Hssin served as a forward military base of the Kzin Patriarchy, barren as a moon, yet with atmosphere like a planet. The gas was thin, wicked, noxious, sometimes as stormy as the surface of R’hshssira was docile. The temperatures ranged over extremes impossible for life to endure. Nothing worth hunting could live in those hills and plains of shattered rock and ice. The kzinti who stayed here were pitied by the kzinti who passed through on their way to greater glory.
…And, thought Short-Son bitterly, who mock and torture the loyal kzin whose heroism keeps this wretched base open for the use of the Patriarchy. He envied the outward-bound warriors their journey, their wily females, the wood and leather and tapestry in their starships. He scorned their petty complaints about the hardships of space. He openly hated their sons who used him as sport, but kept private his thoughts about violating their soft-furred daughters.
The Short-Son of Chiirr-Nig knew where they were running to. The brightest star on the horizon of Hssin was the beacon that made them endure both their travels and the tedious duty at bleak military bases along the way. Looking at it, he refused to call that white binary by its Kzin name, Ka’ashi—he always called it by its unpronounceable exotic alien name, Alpha Centauri. What did those weird sounds mean?
An old warrior had once told him that the monkey aliens had named it after a beast that was half monkey, half herbivore; four cloven hooves and two hands. Just the name could make him smell the hunting and stalking of strange beasts! He had salivated over smell-pictures of the six-legged underland gagrumphers.
But it was he who was being hunted!
The Son of Chiirr-Nig thought of himself as a freak, as the only kzin in the Patriarchy who had ever felt fear. Perhaps others had felt fear—but they did not run.
What was a half-grown kzin youth doing on the surface, hurrying in a pressure suit so hastily donned that he had forgotten his thermal underwear? He had also forgotten his oxygen. His mask-pack was rumbling to make up the lack by the dissociation of atmospheric carbon dioxide and his fur was not keeping him warm. His tail was already numb. Heroes as stupid as he was, died, he castigated himself. He was alone. He didn’t even have his mother to protect him.
I’m a coward, he thought, using a particularly vicious word from the Hero’s Tongue which referred to scurrying animals too small to bring hunt-honor. He would never have let another kzin know that he used such a word to describe himself. Nevertheless, he wished he could understand why no one else was afraid to die.
Puller-of-Noses and Hidden-Smiler—he had his own private names for his youthful comrades—were hunting him and they would catch him and kill him. A game. His father was always pushing him into such games before he was ready. His father wouldn’t care if he died stupidly. It would please Short-Son’s sire not to be embarrassed anymore. That noble one had a name and many sons to do him honor, enough sons themselves to earn names and make themselves rich on the labor of monkey slaves.
An old warrior friend of Short-Son had told him that there were octal-to-the-octals of the man-monkeys to be had out there, swarms! herds! forestfuls! You could kill them by the army and eat them by the feast and still have enough monkey slaves left over to make you rich! For a while Son-of-Chiirr-Nig held his furless tail between his legs to warm it and, shivering, found Man-sun, a radian to the right of Wunderland’s two stars, at the edge of the constellation Raised Dagger. It was almost touching Victim’s Blood, a distant red giant star that the man-beasts worshiped as lucky Mirach or simply as Beta Andromeda. They had a rich vocabulary of hauntingly soft sounds.
Sometimes it awed him to be on the frontier. From within the Patriarchy, it was said, one could gaze at the night sky and be unable to espy any nearby unconquered stars—but out here the sky was filled with unspoiled herds and grass! So much monkey meat; too bad those kit warriors were going to kill him before he got his fangs into it. What a waste! His claws extended and retracted.
Short-Son had a problem. As long as he was outside, he was probably safe. But Puller-of-Noses was one organized kzin, a born commander. Already Puller’s father was arranging to send him with the recruits to Wunderland for the fourth assault on Man-home. By now there were probably two octals of his fur-licking sycophants waiting at the entrances to the city with their wtsai daggers ready to clip ears.
Looking for me.
But the base was enormous. The original assault on Wunderland had been staged from here. And the base had grown fivefold since then as the news of the coming conquest of the Man-system spread back deep into the Patriarchy. New ships arrived constantly and new facilities, tunnels, buildings, floater landing sites were springing up with disordered proliferation. Surely there was a place to hide.
The kzin youth began stumbling his way in the direction of some newer diggings, taking deceptive shortcuts that only led into mazes of walls. He had certainly not been prepared for this frantic expedition. He was already too cold to continue. When the pads of his feet began to go numb a more local solution seemed in order. He almost turned back when he found his advance blocked by the great Jotok Run, an extensive collection of domes and subterranean warrens used for the breeding and hunting of the Jotok slaves. He was going
