some search found an empty shipbay, hidden behind a false bulkhead. Instruments detected residual radiation from a fusion drive lining what was clearly a collapsed escape tunnel through reinforced ice.
Navigator's instruments aboard Belly-Slasher, using the remote drones and Alien-Technologist's growing intuition of monkey ways, found a magnetic anomaly receding quickly from them. It was decelerating very rapidly indeed, and seemed to have originated from the derelict monkeyship.
'Why are the honorless leaf-eaters running and not fighting?' Rrowl-Captain growled in anger and frustration. 'Why would they flee, and leave the defenseless bodies of their comrades to us?”
Kzin never let their fellow Heroes become prey.
Alien-Technologist averted his eyes, folded ears against skull inside his helmet. 'Because they cannot win, Leader, and flee witlessly before Noble Heroes.”
The captain slashed claws in rebuke at the other kzin's lickspittle foolishness. 'Hardly,' he rasped angrily. 'This event reeks of monkey trickery.' He paused a moment in carnivorous thought. Think like a duplicitous monkey, he reminded himself with vast distaste.
'The contra-matter drive is stable?”
'Yes, Leader. We have tapped into the monkey telemetry cables, and found the confinement fields steady.”
There was a snarl of static over the commlink from Navigator, still aboard Belly-Slasher. 'Dominant One, I do not mean to intrude, but there is an anomalous finding – “
'Report,' Rrowl-Captain growled. 'Remote drones near the reaction drive section show increasing levels of radioactivity,' the tiny voice finished.
The darkened monkey corridor seemed to whirl around Rrowl-Captain and close in on him like an implacable enemy's claws. He felt a growl growing within his throat.
'You have no other manner,' he hissed slowly to the other kzin standing before him, 'to determine the status of the reaction drive than what the monkeys wish us to know?' Alien-Technologist looked at his captain blankly.
'Leader, I do not understand. These are standard telemetry lines linking the contra-matter drive directly to these navigation consoles… hrrrrr,' he said, falling silent in thought.
Rrowl-Captain barely contained his fury. 'Confirm the status of the contra-matter drive at once. Directly. In person if necessary. I feel enemy eyes upon us, and scent danger.' Rrowl-Captain repressed the desire to slash an ear from the monkey-trusting Alien-Technologist for his trophy loop. 'In the meantime, the rest of the crew not associated with you will return to Belly-Slasher.”
Rrowl-Captain snorted his displeasure at Alien-Technologist, who hung bouncing in the microgravity like a toothless kitten's prey-toy. He ignored the other kzin's humbled salute and turned to leave the navigation chamber abruptly.
The captain would lead Belly-Slasher on a diverting exercise, a small hunt for the escaped monkeys, who would rather run than fight. Perhaps by the time he had returned with his trophies, Alien-Technologist and his crew would have truly secured the monkeyship prize. He entered the access tunnel, and hooked the guide line to a reinforced loop on his battle armor. Rrowl-Captain snarled and leaped upward in the microgravity, toward the outer airlock, firing his reaction pistol downward for added emphasis.
He never looked down.
Rrowl-Captain entered Betty-Slasher, feeling the comforting artificial gravitation firm beneath his taloned boots once more. Suddenly, slurred hisses of Alien-Technologist yowled over the commlink in a frenzied rush of harsh syllables.
He could not make out the words, but the tone was clear: Fear. Warning.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Carol grinned widely as the holoscreen overloaded with Sun-Tzu's incandescent death.
Flash – blank – and the display reset, showing the horrific radiance of the matter-antimatter explosion in muted colors.
'Bang,' said Bruno softly.
The cloud of plasma and radiation that had once been Sun-Tzu began to spread out in a complex, fluorescence-colorful pattern. Magnetic fields and relativistic impacts with the interstellar medium made the cloud look like a living thing crawling under a microscope.
Carol leaned over and kissed him with sudden passion.
'As usual,' she murmured into his ear, nuzzling gently, 'you have a gift for understatement.' She ran the back of her hand very softly across her lover's face. 'Would you accept the intention, if not the act?”
Carol was gratified to see a genuine smile on Bruno's face.
'Well,' he replied, 'the situation being what it is, I suppose that I can understand your position.”
She winked at him, gave a sly smile. 'We'll discuss positions later,' she whispered, and turned back to the holoscreen.
That is, she thought, if we aren't puking our guts out from radiation poisoning. She knew that Bruno was thinking much the same thing. Their flirting words were both supportive and diverting.
And, despite the danger they faced, fun besides.
Carol had already done as much as she could until the bulk of the radiation arrived, triumphant yet harmful messenger heralding the death of the ratcats. And, much as she hated to think about it, from the deaths of almost thirty of her friends and crewmates, frozen in coldsleep. People for whom she had been responsible, as captain of Sun-Tzu.
She had carefully tuned the superconductive wings of Dolittle to maximize magnetic deflection of the incoming wave of charged particles. Also, Carol had turned the ship sternward to the spreading bloom of Sun-Tzu's death, using the long fuel tank as additional shielding. There was nothing else to do but wait.
While they waited for the radiation front to strike Dolittle, Carol reviewed the autodoc data. Bruno seemed to have recovered well physically from his trauma aboard Sun-Tzu. The wrenching of 'manual de-Linkage' – she frowned at the antiseptic term – left little to no physical damage. Stimulants and mood modifiers kept his mental state relatively calm and normal.
As Bruno had said, his electronic prostheses would repair the brain damage – or not. There was nothing either of them could do about it. She didn't want to die alone, without him. She remained silent for long moments.
'Okay,' Bruno sighed, 'as usual, the Captain will speak when the Captain pleases. Blessed be the Name of the Captain.”
'Next you'll be praising me as 'from whom all blessings flow'.' She smiled, despite herself. He knew her well.
'A little much, perhaps.”
'Flattery will get you anywhere, cabin boy.”
'Sounds like sexual harassment to me,' Bruno replied in mock outrage, batting his eyelashes at her outrageously.
Carol snorted laughter. 'You've been scanning datachips of Early's history lectures again, haven't you? That term hasn't been in use for two hundred years.”
'How would you know?' A sly grin crossed Bruno's face.
She squeezed his biceps hard. 'You always know how to make me laugh, lover. Thanks for bringing my good mood back.”
They said nothing for a time.
'Any time now, isn't it?' Bruno asked calmly.
'That's a big affirmative.”
There was a soundless flash behind their eyelids as the radiation front struck Dolittle. Radiation sleeted through the magnetic fields surrounding the ship, the hull walls, the long, slushed deuterium tank, and their own bodies – all in a microsecond.
