“No,” said the navigator easily. “Your life may be extended a little, but you will die with heroes. Soon.”
“Sounds like a suicide run,” Locklear said.
“We are volunteers,” the navigator said with lofty arrogance, making no attempt to argue the point, and then continued his instructions.
Presently, studying the screen, Locklear said, “That gunner has us forty parsecs from anyplace. Jump into normal space long enough for an astrogation fix and you've got it.”
“Do not abuse my patience, monkey. Our last Fleet Command message on hyperwave forbade us to make unnecessary jumps.”
After a moment, Locklear grinned. “And your commander doesn't want to have to tell Fleet Command you're lost.”
“What was that thing you did with your face?”
“Uh, — just stretching the muscles,” Locklear lied, and pointed at one of the meters. “There; um, that has a field strength of, oh hell, three eights and four, right?”
Tzak-Navigator did not have to tremble because his four-fingered hand was in motion as a blur, punching buttons. “Yes. I have a star mass and,” the small screen stuttered its chicken-droppings in Kzinti, “here are the known candidates.”
Locklear nodded. In this little-known region, some star masses, especially the larger ones, would have been recorded. With several fixes in hyperdrive, he could make a strong guess at their direction with respect to the galactic core. But by the time he had his second group of candidate stars, Locklear also had a scheme.
Locklear asked for his wristcomp, to help him translate octal numbers — his chief motive was less direct — and got it after Apprentice-Engineer satisfied himself that it was no energy weapon. The engineer, a suspicious churl quick with his hands and clearly on the make for status, displayed disappointment at his own findings by throwing the instrument in Locklear's face. Locklear decided that the kzin lowest on the scrotum pole was most anxious to advance by any means available. And that, he decided, just might be common in all sentient behavior.
Two hours later by his wristcomp, when Locklear tried to speak to the commander without prior permission, the navigator backhanded him for his trouble and then explained the proper channels. “I will decide whether your message is worth Grraf-Commander's notice,” he snarled.
Trying to stop his nosebleed, Locklear told him.
“A transparent ruse,” the navigator accused, “to save your own hairless pelt.”
“It would have that effect,” Locklear agreed. “Maybe. But it would also let you locate your position.”
The navigator looked him up and down. “Which will aid us in our mission against your own kind. You truly disgust me.”
In answer, Locklear only shrugged. Tzak-Navigator wheeled and crossed to the commander's vicinity, stiff and proper, and spoke rapidly for a few moments. Presently, Grraf-Commander motioned for Locklear to approach.
Locklear decided that a military posture might help this time, and tried to hold his body straight despite his pains. The commander eyed him silently, then said, “You offer me a motive to justify jumping into normal space?”
“Yes, Grraf-Commander: to deposit an important captive in a lifeboat around some stellar body.”
“And why in the name of the Patriarchy would I want to?”
“Because it is almost within the reach of plausibility that the occupants of this ship might not survive this mission,” Locklear said with irony that went unnoticed. “But en route to your final glory, you can inform Fleet Command where you have placed a vitally important captive, to be retrieved later.”
“You admit your status at last.”
“I have a certain status,” Locklear admitted.
“You do not deceive me in your motive. If I did not locate that spot,” Tzak-Navigator said, “no Patriarchy ship could find you — and you would soon run out of food and air.”
“And you would miss the Eridani mission,” Locklear reminded him, “because we aren't getting any blips and you may be getting farther from your rendezvous with every breath.”
“At the least, you are a traitor to monkeydom,” the navigator said. “No kzin worthy of the name would assist an enemy mission.”
Locklear favored him with a level gaze. “You've decided to waste all nine lives for glory. Count on me for help.”
“Monkeys are clever where their pelts are concerned,” rumbled the commander. “I do not intend to miss rendezvous, and this monkey must be placed in a safe cage. Have the crew provision a lifeboat but disable its drive, Tzak-Navigator. When we locate a stellar mass, I want all in readiness for the jump.”
The navigator saluted and moved off the bridge. Locklear received permission to return to his console, moving slowly, trying to watch the commander's furry digits in preparation for a jump that might be required at any time. Locklear punched several notes into the wristcomp's memory; you could never tell when a scholar's notes might come in handy. Locklear was chewing on kzin rations, reconstituted meat which met human teeth like a leather brick and tasted of last week's oysters, when the long range meter began to register. It was not much of a blip but it got stronger fast, the vernier meter registering by the time Locklear called out. He watched the commander, alone while the rest of the crew were arranging that lifeboat, and used his wristcomp a few more times before Grraf-Commander's announcement.
Tzak-Navigator, eyeing his console moments after the jump and still light-minutes from that small stellar mass, was at first too intent on his astrogation to notice that there was no nearby solar blaze. But Locklear noticed, and felt a surge of panic.
“You will not perish in solar radiation, at least,” said Grraf-Commander in evident pleasure. “You have found yourself a black dwarf, monkey!”
Locklear punched a query. He found no candidate stars to match this phenomenon. “Permission to speak, Tzak-Navigator?”
The navigator punched in a final instruction and, while his screen flickered, turned to the local viewscreen. “Wait until you have something worth saying,” he ordered, and paused, staring at what that screen told him. Then, as if arguing with his screen, he complained, “But known space is not old enough for a completely burnt-out star.”
“Nevertheless,” the commander replied, waving toward the screens, “if not a black dwarf, a very, very brown one. Thank that lucky star, Tzak-Navigator; it might have been a neutron star.”
“And a planet,” the navigator exclaimed. “Impossible! Before its final collapse, this star would have converted any nearby planet into a gas shell. But there it lies!” He pointed to a luminous dot on the screen.
“That might make it easy to find again,” Locklear said with something akin to faint hope. He knew, watching the navigator's split concentration between screens, that the kzin would soon know the
The navigator ignored him. “Permission for proximal orbit,” he requested.
“Denied,” the commander said. “You know better than that. Close orbit around a dwarf could rip us asunder with angular acceleration. That dwarf may be only the size of a single dreadnought, but its mass is enormous enough to bend distant starlight.”
While Locklear considered what little he knew of collapsed star matter, a cupful of which would exceed the mass of the greatest warship in known space, the navigator consulted his astrogation screen again. “I have our position,” he said at last. “We were on the way to the galactic rim, thanks to that untrained— well, at least he is a fine gunner. Grraf-Commander, I meant to ask permission for orbit around the planet. We can discard this offal in the lifeboat there.”
