been on that ship, he thought to himself, with a sudden flare of murderous anger. I was good enough. There are probably Wunderlanders aboard her; those slowships got through. if I hadn't been left sucking vacuum at the airlock, it could have been me out there!
'But not Ingrid,' he whispered to himself. 'The bitch wouldn't have the guts.' Sam was looking at him; it had been a long time since the memory of the last days came back. With a practiced effort of will he shoved it deeper below the threshold of consciousness and produced the same mocking smile with which he had faced the world for most of his adult life. 'I wonder how our esteemed ratcat masters are taking it,' he said. 'Been a while since the ones here've had to lap out of the same saucer as us lowlife monkey-boys. I'd like to see it, I truly would.'
'… estimate probability of successful interception at less than one-fifth,' the figure on the screen said. 'Vengeance Fang and Rampant Slayer do not respond to signals; Lurker at Waterholes continues to accelerate at right angles to the elliptic. We must assume they were struck by the ramscoop fields.'
The governor watched closely; the slight bristle of whiskers and rapid open-shut flare of wet black nostrils was a sign of intense frustration.
'You have leapt well, Traat-Admiral,' Chuut-Riit said formally. 'Break off pursuit.' A good tactician, Traat- Admiral; if he had come from a better family, he would have a double name by now. And he would have a double name, when Earth was conquered, a name and vast wealth. One percent of all the product of the new conquest, since he was to be in supreme military command of the Fifth Fleet. That would make him founder of a Noble Line, his bones in a worship shrine for a thousand generations. Chuut-Riit had hinted that he would send several of his daughters to the admiral's harem, letting him mingle his blood with that of the Patriarch. .. Chuut-Riit, are we to let the… the… omnivores escape unscathed?' The admiral's ears were quivering.
A rumble came from the space-armored figures that bulked in the dim orange light behind the flotilla commandant. Good, the planetary governor thought. They are not daunted.
'Your bloodlust is commendable, Traat-Admiral, but the fact remains that the human ship is traveling at velocities which render it… it is at a different point on the energy gradient, Traat-Admiral.'
'We can pursue as it leaves the system!”
'In ships designed to travel at. 8 lightspeed? From behind? Remember the Human Lesson. That is a very effective reaction drive they are using.' A deep ticking sound came from his throat and Traat-Admiral's ears laid back instinctively. The thought of trying to maneuver past that planetary length sword of nuclear fire…
Chuut-Riit paused to let the thought sink home before continuing: 'This has been a startling tactic. We assumed that possession of the gravity polarizer would lead the humans to neglect reaction drives, as we had done, hrrrearow echssseee nwaroweeaatrurrre, this-does-not-follow. We must prepare countermeasures, investigate the possibility of ramscoop interstellar missiles… at least they did not strike at this system's sun, or drop a really large mass into the planetary gravity well.' The fur of the kzin on the battlewagon's bridge laid flat, sculpting the bone-and-muscle planes of their faces.
'Indeed, Chuut-Riit, ' Traat-Admiral said fervently.
'It was only surprise that made the tactic so effective. Counters come readily to mind: a series of polarizer- driven missiles, with laser-cannon boost, deployed ready to destabilize ramscoop fields. In any case, you are ordered to break off action, assist with emergency efforts, detach two units with interstellar capacity to shadow the intruder until it leaves the immediate vicinity. Waste no more Heroes in futility; instead, we must repair the damage, redouble our preparations for the next attack on Sol.'
'As you command, Chuut-Riit, although it shaves my mane to let the leaf-eating monkeys escape, when the Fifth Fleet is so near completion.' The governor rose, letting his weight forward on hands whose claws slid free. He restrained any further display of impatience. I must teach him to think. To learn to think correctly he must be allowed to make errors. 'Its departure has already been delayed. Will losing further units in fruitless pursuit speed the repairs and modifications which must be made? Attend to your orders!”
'At once, Chuut-Riit!”
The governor held himself impressively immobile until the screen blanked. Then he turned and leaped with a tearing shriek over the nearest wall, out into the unnatural storm and darkness. A half-hour later he returned, meditatively picking bits of hide and bone from between his teeth with a thumb-claw. His pelt was plastered flat with mud, leaves, and blood, and a thorned branch had cut a bleeding trough across his sloping forehead. The screens were still flicking between various disasters, each one worse than the last.
'Any emergency calls?' he asked mildly.
'None at the priority levels you established,' the computer replied. 'Murmeroumph,' he said, opening his mouth wide into the killing gape to get at an irritating fragment between two of the back shearing teeth. 'Staff.'
One wall turned to the ordered bustle of the household's management central. 'Ah, Henrietta,' he said in Wunderlander. 'You have that preliminary summary ready?'
The human swallowed and averted her eyes from the bits of something that the kzin was flicking from his fangs and muzzle. The others behind her were looking drawn and tense as well, but displayed no signs of panic. If I could recognize such signs, the kzin thought. They panic differently. A Hero overcome with terror either fled, striking out at anything in his path, or went into mindless berserker frenzy.
Berserker, he mused thoughtfully. The concept was fascinating; reading of it had convinced him that kzin and human kind were enough alike to cooperate effectively. 'Yes, Chuut-Riit,' she was saying. 'Installations Seven, Three, and Twelve in the north polar zone have been effectively destroyed, loss of industrial function in the 75- 80% range. Over 90% at Six, the main fusion generator destabilized in the pulse from a near-miss.' Ionization effects had been quite spectacular. 'Casualties in the range of five thousand Heroes, thirty thousand humans. Four major orbital facilities hit, but there was less collateral damage there, of course, and more near-misses.' No air to transmit blast in space. 'Reports from the asteroid belt still coming in.'
'Merrower,' he said, meditatively. Kzin government was heavily decentralized; the average Hero did not make a good bureaucrat, that was work for slaves and computers. A governor was expected to confine himself to policy decisions. Still… 'Have my personal spaceship prepared for lift, I will be doing a tour.'
Henrietta hesitated. 'Ah, noble Chuut-Riit, the feral humans will be active, with defense functions thrown out of order.'
She was far too experienced to mistake Chuut-Riit's expression for a smile.
'Markham and his gang? I hope they do, Henrietta, I sincerely hope they do.' He relaxed. 'I'll view the reports from here. Send in the groomers, my pelt must be fit to be seen.' A pause. 'And replacements for one of the bull buffaloes in the holding pen.'
The kzin threw himself down on the pillow behind his desk, massive head propped with its chin on the stone surface of the workspace. Grooming would help him think, humans were so good at grooming… and blowdryers, blowdryers alone were worth the trouble of conquering them.
'Prepare for separation,' the computer said. The upper field of the Catskinner screen was a crawling slow- motion curve of orange and yellow and darker spots; the battle schematic showed the last few slugs dropping away from the Yamamoto, using the gravity of the sun to whip around and curve out toward targets in a different quarter of the elliptic plane. More than a few were deliberately misaimed, headed for catastrophic destruction in Alpha Centauri's photosphere as camouflage.
It can't be getting hotter, he thought.
'Gottdamn, it's hot,' Ingrid said. 'I'm swine sweating.'
Thanks, he thought, refraining from speaking aloud with a savage effort. 'Purely psychosomatic,' he grated.
'There's one thing I regret,' Ingrid continued.
'What's that?'
'That we're not going to be able to see what happens when the Catskinner and those slugs make a high-Tau transit of the sun's outer envelope,' she said.
Jonah felt a smile crease the rigid sweat-slick muscles of his face. The consequences had been extrapolated, but only roughly. At the very least, there would be solar-flare effects like nothing this system had ever witnessed before, enough to foul up every receptor pointed this way. 'It would be interesting, at that.' 'Prepare for separation,' the computer continued. 'Five seconds and counting.'
One. Ingrid had crossed herself just before the field went on.
Astonishing. There were worse people to be crammed into a Dart with for a month, even among the more
