On the screen, the assassin came into Riit's Past at high speed, faster than a Hero's charge. Companions were still assembling in its path, and it produced a needlegun and shot them all. There was respectable return fire, but there was impact armor under the superconductor, and the assassin was either immune to stunners or shielded somehow. The needles got through all the armor the Companions had, but apparently didn't tumble-none of them began vomiting blood, anyway; they just fell asleep at once.
A Companion in powered armor was beyond the next archway. He fired a staggered laser array-and none of it hit. The assassin had turned sideways and bent backward and tilted its head, and all the beams passed it by. Then the assassin fired the needlegun into the wrist control of the armor, and the armor fell off. The Companion drew his w'tsai and leapt even as the armor was hitting the ground, and the assassin dodged the blade and hit him with both hands, one on either side of the rib cage. The Companion fell, gasping. He wasn't dead or dying, but he wasn't going to be getting up until someone came with a medikit and pulled back his dislocated rib joints, where the assassin had caved them into his lungs.
The assassin got to where the stuffed alien stood on a pedestal and hesitated for an instant. That was enough for the lasers to slice up the needlegun. The assassin ran on.
A section of the monitoring system went dead, just as the assassin was getting to it.
HOW DID IT DO THAT? Gnix demanded.
'It couldn't have,' the chief slave replied. 'It could be damage from the crash.'
FIND THAT THING!
'There are Heroes massing in its only path.'
The statue looked like a six-legged Jotok. Given its imposing size, it was a religious image, probably based on a real individual; each Jotoki limb had its own brain lobe, so a six-legged Jotok would have been far smarter than usual, and probably also a holy cripple. Certainly a legend.
From above came a voice, speaking Flatlander: 'Hey. Protector. Up here.'
There was a half-grown kzintosh hanging by one foot. 'I know a shortcut,' he said.
An army could be heard ahead-could be smelled ahead.
After the youngster had been hauled into the duct and the hatch closed, he said, 'There's one Thrint and four Tnuctipun. Rrao-Chrun-Riit is obeying as slowly as feasible. And,' he said, 'and he is my father, so-'
'Alive if any chance exists,' the Protector said, and sniffed. 'Harem? Right. Stay someplace safe.'
'Felix said Protectors liked jokes.'
'Felix?'
'Felix Buckminster. Former technology officer on the Fury. I'm a Patriarch's Son.'
'Okay, but be inconspicuous.'
The kzintosh wrapped a piece of metal mesh around his head and touched a switch. 'The Thrint won't notice me. Felix taught me a lot.'
'Good for him.' The Protector wriggled down the duct, came out the access hatch, and pretty well ran along the ceiling loops to the wall handholds. It went down the wall and was working out the door mechanism before Shleer was all the way out of the hatch, and was gone well before he reached the ground.
It hadn't been patronizing him, though: It had scratched the combination into the wall before it left. Shleer followed as quickly as he could.
I CAN'T FIND IT! Gnix Shrieked, and slaves howled and fell.
'It may have a shield,' Darfoor said.
MY AMPLIFIER CAN GET THROUGH A SHIELD, FOOL! UNLESS YOU MEAN THE KIND YOU WERE MAKING.
Despair added flavor to the spy's thoughts. 'I do.'
CAN YOU DO SOMETHING ABOUT THAT? Darfoor seemed much too pleased at this question, so Gnix learned why and said, CAN YOU DO IT WITHOUT
SHUTTING DOWN THE AMPLIFIER?
No,' Darfoor said miserably.
THEN WAIT A MOMENT. Gnix paused to exclude his immediate group of slaves, then Told the rest of the palace:
GO TO SLEEP.
Then he Told Darfoor, NOW SHUT IT DOWN.
Shleer staggered a bit as his jammer quit, but it wasn't bad-almost everyone in range had gone to sleep.
He got to the Place of Contemplation, which the Thrint had had redone as a TV room, just as Rrao-Chrun-Riit was stunned asleep by the Protector.
The Thrint had three of the Tnuctipun in front of him in a pyramid, and said something that the Tnuctipun understood to mean, 'Drop your weapons.' There was a strong Push behind it. It didn't work, and the Thrint raised a variable knife-the Patriarch's, Shleer noted, offended-and pushed the switch.
The glowing red ball fell off the end and rolled away. The Thrint stared after it. Then he looked up.
The Protector shot his eye out with a plain old slug pistol. 'Apparently a knife doesn't always work,' it said as Gnix fell backward.
Then it blew the three Tnuctipun's brains out too.
It turned to the fourth, Darfoor, who screeched desperately, 'Fa la be me en lu ki da so mu nu e ti fa di om sa ti po ka et ri fu…' and more of that general nature.
The Protector said, 'Glossolalia?…Machine code?…Hard… wire…ta…lo…'
Shleer pulled out one of the Peer's anemones, leapt into the room, and thrust its disk against the Tnuctip's side. As designed, the disk stayed put against the target's skin, while the ultrafine hullmetal wires it bound together passed through it, resuming their original shapes: curves, varying from slight to semicircular. In combination they made up a rather fluffy blossom: an anemone.
They had to pass through the Tnuctip to do it. It fell into two pieces and a good deal of goo.
The Protector shook its immense head in relief and said, 'Kid, I owe you a big one.'
'You don't either,' said Shleer.
'I do. The Tnuctipun created my ancestors, and they clearly hardwired our brains to respond to a programming language this one knew. I was about to become his adoring slave. I owe you big.'
'You gave me my father back.'
'I wanted him healthy anyway. Give me a minute here.' It went to the control panel and looked it over. 'Wow, good traps you guys make. Got it.' It shut down the acceleration field. Then it opened a belt pouch and got out a disk about the size of a decent snack, pulled a switch, and set it down to inflate into a globe.
'How did you do that with the variable knife?' Shleer said.
'One time-alteration field won't work inside another. The wire was too thin to support the weight of the ball when it wasn't in stasis. Sorry, I'm being rude. I'm Judy Greenberg.'
'Who?' said Shleer, utterly surprised.
When he'd come out of it, Larry had abruptly sat up in his rinse tank and said, 'Why the hell do kzinti dislike eye contact?'
They were felines, after all. 'Good question,' said Peace. 'That's Judy there. She insisted. She'll be out tomorrow.'
'What about the girls?' They had four daughters, Gail, Leslie, Joy, and Carolyn. Carolyn was four. (All had blond hair the young Peace Corben would have given up three fingers for.)
'Old Granny Corben explained everything, and they're all proud of you two.' The colonists' children, at least, trusted her, not least because kids usually know a pushover when they see one. (It is a protector's duty to spoil children absolutely rotten.)
Larry had then said, 'Oh god damn. Telepath in orbit to be sure the situation is resolved.' So Judy had to be the one going in with the amplifier.
'At least she's a precog.' So she'd duck before being shot at.
'Thanks.' That had helped. Larry picked up a pack of cigarettes, left thoughtfully nearby, and lit one. 'Gaahhh!' he bellowed, and threw it into the rinse tank he'd just left. 'What did you put in that?'
'Tobacco,' Peace said.
He looked her over. 'They've always smelled like that to you?'
'Yes, but you seemed to enjoy them.'
He spent almost a full second thinking this over. Then he said, 'Thanks.'
