tear out his hunk of flesh to an anguished animal cry. Trainer was not going to mention the subject of irregular modifications again.
'I'll take any edge,' said Kr-Captain, blood on his Jaws.
'Of course, any alteration can be re-standardized.'
'A laudable way to deal with fussy bureaucrats.'
'Useful too, in case non-standard parts are unavailable during an emergency.'
'When might such work be done?'
To avoid equipment chaos, standardization had been rigidly imposed since the time of the first interstellar Patriarchs. All improvements, by decree, had to come out of Kzin-home. In a subluminal empire, sixty light-years in diameter, new standards diffused slowly.
Brilliant innovations built to serve a need during the heat of some local war tended to die in the files. First the innovation had to reach Kzin-home. Then it had to be tested by a bureaucracy which considered itself to be the sole font of all change--and was understaffed. The ideas that lived often took ten or fifteen generations to become the new standard authorized by the High Admiralty, not because the Admiralty was particularly senile, but because the pace of light from star to star was pitiably slow.
Still, many such battle-tried ideas could be found hibernating within the labyrinthine network of lairs inside the data-links. Finding them took maze-tracking skills, and battle-cunning to know what was wanted, and an engineering background to know what was possible. Having fanatically loyal Jotoki technicians also helped.
The Flayer-of-Monkeys was a three-kzin fighterscout. They were well away from the Sherrek's Ear, testing the illegal modifications, when they got an emergency message. 'Flayer. Flayer. Flayer. Record. Record. Record.' Kr- Captain was at the leading point of the delta-shaped control chamber. He switched on his combat communications memory. Trainer-of-Slaves happened to be riding in the Sensor's harness, and Long-Reach was uncomfortably seated on his mouth in the Weapons-Operator chair, peering at his instruments. He was used to maintaining them, not reading them.
Sherrek's Ear continued urgently. 'Acknowledge and Execute. Time Lag too Long for Confirmation. Will Repeat Message. Ramscoop Coming Through. Intercept and Destroy. Flayer is only Warcraft in Combat Range. Repeat: Intercept and Destroy. Ramscoop Coming in Much Faster than Predicted.'
The excited kzin controller spat out a number. 'We See Target: Three Octal-squared Light-days Out, Coming In. Real Position: Passing A-star; Perhaps Already Outbound. Possible Collision A-star. If So:
Cancel Intercept. Now Read Coordinates for Flayer Intercept.'
They were given a position which placed Man-sun almost in occultation with Alpha Centauri A, on a circle surrounding A at a point thirty degrees north-east of a reference longitude through Kzin-sun. If they couldn't intercept within forty-seven hours, the ramscoop would escape.
'…We Assume You Are Unarmed. Destroy-mode Your Choice. Message Will Now Repeat. Flayer. Flayer…'
A startled Kr-Captain swung his outer antenna toward the Sherrek's Ear. 'Flayer Ack. Will Intercept. Flayer Ack. Flayer Ack. Moving out.' He switched off the comm they were too far away to carry on a conversation pulled down his goggles, and took a brief look at the heavens while he rolled Flayer-of-Monkeys in the direction of the line joining Man-sun and Alpha Centauri A, now separated by about seven degrees.
'We've got to close up Man-sun and the A-star. That's shaving the hairs. Hope your juiced-up polarizer really will do octal-squared g's. What the sthondat is a ramscoop?'
'Hey, two missiles!' said long-Reach's short(arm) after checking the weapons readout.
'Camera missiles,' snarled Kr-Captain, lolling his tongue. 'For maneuvers.'
Trainer-of-Slaves was suddenly remembering Grraf-Hromfi's long forgotten seminar on ramscoops. 'I know what a ramscoop is.'
'Good. Whatever it is, can we kill it? We're disarmed.' They were already accelerating at sixty-three g's, yet it would be hours before they began to see Alpha Centauri creeping across the starfield. Kr-Captain turned to calculating orbits on his screen. They were going to have to cross the line-of-flight of the man-thing at ninety degrees. 'We have just enough time to decelerate and stop on their line-of-flight. Should we stop or do a flying pass?'
All of Grraf-Hromfi's lectures on tactics crowded into Trainer's thoughts. Think before you leap. 'Stop if we can. We get one try. We don't want our fire crossing the line-of-flight at an angle not at those velocities.'
The old seminar room on the Sherrek's Ear was filling Trainer's imagination. The smell of frame-beryllium and old fur. The wet sniff of algae. But especially that room five years ago. Grraf-Hromfi was the same benevolent tyrant that he had always been, mane a bit scraggly. His halo mockup of the ramscoop floated to one side and he held his shamboo pointer tipped with slashtooth tusk that he liked to jab into his bolos and sometimes into the bellies of his less attentive listeners.
'We do not know its intention,' the ghost-memory was saying to Trainer. 'It is probably coming to sniff spoor around our boundaries. It cannot have an attack capability.'
Trainer tried to reevaluate was that still true? And drew a blank.
'It cannot defend itself.'
Yes, thought Trainer, its speed* its only defense, running like a fangless herbivore.
'The most interesting fact that this mockup reveals about the United Nations Space Navy is that they have not as of four years ago, I repeat learned how to build an interstellar-grade gravity polarizer. Otherwise they would not be launching such a massive low-performance device. The magnetic funnel' he pointed 'is used to collect interstellar hydrogen for the reaction drive. Can any of you tell me its major constraint?'
There had been silence in the classroom. Today it was the silence of interception through soundless space.
Trainer remembered himself prompting, mischievously, 'Ask Long-Tooth. He knows.'
Long-Tooth-Son of Grraf-Hromfi jumped out of his reverie. 'Honored patriarch, a ramscoop is too slow.'
'Its acceleration is too feeble,' corrected the father. 'And why is that?'
Long-Tooth cast Trainer a venomous look for getting him into this dialog. 'There's not much hydrogen for it to use.'
'How much?'
'Sire! I don't know.'
'Trainer-of-Slaves?'
'Please accept my surrender if I am wrong. Between here and Man-sun the density is about an octal-squared to four-octal-squared hydrogens per fistful of space.'
Grraf-Hromfi again passed the slashtooth tusk of his pointer through the fuzzy holographic ramscoop in front of him. The spout of its funnel was burdened by racks of spherical tanks. 'They need these huge hydrogen tanks to prime their reaction engines since they can't collect much hydrogen at low speeds. The tanks will be dropped off once they are moving fast enough to devour more than starvation rations of the interstellar hydrogen.'
He was grinning at monkey folly. 'They can't collect much at high speeds either in spite of the fact that the main funnel collector surface seems to be about as large as the Patriarch's private hunting estate. Their maximum speed is a quarter that of light if they use a ramjet design. With a more sophisticated flow-through design they are only limited by relativistic effects which are considerable. I doubt a top velocity beyond a half-lightspeed.'
…and you were wrong… The Flayer was at the center of a sphere of stars, intercepting some manthing that was coming at them close to the velocity of light.
'At really high speeds they would have to know how to burn proton cosmic rays an unpleasant diet.' Grraf- Hromfi got an amused ripple of ears when he added that this might be to the taste of a herbivore.
… yes, and the monkeys have managed to thrive on that unpleasantly lethal die…
'Those are engineering details and I presume they can be mastered. Ramscoops are a primitive solution and we've never used them, so we know little of the details. The major problem is not an engineering one it is a flaw in the concept. A fusion funnel cannot attain high accelerations, first because it is fuel starved, and second because reaction drives produce inertial acceleration. How do you build a gossamer funnel that can take even one gravity of inertial acceleration?'
…but at a fifth of a gravity, year after year…
Grraf-Hromfi did not mention in his lecture that a fighting kzin warship could accelerate at sixty gravities with the pilot floating in his cockpit and thus reach its maximum cruising speed in about five days, because all of his
