taken northeast in cautious stages to the great limestone escarpment of the Hohe Kalkstein and the sparsely- settled country beyond. A few days after they left the warehouse the collaborationist government on orders from the local kzin supervisor-of-animals brought in a kzin telepath to sweep the minds of key personnel working in the plant. The resistance was alerted beforehand and several fled. The alert was not perfect, however, and so several others died, but they died before the telepath could reach them.
Occupied Wunderland 2407 a.d.
The convoy arrived in the little valley at nightfall. Nils and Leonie Rykermann and a dozen others emerged from hiding and greeted it. More remained hidden.
'Our instructions,' said the guerrilla courier in charge of the convoy, 'are to get this stuff to you, and you are to get it under cover. Bury it in the caves-caves that aren't used-and forget it until you hear further.' He passed Rykermann a sealed copy of orders.
'What is it?'
'I don't know.' That was hardly surprising. 'Need to know' was enforced with religious zeal in the Resistance. Kzin interrogation of prisoners very often included telepathic probing, and even without this kzin tortures were very persuasive. 'Markham's ships picked it up off Acheron.' He gestured to the nuclear-material warning which some of the containers bore. That seemed self-explanatory even if the rest did not. 'It was landed with false certifications. I know there was a lot of effort put into getting it here.'
Rykermann nodded. 'If it's something that kills ratcats, that's all that matters for now,' he said. Hatred glittered in his eyes. 'Dead ratcats. That's all that matters,' he repeated to himself. It was probably an unnecessary statement. None of the humans present felt differently.
'I don't think Sol would go to this much trouble to send us strawberry ice cream,' the courier said.
Their infrared signatures, diffused through the canopy of leaves, and further by the cloaks which they and their mounts wore, might be indistinguishable from those of a herd of gagrumpher or other large Wunderland animals to kzin or government surveillance satellites. But it would be foolish to bet that way for too long and they wasted little time in talking.
Rykermann, the Resistance's chief biochemist and Wunderland's major expert on the great cave systems of the Hohe Kalkstein, supervised the rapid unloading of the animals. The containers were stacked inside one of the many cave entrances in the area. Some of these caves joined the huge main system, but even those that did not could be prodigious in themselves. Mapping the great caves and their connecting passages-many times the size of the Carlsbad Caverns of Earth-had been barely begun when the kzinti landed forty years before, and after decades of use by human guerrillas it was still very far from complete. A quick prior inspection had shown these chambers at least to be free of recent signs of Morlocks, the large, quasi-humanoid but near-brainless predators that had ruled in the deep caves. The two parties hurriedly began covering the containers.
'I'm sorry I can't stay and socialize,' said the courier.
'Don't apologize,' said Rykermann. 'Whatever this stuff is, we'd better not linger too near it. And I've got an honest job to get back to.'
'Kzin!' screamed Leonie as the two gravity-cars rose over the valley-wall. Her beam rifle was firing before she finished the word. Attached to her rifle was a small surface-to-air missile. It just missed one of the sledges, but the kzinti did not know it was the only one the guerrillas had-given the threat of such missiles, they could not circle firing from the air. They needed no other encouragement for ground-combat. Other guerrillas, previously posted, fired from hiding-places around. Some of the weapons were primitive makeshifts, others were more modern and effective.
The kzin cars were sledges for light scouts and hunting-parties, not for full-scale war, but they carried a couple of heavy beam-weapons mounted at the noses and the great felinoids had sidearms. The beam from one smashed into the part-buried heap of containers before the housing of the car's gravity-planer was hit and it turned over, the screaming kzinti leaping clear, firing their own weapons as they came. The main human party was down too, firing into them.
One of the human party's horses provided a diversion. Maddened by the smell of kzinti it broke its tether and ran screaming. Uncontrollable reflexes triggered by the sight and by the smell of its terror, two kzinti leapt at it, razor claws slashing through saddle, hide, muscle and ribs, the kzinti themselves presenting a target the human marksmen were quick to find. The shrieking animal ran in a semicircle, crashing into a group of kzin as it collapsed in its death-agony. The humans had time to begin firing at the grounded kzin troops in earnest before they leapt.
The ground combat was short and bloody. No human could hope to match a kzin in speed or strength, but if the human was trained and experienced and could get in or under shelter with a modern weapon, the odds were evened a good deal. The members of the guerrilla supply column obeyed their instincts and went down in a circle, firing outwards. The kzinti obeyed their instincts and tactical doctrine: they leapt and charged, screaming and firing as they came. Kzinti died in the charge, but the circle of guerrillas was overrun and shattered. Their heavy weapons apart, the kzinti's speed and agility were as terrible in battle as were their claws, teeth, strength and merciless fury.
Leonie leapt to one of the abandoned kzin sledges and swung its heavier gun onto the main kzin body. More kzinti died, the survivors scattered, regrouped and counterattacked. Leonie and the gun were their main target for a moment. A laser blast hit her squarely in the chest, but she was wearing one of the guerrillas' few high-tech light-weight flak-jackets with layers of mirror. She went down in a diving somersault and crawled away as the guerrillas-Rykermann's group and the few survivors of the supply party-gave covering fire. The kzinti again charged the main human position. Again kzinti died, and so did a large number of humans, then, but thanks largely to Leonie and the gun, the humans now outnumbered the kzin enough to take losses and keep fighting.
The leader of the guerrilla convoy was torn apart by the claws of one kzin slow to die of wounds, who plunged on to wreak havoc with rest of the convoy party. The surviving kzinti scattered after their first slashing leaps, but humans followed them, screaming their own battle-cries. The kzinti, instead of disappearing into the darkening forest, regrouped and leapt back. Strakkakers, Lewis-guns and beam and bullet rifles met them. The kill-ratio was better this time, almost one kzinti for every two humans dead. Four kzinti made it into the cave, where the fight ended. The humans had bombs of nitrate-based explosives.
Nils and Leonie Rykermann, highly-experienced fighters, and protected as major assets by their own people, survived, as did some of their fighters. None of the convoy party did.
The last fighting kzin, staggering bloody and maimed from the cave to die on the attack, fell screaming in a storm of converging bullets and beams. The few surviving humans moved fast, killing the wounded kzinti and those of their own too badly wounded to move.
'Let's go!' Tasso von Lufft, the second-in-command, grabbed Rykermann's arm.
The dying kzin commander had been playing possum, hoping to lure a human within reach of his claws. Rykermann finished shooting him between the eyes. Some kzinti were terrified of going to the Fanged God without ears or noses. In case this kzin should be one such, Rykermann paid his respects to the details of this belief by slashing the nose off with his ratchet-knife. Two more slashes secured the tattooed ears, which would go to his belt-a kzin custom which the guerrillas had adopted. With practiced fingers he rifled the ammunition pouches.
'We can't leave this stuff!' Leonie protested. Half the containers were unburied still, a number scarred by the kzin beam. The damp ground around them steamed.
'There'll be more ratcats here any minute,' von Lufft objected.
'Not quite yet,' said Leonie. 'If that was a set ambush they'd have had follow-up on top of us now. I think it was just a hunting party or a random patrol.'
'But the cars will probably have signalled,' said von Lufft. 'And satellites will have picked up the beams. We've got to get out of here fast! There will be more kzin forces on the way here now. That's if they're in the mood for a hunt and don't just hit us from space.'
'They died to get that stuff here,' said Nils Rykermann, gesturing at the dead leader of the couriers. 'Whatever it is, it's important.'
'And if it's dangerous, and leaking? Those drums took a fair hit. Like the man said, I don't think it's strawberry ice cream.'
'If they're leaking virulent radioactives we're dead already. But'-a quick examination-'I don't see my meter moving. I'm hoping they were made with strong linings. Come on! The sooner we get them covered the sooner we're out of here.'
