"These are the traces of highly radioactive substances which satellites have recorded in the last year," Guthlac said. "From the state of the ground we don't think the stuff's been gone longer than that. Fortunately we can narrow it down further. The signatures you recorded match these—" he pointed to a long lonely line that crossed the Wunderland equator and continued down the globe. "They've gone to Little Southland. A couple of them have, anyway. As far as we can make out, the bulk of them can't have been moved far, though. You did a good job, Vaemar."
"The University has routine trips to Little Southland," said Nils Rykermann. "Mainly instrument checks. Vaemar can be rostered to do it. If we want to keep this matter quiet . . ."
"We do. For the moment certainly."
"Vaemar had better take a look, then. A look and back. He shouldn't be away more than a couple of days at most."
"What do you have in mind?" asked Cumpston.
"If what you say is on the loose," said Rykermann, "then for obvious reasons we don't want humans going after it blindly. Vaemar is better able to look after himself than almost any human and if he can tell us what he sees, then we can at least make our next move with knowledge. Anyway, if all the containers are together, we can at least say they've been gotten away from the Morlocks. Setting aside the question of who took them."
"It might be—" Cumpston bit off the words. To suggest in Vaemar's electronic presence that it might be dangerous for him would be an insult to test even Vaemar's exceptional self-control.
"The deserted farms?"
"That's bad. We thought the feral gangs were falling apart, but maybe this is their doing."
"If nothing worse. The thing we fear. We can't keep this secret much longer."
"The police have some ready-reaction teams," said Rykermann. "They're small but they've got good weapons. I'll get them up there now!"
"What about ARM?"
"They're Wunderland police, not ARM, and what they do is not ARM's business. Why do you think we have a police bagpipe band?"
"I always assumed it was to torture kzin prisoners. Or maybe flatlanders."
"I'll take that up with you later. Our pipers are actually part of an elite reaction force that doesn't care to advertise its presence as such. Band-practice covers a multitude of sins. I've still got plenty of rank in the Wunderland armed forces and I'll get them up to the Hohe Kalkstein now."
"Are you going to warn them about what they've really got to look out for?"
"Yes, there seems no choice about that now. But they are our best."
"Do you really think your best is good enough?"
"At the moment we've got no choice, with so much of our forces still tied up in the space war."
"I will give you full discretion," Guthlac told Vaemar. "Take any companions you wish, but lead. Lurk cunningly in the tall grass, scent out the spoor, do not scream and leap at the prey, but return. Knowledge is the prize."
"I have done the ROTC intelligence course," Vaemar reminded him, with the barest hint of something else in his voice, and adding after a moment, "sir."
"And that, my young Hero, is another reason you are chosen," Guthlac told him. "Act at discretion."
* * *
Kzaargh-Commodore paced. Night-Lurker's bridge did not allow him much space, a dozen strides one way, a dozen the other. But Captain, Navigator and the rest of the bridge team kept well out of his way.
One kzin heavy cruiser. With repairs of less than naval dockyard standard. But with claws still capable of seizing Glory on an epic scale. Still with claws capable of devastating a planet or a system.
Eight-and-four Earth-years had passed since, returning with some damage from a tip-and-run raid on the human bases in Sol system, his ship had received news of the death of great Chuut-Riit, of fratricidal war between Traat-Admiral and Ktrodni-Stkaa, and, far worse and more unbelievable, disaster on disaster, the shattering news of the human reconquest of Ka'ashi, and of the humans' possession of a superluminal drive against which no kzin strategy could prevail.
Kzaargh-Commodore had turned tail and fled. A commander less sure of his own courage or of his crew would have leapt into the battle, however hopeless, but his veterans trusted him unwaveringly, and he had long since passed the point of needing to prove his courage to himself. He had guessed from other experiences that the apes had developed a means of detecting the monopoles that powered the big kzin gravity-motors, but like all modern warships, Night-Lurker had a reaction-drive as well.
Evading detection in such circumstances was not difficult. In the vastness of space it was surprising that ships, even with detection equipment, encountered one another as often as they did, and he had more delta-V than he needed. He slowed the ship and headed in a long, elliptical orbit out of the Alpha Centauri system, well above the plane of the ecliptic, to further reduce chances of detection.
But he did not entirely flee. He dispatched Chorth-Captain, one of his best officers, once "Hider-and-Whisperer," a specialist in cloaking and communications technology, now promoted to Partial Name and Ship-Command rank, in a cloaked Rending Fang heavy fighter craft to spy out the situation. They would rendezvous later.
Strictly speaking, his duty as a commander in the Patriarch's Navy, if not to die on the attack, would have been to get his ship back to the nearest kzin world, or to Kzinhome itself.
But who knew which were the kzin-held worlds now? Further, he knew, his one ship, added to whatever kzin fleet was still in the area, would make no real difference to the situation. On the other hand, lurking in the Centauri system, it could still inflict terrible slashes if it could leap from hiding. His experience of humans was that, like other monkeys, they lacked persistence. No doubt the skies over Ka'ashi would be guarded and patrolled by human ships in the
