Larry Niven - The Man-Kzin Wars 03

The screen blanked. “Bob, darling, darling.” Dorcas twisted about in her seat to cast her arms around him.

He hugged her. As always in crisis, confronting the worst, he had grown cool, watchful but half detached, a survival machine. Not that he saw any prospect of living onward, but— “We should bring the others up,” he reminded her. “We can have a short time together.” Before the kzinti arrive.

“Yes.” He felt how she quelled her shuddering. Steady as he, she turned to the communicator and directed a broad beam at the sphere. “Carita, Peter, get straight back to the ship,” she said crisply.

“Was ist—what is bad?” sounded Nordbo's hoarse bass.

“Never mind now. Move, I tell you!”

“Jawohl.” And: “Aye, aye, ma'am, we're off,” from Carita.

Dorcas cut transmission. “I want to spare them while they flit,” she explained. “They'll worry, but if they don't happen to make the enemy out in the sky, they won't be in shock.”

“Until we meet again,” Saxtorph agreed. “What about… Tyra and Kam? Shall we keep them waiting too?”

“We may as well, or better.”

“No. Maybe you weren't being kind after all. I think Tyra would want to know right away, so she can, well, she can—” kiss me goodbye?— “prepare herself, and meet the end with her eyes wide open. She's like that.”

Dorcas bit her lip. “I can't stop you if you insist.” Her words quivered a little. “But I thought you and I, these fifteen minutes or so we have left before we must tell them—”

He grinned, doubtless rather horribly. “'Fraid I couldn't manage a quickie.”

She achieved a laugh. “Down, boy.” Soberly: “Not to get maudlin either. But let me say I love you, and thank you for everything.”

“Aw, now, the thanks are all due you, my lady.” He rose. She did. They embraced. He damned himself for wishing she were Tyra.

She kissed him long and hard. “That's for what we've had.” The tears wouldn't quite stay put. “And for, for everything we were going to have the—kids and—”

Yah , he thought, our stored gametes. We never made provision for exogenesis, in case something clobbered us. They'll stay in the freeze, those tiny ghosts of might-have-been, year after year after year, I suppose, forgotten and forsaken, like our robot yonder .

Saxtorph lurched where he stood. “Fanden i helvede!” he roared. Dorcas stepped back. She saw his face, and the breath whistled in between her teeth. “What?”

The Danish of his childhood, “The Devil in Hell,” his father's favorite oath, yes, truly, for a devil did squat just outside the hell star awaiting his command. His revelation spilled from him.

Fierceness kindled in her, she shouted, but then she must ask, “What if we fail?”

“Why, we open our airlocks and drink space,” he answered. He had dismissed the idea earlier because he knew she wouldn't want suicide while any chance of being cleanly killed remained. “Though most likely the kzinti will be so enraged they'll missile us on the spot. Come on, we haven't got time to gab, let's get going.”

They returned to their seats and controls. An order went out. On the tnuctipun structure, the robot prospector stirred. Cautiously, at minimum boost, it lifted. When it was well clear, the humans accelerated it harder. They must work fast, to have the machine positioned before the enemy came so near that watchers at instruments might notice it and wonder. They must likewise work precisely, mathematically, solving a problem of vectors and coordinates in three-dimensional space. “—line integral of velocity divergence dS—” Dorcas muttered aloud to the computer while her fingers did the real speaking. There passed through the back of Saxtorph's awareness: If the scheme flops, this'll be how we spent our last moments together. Appropriate.

A telltale blinked. Nordbo and Carita had arrived. “Kam, our friends are back,” the captain said through the intercom. “Cycle 'em through and have them sit tight. Tyra, I think we can cope with our visitors.”

Except for Ryan's “Aye,” neither of them responded. The quartermaster knew better than to distract the pair on the bridge. The woman must have understood the same on her own account. She isn't whimpering or hysterical or anything , Saxtorph thought— not her. Maybe, not being a spacehand, she won't obey my order and stay at the boat. It's useless anyway. But the most mutinous thing she might do is walk quietly, firmly through my ship to meet her dad .

“On station,” Dorcas sighed. She leaned back, hands still on the keys, gaze on the displays. “It'll take three or four mini-nudges to maintain, but I doubt the kzinti will detect them.”

The Raptor was big in the screen. Twin laser guns in the nose caught starlight and gleamed like eyes.

“Good.” Saxtorph's attention skewered Rover' s control board. He'd calculated how he wanted to move, at full thrust, when things started happening. Though his present location was presumably safe, he'd rather be as far off as possible. Clear to Wunderland would be ideal, a sunny patio, a beer stein in his fist, and at his side. “Go!” Dorcas yelled. She hit the switch that closed her last circuit. “Ki-yai!”

Afloat among stars, the robot prospector received the signal for which the program that she sent it had waited. It took off. At a hundred gravities of acceleration, it crossed a hundred kilometers of space in less than five seconds, to strike the shell around the black hole with the force of a boulder falling from heaven.

It crashed through. White light was in the radiation that torrented from the hole it left and smote the kzinti ship.

“Put me through again to the human commander,” said Weoch-Captain. “Yes, sire,” replied Communications Officer.

Human , thought Weoch-Captain. Not monkey, whatever my position may require me to call him in public. A brave and resourceful enemy. I well-nigh wish we were more equally matched when I fight him. But no one must know that .

His optics showed Rover , an ungainly shape, battered and wayworn. Should he claim it too for a trophy? No, let Saxtorph's head suffice; and it would not have much meaning either, when he returned in his glory to take a full name, a seat among the Patriarchs, the right to found a house of his own. Still, his descendants might cherish the withered thing as a sign of what their ancestor did. Weoch-Captain's glance shifted to the great artifact. Power laired there, power perhaps to make the universe tremble. “Arrrh,” he breathed.

The screens blanked. The lights went out. He tumbled through an endless dark.

“Ye-a-a-ach, what's this? What the venom's going on?” Screams tore at air that had ceased to blow from ventilators. Weoch-Captain recognized his state. He was weightless.

“Stations, report!” No answer except the chaos in the corridors. Everything was dead. The crew were ghosts flapping blindly around in a tomb. Nausea snatched at Weoch-Captain.

He fought it down. If down existed any more, adrift among stars he no longer saw. He shouldn't get spacesick. He never had in the past when he orbited free. He must act, take charge, uncover what was wrong, rip it asunder and set things right. He groped his way by feel, from object to suddenly unfamiliar object. “Quiet!” he bawled. “Hold fast! To me, officers, to me, your commander!”

The sickness swelled inside him.

He reached the door and the passage beyond. A body blundered into his. Both caromed, flailing air, rebounding from bulkheads, all grip on dignity lost. “My eyes, arh, my eyes,” moaned the other kzin. “Did the light burn them out? I am blind. Help me, help me.”