process and lay partially buried in the sand uphill. With nothing to hide behind, he moved up the dune on his belly, using a slight depression in the slope for what little concealment it provided. He shifted barely a paw-span at a time, listening at every pause, his tail unconsciously twitching hunt commands to nonexistent pridemates. His goal was an uprooted bush at the crest that would give him cover as he surveyed the other side of the dune. He moved with the sounds, stopping when they stopped. A prey animal pausing to listen for danger would hear nothing.
Here was the bush. With infinite patience he lifted his head until he could see over the dune’s crest.
Nothing he had experienced before prepared him for what he saw. It was wrong. The dune was the rim of an immense bowl-shaped concavity and all of it was freshly-dug sand. Swift-Son didn’t want to contemplate the size of the creature that had dug it. Arcane artifacts lined the bowl, set in concentric circles a rock-throw apart from each other. They looked vaguely like the tall cache-signs a trail scout would build from sticks to mark a kill or a route change during a trek, but they weren’t. These had a symmetry of construction that he’d never seen before, and where cache signs were blackened with charcoal to make them stand out these… things were a dusty yellow that made them hard to see against the sand. In the center of the bowl was-something. It seemed to be a pile of sand until he tried to look right at it, and then it shimmered into the background like a mirage. The entire tableau was unsettling.
Then he caught sight of the demon. A cache-sign-thing had obscured it momentarily. It was a nightmarish shape with five multijointed limbs with eyes on them and no head at all. It was standing on three limbs while the other two worked at the artifact with some strange tool. The tool was making the rhythmic clicking that he had tracked. Perhaps it was a magic totem? He would kill the demon and bring it back to the pride. Rritt-Conserver would know what to do from there.
One thing was sure: the old kzin had read the portents correctly. Swift-Son was krwisatz. He had been guided to this desolate spot by the Fanged God himself. This would earn him a greater Name than “Silent Prowler” if he lived, and a place at the Fanged God’s pride-circle If he died. Banish that thought; he would not fail! What name would he choose? Chraz-Hunter-no-Chraz-Warrior! He snarled the name beneath his breath. It tasted good. The exultation in his liver washed away the fear and fatigue.
The demon was coming closer, to perform its ritual on the next artifact. Swift-Son studied it carefully. His first blow had to kill; otherwise it might bring magic into play.
It had no vulnerable neck to snap or head to tear off. It seemed to be all limbs, but he couldn’t see himself pulling them off one by one while it attacked him with the remainder. Its featureless central body must be its weakness. Strike there, fast and deep, and all the limbs would be rendered useless at once.
His target was oblivious to his presence. That was as it should be. His stalk had been as silent as a zephyr and he was downwind and directly in front of the rising desert sun. Not even a demon’s eyes could see into that dazzling blaze. Swift-Son gathered himself for the leap.
Joyaselatak was pleased with its progress. Touchdown had been successful. The next morning four enemy fighters in formation had dragged contrails across the sky, but by then it had its wide spectrum camouflage canopy erected over the ship. Of course nothing could be done about the impact crater, if searchers could pick it out amidst the rolling dunes. It was an acceptable risk. The nearest outpost of kzin civilization was a mining complex well to the southeast.
That afternoon it began to deploy its sensors. Information began coming in. Once the transmitter was set up, the data was uplinked in microbursts to the probeship lurking in the primary’s cometary halo. But even before the first transmission, Joyaselatak had gained an important piece of intelligence. The contrails meant the kzinti still used turbines for in-atmosphere flight. That meant that gray polarizers were still too expensive to be used anywhere but space, and that meant this species might not have to be exterminated to halt its expansion. The Jotoki were a far-sighted race. Annihilating enemies was wasteful. if an enemy could be contained, then in time it could be converted to a valuable trading partner. Joyaselatak’s primary mission was to determine if in this case such restraint was possible. If its initial estimate of the enemy’s technology proved correct, then indeed mercy might once again prove both safe and profitable.
Not that it could head home yet. Much analysis remained to be done. Closely allied with the main task was the question of the most economical method of control. Of course the predators would be charged containment costs, service fees, and interest when they finally became trade partners, but the process was a long one and conversion didn’t always occur. The Trade Council wanted to minimize their investment risk.
Its mind sections debated possibilities as it adjusted an element of its transmitter grid with a ratchet. The impact crater provided a fair basis for a parabolic antenna form and the grid was designed to take advantage of this. It was a clever design, although each antenna element required quite precise alignment. Though not planned for, the shifting sand had posed no problem; it had been simple enough to bury each element’s supports, then douse the sand with liquid adhesive. Once set it was a simple, if meticulous, job to ratchet the elements into position. Even so they tended to drift out of alignment as the sand settled, with a resultant drop in signal. Joyaselatak didn’t mind resetting them.
It made a pleasant change from evaluating the never-ending flood of information from the sensors.
Swift-Son screamed and leapt, taking the Jotok completely by surprise. Four of its self sections were concentrating on the tricky antenna adjustment. The one left on danger alert was watching a portable display board with the ship’s detection systems remoted to it. Blurred somewhat by the impact crater’s rim, the ship’s sensors had still picked up life-form readings from the approaching kzin, but in the absence of corresponding metal or power indications, the computer hadn’t even assigned them a threat priority until Swift-Son exploded over the dune. The scream shocked the watching self section into action even as the others realized the danger and jammed the torochord with warnings. The first section overrode them all, throwing the display board and ratchet at the enemy with two limbs and dodging the leap with the other three. It was too little too late. Swift-Son’s pounce had been perfect and there wasn’t enough time.
The ship’s AI, belatedly recognizing the threat, sifted through a decision tree. Since the threat was immediate, it could act without Joyaselatak’s authorization. It selected the weapons turret that covered that arc of the ship. Since the threat was biological, it chose a stunner. Since Joyaselatak was within the beam’s spillover cone, it set minimum power for the target’s mass and offset the aim.-point to spare the Jotok as much of the radiated energy as possible.
The turret accepted the targeting data from the AI, computed Swift-Son’s trajectory, swiveled to track him, locked on and fired. His kill-scream cut off with a gurgle as he went limp in midair. Unable to control his touchdown, he landed in a heap atop his target. Kzin and Jotok went down in a tangled pile of limbs. ???
Joyaselatak recovered first. Swift-Son’s shock became fear when he found he couldn’t move a muscle, then terror as his intended victim rolled him over on the sand. His horror only increased when the demon began to drag him downslope, beneath the shimmering not-mirage.
The Jotok’s spindly limbs belied its strength and it quickly hauled its prize under the filmy camouflage and tied the kzin to one of the canopy’s supports by looping a mooring cable around its ankles, securing it with a burst from the sonic welder in its tool smock. Then it retrieved its display board from upslope, sat on its undermouth, and went to work. One self section maintained a watch around three hundred and sixty degrees for more intruders, borrowing eyes around the torochord as necessary, and three more began accessing the ship’s sensor logs to find out why the AI had missed the danger. The remaining limb stripped its captive of its meager possessions.
Swift-Son felt his panic recede somewhat when he found he could weakly move his bound legs. As the weirdly shaped demon took his hunt pouch and tools, he tried to make sense of his surroundings. Only the sand beneath him was familiar; everything else was strange and intimidating. The sand pile mirage was held up on poles, like a travel-tent. It covered a huge, blunt cone, unnaturally symmetrical and thoroughly scorched. Smooth cords snaked from an opening in its belly to every one of the cache-sign things in the sand bowl and a number of larger, more oddly shaped arcana deployed beneath the canopy overhead. And that was the strangest thing of all. It no longer looked like a wavy sandhill. From underneath it was just a faintly bluish filminess, rippling like a pool in the desert breeze. He knew it was impossible, but he could see right through it into the clear and cloudless sky.
Examining the sensor log Joyaselatak carefully noted the points where the AI had registered the kzin and decided it represented no danger. Threats were too narrowly defined as weapons or weapons carriers, with an implied assumption that these involved power sources, heat production, EM emitters, or other technological fingerprints. Clearly someone at base was far too solicitous of the sensibilities of local animals. A few brief commands expanded the definition to prevent future surprises and for the local fauna. That done, the Jotok transferred all its attention to inspecting its prize.
