Larry Niven - The Man-Kzin Wars 09

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.

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."