claim. By the Sigril of the Patriarch which I now display, I make that claim to the death and to the generations.' He was in a fighting stance again, and his hand with extended claws gripped the hilt of his w'tsai. Thrint brains, if they could somehow be made to reveal…
'I think we should leave them and send another ship,' said Richard. 'Let's not push our luck.' In fact, he thought, it would probably be safe enough to approach again cautiously with chemical rockets or EV, but it was the best he could think of to defuse the situation. A human-kzin quarrel over thrint brains was not a good idea. In the time it would take to send another ship, the freeze-drying process of space might destroy some of their structure at least, and it was best destroyed. And he would like to be out of this grisly place.
Charrgh-Captain leaped to the console in a bound. 'There is activity!' He shrieked. 'Look! There is energy discharge! And lights!'
The camera, still trained on the sphere, showed red points in its dark depths, appearing and disappearing in a regular pattern.
'What do we do?'
Peter Robinson was hunched, crouching, ears knotted. He was trying, Richard thought, to block out something none of the others could feel-or did not know they felt? The last words had come from Charrgh-Captain, and Richard realized that what he was trying to block out was Charrgh-Captain's fear. Charrgh-Captain himself stood dignified and motionless now, his ears, tail and testicles all in the relaxed position. What an act! thought Richard. Only Peter Robinson gives it away. Speculating on the body language of the two great felines kept his own cold apprehension for a moment at bay. The Slavers are dead, he told himself.
Then Charrgh-Captain pointed to another screen.
The deep-radar showed that beneath its stony covering, the great sphere was changing preparatory to its stasis field being switched off.
'Flight is pointless,' said Charrgh-Captain. 'Whatever is happening, we must see it through. Have the main weapons poised.'
'Be prepared to fire without my command,' Richard told Melody. He noticed Charrgh-Captain's tendency to give orders. Comes naturally to a Kzin in a dangerous situation, I suppose, he thought. But I had better assert my authority right now.
– discontinuity-
'I detect no Slaver minds,' said Peter Robinson. The relief in his humanized voice, and in the atmosphere of the cabin, was almost palpable. 'None whatsoever. There is no danger of live Slavers, I think.'
The Slavers are dead!
There was no change to the surface of the sphere. 'The accreted material now becomes a thin shell over whatever is within.'
'We can see it with deep-radar anyway. Also, there is a possible advantage to the shell remaining in place. If there is anything dangerous in there, the shell will help stop it getting out.'
It would not stop the Slaver Power. And if it is anything of high gravity the shell will crumble inwards.'
It would have to be something of abnormally high gravity, I think. It would be prudent to move farther away, but not so far as to slow our responses appreciably.'
'There is nothing,' said Peter Robinson. 'No living minds.'
As the Wallaby moved away, the deep-radar's screen compensated and held its image at constant size. A great, irregular, metallic shape was seen within. It did not resemble any human, kzin or Puppeteer ship. It was not spherical, but asymmetrical and relatively compact. A large circle could be made out near a kind of double protuberance. What they called the control chamber was connected to it by a metallic stem. The #4 General Products hull, the biggest of the range, used almost entirely for colony expeditions, was a vast cargo-carrying sphere more than a thousand feet in diameter. This was far bigger, miles from one point to another. The Wallaby's instruments picked up another, still very faint energy discharge.
'A thrint battle-wagon!'
'I have seen nothing like it,' said Gatley Ivor.
'I am awed,' said Charrgh-Captain. 'I have seen holos of the dreadnaughts of the great wars. This dwarfs them. But it is cold and a dead ship. It must have been laid up to conserve it against need…'
It is almost too big to be a dreadnaught,' he said after a few moment's thought. 'I do not understand.'
No 'almost' about it,' said Richard. 'It is too big. Building a ship that size would be, as far as I can tell, an exercise beyond the point of diminishing returns. Thrintun were stupid but not, surely, that stupid. The same resources could have been used to build a score or more of respectable-sized battlewagons, big enough to do anything you liked, or any number of smaller warships still capable of carrying heavy warloads.
'Too many eggs in one basket… Once the stasis field was turned off-and it would have to be turned off before the thing could be used-a simple fusion missile could wreck it, let alone antimatter, which we know both sides used as a weapon… Besides, the deep-radar shows nothing that looks like weapons.'
'Anything can be made into a weapon,' said Charrgh-Captain grimly. 'You humans taught us that.'
Nonetheless, surely a purpose-built warship would have purpose-built weapons. Rail-guns, lasercannon… '
'Apart from war, you only need a truly vast ship like this if you cross space rarely,' said Gay. 'But with an FTL drive, you can cross it as often as you like. And they did have FTL. They wouldn't have needed a freighter, or even a colony-ship, that size.'
'It's worth plenty, anyway,' said Melody. 'The Institute will be pleased. And the Foundation. We've shown the Puppeteers again that we are worthy of the hire.'
'I'm not so sure,' said Richard. 'It might be an interesting historical artifact, but as a ship it's hardly likely to give us new knowledge apart from the archaeological. We have better drives than the ancients ever had, and their materials were inferior to General Products hulls. Perhaps if it had been a tnuctipun ship it would have taught us more. I'm not saying it's worthless, of course. There must be some discoveries on board. I'm sure an army of Ph. D. students will pick through it. I suppose the Institute may sell it to a wealthy collector.'
'How do you propose to get it there?' asked Charrgh-Captain.
'Fly it, I suppose. It would make quite a sensation!'
'Fly it how? Can you see a drive on it?'
'Finagle's ghost!'
'I did wonder how long it would take you to notice that.'
They peered into the deep-radar ghost of the thing. Melody said, 'There are massive fusion toroids, and what look like fuel tanks, part full. You can see there are massive stores of both hydrogen and heavy elements. The center of the thing, at least, seems to be built more of less on a pattern of concentric spheres.'
'A good shape for a warship. As little surface as possible to target,' said Charrgh-Captain. 'But the surface itself is not spherical. It is intuition only, but I feel-see a resemblance to the architecture of a computer whose cognitive cells are linked to give a cascading effect.'
'Are you saying it is a computer, Charrgh-Captain?'
'No, I am saying it reminds me of one. What would such a computer do? No, sense tells me it is a spaceship whose design is too alien for us to understand.'
'Drives must be there, if only we can find them,' said Gay. 'Let's look systematically.'
The ancient Slaver style of hyperdrive could not function until light-speed had nearly been reached,' said Richard some time later. He turned away from a search of the deep-radar images. The Whomping Wallaby's main computer screen was large, but he had almost covered it with boxes of data. 'The ancient craft needed massive conventional subluminal engines to accelerate them initially. But Charrgh-Captain is right: There are no propulsive engines apparent here. Despite the fusion-toroids, I see no ramscoop collector-head. And even a ramscoop would need something to boost it initially. There is no surface for either the discharge of a laser drive or to receive the impact of a pushing laser, unless that bulging circle has something to do with it. There are no reaction-drive ports. They did not have the Jotoki-Kzinti gravity-drive. There are only relatively tiny attitude-jets, which can maneuver it around various axes but can do little else. So we have a spaceship without a drive.'
'What about a sailing ship? Might it have had a lightsail?'
'It's too big. No buildable lightsail could move that mass. And why build a sailing ship when they had a hyperdrive? Besides, what good is a lightsail when you're being attacked by enemy warships? It's vulnerable and it's hard to maneuver at all. Thrintun had others do most of their thinking for them, so even if they weren't too
