Larry Niven - The Man-Kzin Wars 09

Bihari nodded. "Yes, of course I remember the reports, but thank you for reminding me." She stroked her chin. "Our own long-range observations do show large excavations, and structures that may well be prefabricated facilities for purification and transfer… Yes, I feel sure you are right. Thank you again. You have done us a service."

Our instruments are all directed at Pele and Kumukahi, Tyra thought. "They can't claim that's military."

"Not logically. If it were, it would be a violation of the peace treaty. But proprietary processes-I can't predict how an Earthside court would rule. I suspect dear Ghrul-Captain was rather well briefed before he left home. The kzin may be mad, but they are not stupid; and… there have been humans eager to inform them. There doubtless still are."

"Civilian, military, no difference to them anyway," said Tyra with a bitterness that the memory of her brother redoubled.

"You understand."

"He's been on the lurk for an excuse, any excuse, to make trouble for us. What can we do?"

"That will be seen," said Bihari.

They spoke little more but sat each with her thoughts until the kzin face came back.

"Your two ships will move to hyperspacing distance," stated Ghrul-Captain. "When they have done so, we will allow the three creatures we hold to rendezvous with you. You will then depart."

"And leave further discoveries to you," Bihari retorted. "Sir, you know how underequipped you are. Priceless knowledge will be lost, which it is our mission to obtain." She paused. "Very well, you have made your-initial offer, shall we say? Mine is that you release our people and their boat immediately, unconditionally, and unharmed. In return, we will consider this a misunderstanding which, fortunately, was resolved by mutual reasonableness. I expect your decision as quickly as transmission lag allows."

The screen blanked.

"What next, ma'am?" Tyra whispered.

"We have about a quarter of an hour. Ample time." Bihari activated an intercom and ordered battle stations. Tyra heard running feet and clashing metal. In minutes, a monitor screen showed assault boats leaping from their bays, spearlike athwart the stars.

It thrilled in her. Yet what would Craig think?

When Ghrul-Captain's image reappeared, he must have known what his radars and other detectors were revealing. Tyra wondered whether that smoothed his arrogance a little. It certainly did not quell him. "If you do not wish me to send the command for the execution of your agents, you will not try my patience further. I make this much concession in the interests of peace. You will turn your hyperwave transmitter over to us, with complete instructions for its use. I am prepared to consider that a barely sufficient atonement."

Yes, Tyra thought at him, and after that you can do anything you think you might get away with. You aren't armed like us, but-Robert wiped out your red-sun base by crashing an asteroid on it. Your ice tug? I don't know. But I can hear that you don't gag on words like "peace." Was this what you were after all along? "Ghrul-Captain," said Bihari glacially, "what I will consider barely sufficient atonement is the liberty of our people. My command is in attack mode, as I trust your instruments have verified for you. If we do not hear from those people in minimum transmission time that they are coming safely back to us, we will destroy you. Yes, they will die too, but a Hero understands what honor demands. I require your immediate response."

Blankness.

"Whew!" gasped Tyra.

"Now the burden falls on you," Bihari told her gravely.

"What? How?"

"To make them see at home that this has been the only way."

"But, but you may lose your whole career-"

"Much worse, the movement for preparedness and a firm stance will suffer. And so a new war will become all the more likely. I think you can help make that clear to the human race. Will you?"

"I'll t-try my damnedest," Tyra promised. Whatever it may cause between Craig and me.

Bihari smiled. "I haven't misjudged you. Nor do I think I have underestimated you."

They waited in silence, together.

Ghrul-Captain snarled while the translator gave: "So be it, then. To treat with your hysteria would be unworthy of Heroes. Your wretched slinkers may return to you, and good riddance. But beware of coming near that planet again." Bihari nodded. "We grant you that. The third planet will be off limits for us, within a ten-million-kilometer radius. Please note that nothing else in the system, except your vessels, will be. Let this agreement be made in full honor, and our original terms of relationship continue in force. As soon as I learn that our people are bound back unharmed, I will take my command off battle footing. Please acknowledge."

The screen blanked anew.

Tyra felt and smelled that she had been sweating. A chill passed through her. Fire followed. "That was wonderful!" she cried.

Bihari smiled as if unperturbed. "Thank you. They'll be nearly out of their skins with rage, driven to do something or other showing they actually are superior to the monkeys. Let us hope it won't be too dangerous-to us, at any rate." She leaned forward. "I also hope, and I believe you can, when you tell the story, you will soften it, make it seem as minor an incident as possible." "Yes," Tyra murmured, "that would be best, wouldn't it?"

Every deployed robot and observatory, every probe, each of the boats when sent forth, transmitted continuously back to Freuchen. The computers printed everchanging displays and images. Aboard, Tyra could follow moment by moment. "Yes," opined planetologist Verwoort. "The catastrophe will begin any day now." Kumukahi writhed, distorted and in torment. The night side flickered with enormous lightnings, shimmered with their glare cast back from roiling clouds the size of Earth or greater, flashed with the red sparks of explosions, or whatever it was going on in the upper atmosphere, all above a dull glow of sheer heat. The day side seemed afire. Bursts of incandescent gas leaped from it like flames. Some broke free and whirled off, vanishing as they dissipated, toward the sun. Storms mightier than Jupiter's Red Spot, and perhaps of greater age, fought to keep their structure as they poured along the steepening slope of the inner tidal bulge. A segment of Pele's disc, dimmed by the imagers to seething purple, filled the right edge of the big screen.

"The spectrum grows more and more strange," said his colleague Takata. "In the past few hours I have been finding an increase of iron, largely hydrides…”Her voice trailed off.

"Spewed up from below, I suppose," suggested the physicist Padilla. "Should heavy elements not have sunk to form a core?"

"No," answered Verwoort. "They exist, yes, and they would be more plentiful in lower layers, but with as vast a mass of hydrogen and helium as this, the percentage is so small that it must always have been diffused. The core is metallic hydrogen, maybe pressed into a still denser form than in Jupiter. This upwelling should tell us much about the gaseous atmosphere."

"It is not the only peculiar chemistry," Takata said. "Jens will have plenty to consider when he gets back."

"What will we see when the whole thing breaks apart, before it falls into the sun?" asked the steward Hauptmann. While he was intelligent enough, science was not his forte, and with as many people to look after as there were on this voyage, he had been too busy to keep track.

Kivi shook her head. "It won't break like a melon," she explained. "The planet's self-gravity will hold it together as it fills its Roche lobe. We can't predict events with any precision, and no doubt we will be surprised. However, we can say that turbulence within may well eject great gouts of material, forming a spiral that streams into the star. The magnetic effects-but that goes too far into speculation. Eventually the planet will take a teardrop shape, filling its Roche lobe, and pouring its substance down that spiral until it becomes an accretion disk. This will go on at an accelerating rate for some undetermined time. Decades at least, possibly centuries." She sighed. "How I wish we had probes that could observe from sunside!"