Hal Colebatch - The Wunder War

“No. It could not. It must have been rough on you.”

“My mental shields go up with the speed of thought. I have worked on them every day since I became a telepath, and more since I knew I would have to travel in this ship.”

Otherwise, Charrgh-Captain's loathing and contempt—and perhaps his inadmissible fear also—would be pouring into him every instant that both were conscious , thought Richard. I don't think Melody likes him much either. Yes, it must be rough.

He turned to the controls of the camera they had left in the control chamber.

“Gently,” growled Charrgh-Captain. “Let it touch nothing.”

The camera floated from one compartment to another. The stasis field covering the next sphere in the sequence had been deactivated. Its metal looked almost as shiny-new as if the field still operated, but its top had been opened. Four green-skinned thrintun floated out of it, plainly dead in the vacuum. They wore no helmets or pressure-suits, and it was gruesomely obvious that decompression had killed them before the many other deaths possible in space, before they had had time for coherent thought.

“One field only was deactivated,” said Richard. “I guess its switch was either damaged or already partly operated. It could have been a lot worse, but we must not run a gravity motor near the chamber again. Let us be thankful for a harmless lesson. Harmless for us, anyway.”

“It has given us something for the Institute of Knowledge,” said Melody. “Perhaps we are beginning to earn our money. Thrint brains to dissect will be treasures indeed.”

“The Slaver-students of the Patriarchy are entitled to a share of them,” said Charrgh-Captain. He turned and spoke to the console, first in the Heroes' Tongue and then in Interworld. “I make formal claim and I record that claim. By the Sigril of the Patriarch which I now display, I make that claim to the death and to the generations.” He was in a fighting stance again, and his hand with extended claws gripped the hilt of his w'tsai . Thrint brains, if they could somehow be made to reveal…

“I think we should leave them and send another ship,” said Richard. “Let's not push our luck.” In fact, he thought, it would probably be safe enough to approach again cautiously with chemical rockets or EV, but it was the best he could think of to defuse the situation. A human-kzin quarrel over thrint brains was not a good idea. In the time it would take to send another ship, the freeze-drying process of space might destroy some of their structure at least, and it was best destroyed. And he would like to be out of this grisly place.

Charrgh-Captain leaped to the console in a bound. “There is activity!” He shrieked. “Look! There is energy discharge! And lights!”

The camera, still trained on the sphere, showed red points in its dark depths, appearing and disappearing in a regular pattern.

“What do we do?”

Peter Robinson was hunched, crouching, ears knotted. He was trying, Richard thought, to block out something none of the others could feel—or did not know they felt? The last words had come from Charrgh-Captain, and Richard realized that what he was trying to block out was Charrgh-Captain's fear. Charrgh-Captain himself stood dignified and motionless now, his ears, tail and testicles all in the relaxed position. What an act! thought Richard. Only Peter Robinson gives it away. Speculating on the body language of the two great felines kept his own cold apprehension for a moment at bay.

The Slavers are dead, he told himself.

Then Charrgh-Captain pointed to another screen.

The deep-radar showed that beneath its stony covering, the great sphere was changing preparatory to its stasis field being switched off.

“Flight is pointless,” said Charrgh-Captain. “Whatever is happening, we must see it through. Have the main weapons poised.”

“Be prepared to fire without my command,” Richard told Melody. He noticed Charrgh-Captain's tendency to give orders. Comes naturally to a Kzin in a dangerous situation, I suppose, he thought. But I had better assert my authority right now.

“I detect no Slaver minds,” said Peter Robinson. The relief in his humanized voice, and in the atmosphere of the cabin, was almost palpable. “None whatsoever. There is no danger of live Slavers, I think.”

The Slavers are dead!

There was no change to the surface of the sphere. “The accreted material now becomes a thin shell over whatever is within.”

“We can see it with deep-radar anyway. Also, there is a possible advantage to the shell remaining in place. If there is anything dangerous in there, the shell will help stop it getting out.”

“It would not stop the Slaver Power. And if it is anything of high gravity the shell will crumble inwards.”

“It would have to be something of abnormally high gravity, I think. It would be prudent to move farther away, but not so far as to slow our responses appreciably.”

“There is nothing,” said Peter Robinson. “No living minds.”

As the Wallaby moved away, the deep-radar's screen compensated and held its image at constant size. A great, irregular, metallic shape was seen within. It did not resemble any human, kzin or Puppeteer ship. It was not spherical, but asymmetrical and relatively compact. A large circle could be made out near a kind of double protuberance. What they called the control chamber was connected to it by a metallic stem. The #4 General Products hull, the biggest of the range, used almost entirely for colony expeditions, was a vast cargo-carrying sphere more than a thousand feet in diameter. This was far bigger, miles from one point to another. The Wallaby 's instruments picked up another, still very faint energy discharge.

“A thrint battle-wagon!”

“I have seen nothing like it,” said Gatley Ivor.

“I am awed,” said Charrgh-Captain. “I have seen holos of the dreadnaughts of the great wars. This dwarfs them. But it is cold and a dead ship. It must have been laid up to conserve it against need…”

“It is almost too big to be a dreadnaught,” he said after a few moment's thought. “I do not understand.”

“No 'almost' about it,” said Richard. “It is too big. Building a ship that size would be, as far as I can tell, an exercise beyond the point of diminishing returns. Thrintun were stupid but not, surely, that stupid. The same resources could have been used to build a score or more of respectable-sized battlewagons, big enough to do anything you liked, or any number of smaller warships still capable of carrying heavy war-loads.

“Too many eggs in one basket… Once the stasis field was turned off—and it would have to be turned off before the thing could be used —a simple fusion missile could wreck it, let alone antimatter, which we know both sides used as a weapon… Besides, the deep-radar shows nothing that looks like weapons.”

“Anything can be made into a weapon,” said Charrgh-Captain grimly. “You humans taught us that.”

“Nonetheless, surely a purpose-built warship would have purpose-built weapons. Rail-guns, laser-cannon…”

“Apart from war, you only need a truly vast ship like this if you cross space rarely,” said Gay. “But with an FTL drive, you can cross it as often as you like. And they did have FTL. They wouldn't have needed a freighter, or even a colony-ship, that size.”

“It's worth plenty, anyway,” said Melody. “The Institute will be pleased. And the Foundation. We've shown the Puppeteers again that we are worthy of the hire.”

“I'm not so sure,” said Richard. “It might be an interesting historical artifact, but as a ship it's hardly likely to give us new knowledge apart from the archaeological. We have better drives than the ancients ever had, and their materials were inferior to General Products hulls. Perhaps if it had been a tnuctipun ship it would have taught us more. I'm not saying it's worthless, of course. There must be some discoveries on board. I'm sure an army of Ph.D. students will pick through it. I suppose the Institute may sell it to a wealthy collector.”