trunk and stepped out into the green world of the elevated rainforest.. The foliage beneath him had been uniformly limber, sagging fearfully under the weight of his body and armor. He had made his way a few cautious steps in this treacherous environment-so unlike the rolling veldt of his ancestors. Every step bad required careful placement of all four paws on a firm bough, to avoid falling through. When he was fully clear of the trunk, he had raised his torso, balanced, and aimed his locator in the four cardinal directions.
By gauging the strength of the various returns, he bad determined the general direction of the artifact. And by keeping his path down the last tree all along one side, without deviating around the intervening branches, he had maintained his sense of that direction. He was reasonably sure that the way to the artifact was up the tree he now addressed.
And if it was not, then he would start over again-right up until the time his crew had the Cat’s Paw repaired and he must continue with his mission to Margrave.
Nyawk-Captain extended the powered claws and began climbing. In his previous forays up into the canopy layer, he had perfected the technique, digging in with his hind claws for lift and using his front claws for balance. It was easier going up than coming down.
A stutter of blue-light pulses, of short and penetrating wavelength, flashed from the muzzle of Gambiel’s weapon. In a second, their original impact point in the tree trunk was obscured by smoke and steam.
“Don’t worry about touching the box’s perimeter;” Cuiller advised.
“I’m riding on it,” Gambiel replied. “The reflection helps.” He swung the rifle in a slow circle, keeping ahead of the billow of steam.
After about thirty seconds, he had made two circuits of the mirror’s face, going deeper each time. After the third pass, he shut off the weapon.
“We can pull it now.”
Gambiel gripped the outer circumference of the box, which was shaped like a keg with its flat end facing them.
At first, Krater expected Gambiel to draw back his hands from the residual heat, but of course the stasis-box absorbed the laser energy into another dimension. The Jinxian did, however, try to keep his knuckles away from the charred and smoldering wood surrounding it. He worked the box left, then right He drew a slender knife and began digging around it Krater saw the blade make along drag against the side when his knife slipped, but it left no scratches and made no sound. Like cutting against glass with a feather He worked on swinging the end with his hands again. It came free suddenly, like a stopper from a bottle.
“Light,” he said, surprised. “Must weigh about ten kilograms.”
“Empty?” Jook asked.
Gambiel started to shake it, then stopped in mid-motion with a frown.
Jook stifled a laugh. Whatever the box held, it held in stasis. The contents would not be rattling around in this time-frame.
“Not much mass, anyway,” the Jinxian said. He had been staring at the box in his hands, but in a flash his attention shifted to the tree trunk at the point his knee rested against it. He stuffed the keg under one arm and placed his free palm against the bark.
Krater tried to read his face and couldn’t. She swung closer to the tree and felt it, too.
A dull, rhythmic pounding was transmitted through the wood. She looked up, expecting to see the weakened top section bending over, dragging against branches as it started to topple on their heads. But, despite the deep wound in its side, the trunk wasn’t falling.
Still the pounding came.
“Kzin One has found our tree,” Gambiel whispered hoarsely.
“That’s him climbing?” asked Cuiller, who had also put a band on the wood.
“Yeah. But slowly. Methodical.”
“Right. Daff, you keep the box. Sally, stay with him. The two of you go east.” Cuiller pointed to establish direction. “Hugh, you and I go west to provide a diversion for them. Everybody try to keep out of the kzin’s way for at least a full day. Reassemble at noon tomorrow by Callisto’s hull-or, if the kzinti are still around, one kilometer south by the sun. Questions?”
They shook their heads.
“Go!” he hissed, pushing Krater’s shoulder.
The reel motors whined as they each rose away from the burn mark, toward the scattered anchor points of their own grapples.
Once he was inside the lowest levels of the green layer, Nyawk-Captain boosted the gain on his aural enhancers. He was listening for anything that might attack. On the ground, he could trust his senses of sight and smell to detect an enemy at great range. And his armor could deal with anything short of another rampaging Whitefood. Up in the foliage, however, screened by leaves and baffled by random breezes, those senses were next to useless. Only his steel ears would save him now.
Listening hard, he could hear twanging and huffing noises, with the clatter of leaves closing around solid bodies. Nyawk-Captain froze. But the noises were fading, he decided, moving off into the forest. Whatever lived up here perhaps had more to fear from a kzin than he from it.
Instead of stepping off on the lower branches, as he had before, this time Nyawk-Captain kept close to the main trunk of his tree. He intended to climb as high as he could, until the width of the bole was insufficient to support his weight.
He was still climbing on firm wood when he saw a burn mark in the tree. His head came up level with a hole big enough for a newborn kzitten to curl up inside. He touched the edges of the scar, crumbling the charcoal that coated them. It was still warm. He tasted his fingerpads. Fresh soot, with the scent of smoke still in it. As he watched, a tear of yellow sap rolled down and across the curve of the hole, confirming his suspicion.
He drew his locator from its belt clip and aimed down along his leg.
No return image.
He aimed up, past his helmet.
No image, either.
He aimed to the four cardinal points, in one case reaching around the tree trunk to aim for it.
East by the sun, he got a hard return, but nowhere as close to him as the bloom had been a few minutes ago.
The artifact was on the move-and going fast.
Nyawk-Captain did not think a Whitefood would have come to take it. He did not think a sudden burst of lightning had burned this hole, And he could think of no animal living in this world of green vines which might have control of such fire. Unless it was a form of superior monkey… the sons of Hanuman.
Certainly they had come here in the Leaf-Eater hull. They had not died with it. And, considering its present condition, they could not leave in it.
He began the long climb down to the forest floor. As he went, he sent a call to Cat’s Paw. It was time to get Weaponsmaster started on a wide-area sweep with those sensors they still possessed.
Daff Gambiel rested in the fork of a large branch, balancing the Slaver stasis-box on his knee. He and Krater had traveled eastward five kilometers by his own dead reckoning.
Now they were in disagreement about which way they had actually gone. So Krater had climbed higher into the overgrowth, to take bearings by the setting sun. Fine in theory-if she could keep her sense of direction while moving around in this leaf maze.
Gambiel was willing to bet she would get lost just coming down.
While he waited, he studied the stasis-box. One side had a flattened place with a dull-gray disk etched onto the mirrored surface. It was the only feature in an otherwise featureless object. It had to be the field actuator switch.
Gambiel considered it carefully. He knew he should wait on opening the box until the other team members could be present. They would all want to inventory the contents together. That way they could examine anything inside that might be fragile or valuable, offer witness of anything that might fall apart or evaporate, or try to protect each other against anything that might suddenly leap out and attack them.
But Cuiller and Jook might also have been captured by now. Or he and Krater might be captured anytime soon. Better to open the box now and know what it contained. Besides, even though it massed only ten kilos, the thing
