature. The compartment, the whole interior had gotten unpleasantly warm, and still the temperature crept upward.