Chamber Number Three showed me its picture, a pair of kzinti floating weightlessly and inspecting the coldsleep coffins.
They stopped in front of one coffin and stared intently through its cloudy glassine cover. Then they did the unimaginable. They slid the coffin out of its place in the carefully designed arrangement of cryogenic storage units, started the pumps to remove the liquid nitrogen from the coffin and afterwards forced open its cover.
I tried to see who it was, to make out the identity of the person in the coffin. And then I saw the thick shock of flaming red hair cut in a Belter’s crest, the tall slender frame with improbably large breasts. It was Sara d’Lambert, a Belter with whom I’d spent several months in a three-person ship prospecting the Saturnian Trojan points for volatiles, rare earth elements and monopoles. I remembered the excitement of the discoveries we’d made, the friendship and camaraderie, the disagreements and reconciliations. I imagined the things we might have done but were now forever impossible.
No!!! Those mother-raping kzinti were making no pretense of trying to activate the thawing mechanism! They ripped away the restraints that had held Sara in place and stripped away the gold-foil mylar blankets that were wrapped around her. Flecks of ice and shredded gold mylar went tumbling into the frosty air of the coldsleep chamber.
The kzinti were reaching into Sara’s coffin and removing her from it. Clouds of fog formed around Sara’s liquid nitrogen temperature body as the remains of the restraining straps waved in the breeze of the air circulators like mindless snakes. Her nude form was obscenely stiff as the kzinti floated her weightless corpse toward the door of the coldsleep locker.
As they were about to reach the door of the coldsleep chamber One Ear entered the room. He eyed Sara’s body like she was nothing more than a piece of meat. The three kzinti’s mouths moved but I didn’t have the audio feed activated so I couldn’t hear what they were saying. (Like I could understand that growling spitting excuse for a language that they spoke.) One of the two kzinti who had pulled Sara from coldsleep turned and grabbed a bag that was floating near the door and pushed it over to One Ear who opened it like it was a Winter Solstice present.
From within the bag One Ear extracted something that horrified me more than anything I’d seen since coming out of coldsleep. It was a human leg, raggedly cut off at the thigh with a stump of bone projecting out from the raw red wound. One Ear eyed his gift hungrily and then put it back into its bag before pushing off into the corridor carrying it off for purposes my mind did not want to imagine.
I watched in horrified disbelief as the other two kzinti made their way with Sara toward one of the cargo locks where they had attached a docking collar for their boarding craft. I was thankful for the freefall since it would keep them from dropping Sara. At liquid nitrogen temperatures things don’t break when they fall, they shatter into millions of pieces. No matter what horrors might be in store for her, at least she would be spared the indignity of becoming a snapsicle. I watched in stunned silence as the two kzinti guided Sara’s body through the docking collar into their ship and then vanished through the hatch behind her.
The computer chirped and switched the display to an external camera. A small kzinti boarding craft undocked from Obler’s Paradox, slowly withdrew a few hundred meters and then pointed itself toward the kzinti warship and moved off without any trace of flame or exhaust. In minutes it was just another star lost in the darkness.
No!
This couldn’t be happening!
I screamed out in rage and fear. I threw my ‘cafe mug against the wail and watched the green intercom light wink out as my cup shattered against it. I gripped the plate that held the remnants of my meatless handmeal- damn those kzinti for forcing me to be a vegetarian-and threw it against the mirror over the ‘fresher. The mirror shattered into thousands of unsafe pieces with two large fragments hanging from the wall reflecting my image. My eyes were wide and my mouth pulled back in a rictus of anger. Sweat beaded on my forehead and my body quivered with the energy of unrequited hatred.
I screamed and leapt at the door of my room and pounded on its unmoving metal surface. I felt my hands pulling into the unfamiliar shape of fists and beat on the door with them like they were organic mallets. The door rattled under my fists but stayed closed in locked mockery of my anger.
I turned and looked around the room, trying to find something to use for a weapon. My back curled into an angry arch, the muscles of my arms bunched up in tension. I’ll teach those rat-cats the danger of fighting with humans over who’s at the top of the food chain! My eyes darted around the room but our oh-so nonviolent culture had made sure there weren’t any weapons.
I searched the room, tearing things apart in my search for something I could use to force the door open so I could get at those future-stealing kzinti. Something that I could use to put paid to the debt of pain the kzinti had laid upon us. Just give me a weapon and I’d teach those rat-cats to fear us. Give me the chance and I’d introduce the kzinti to the extinct Sabertooth Cat, African Lion and Bengal Tiger. I’m sure they could explain just how dangerous humans were.
My search for a weapon took me into the ‘fresher where my shoes crunched the broken glass from the mirror as I looked for anything that could be turned against the kzinti. The prick of a bit of glass through my soft ship shoe made me think of using the broken mirror as a weapon. Most of the pieces were too small but those two large pieces… They had potential.
I set about freeing those two large pieces of silvered glass from the wall and in a moment had two large sharp shards in my hands, ready to use on my enemies.
The sharp edges of the mirror fragments had cut my fingers, causing rivulets of blood to stain the arms of my flight suit, but I felt no pain. The feel of these weapons made me dizzy and delirious. I was the embodiment of Man the Hunter. The killing rage flowed through my veins and I knew the primal blood lust that our innumerable animal ancestors must have felt. And it felt good. Now all I had to do was find a way to get past the locked door.
“Ib! What’s the matter? I heard your screaming. The intercom’s broken. I didn’t know what to think. I had to tell Slave Master there was a medical emergency before he let me check in on you.” The words tumbled from Tom throat as he rushed up behind me and stood in the door of the ‘fresher. I turned to face him with those large shards of the mirror held in my hand. It took a moment of concentration for me to bring him into focus, to not lash Out at this new sound source.
“Tom! Those kzinti are taking people out of coldsleep. Killing them and eating them. I’ve got to stop them. Get out of my way.” I pushed forward to get past Tom but he blocked my way.
“Don’t try it that way, Ib. You’ll just get killed and accomplish nothing.”
“Get out of my way,” I barked again, harshly this time. “I should have done this a long time ago. I don’t know why I didn’t.”
“You couldn’t. No one could. Until now.” Tom looked at me with guilt in his eyes. Or was it fear?
“No one on this ship had the mindset needed to confront the kzinti,” he continued. “That type of person would have been labeled a schitz and kept back on Earth where they could be treated by the psychists.”
“What? You’re saying I’m schitz? Can’t be. I feel fine. Better than ever.”
“You weren’t schitz. Maybe you’re not even one now. I’m not sure. But you were almost borderline. Nothing serious. But close enough.”
“Close enough? For what?”
“Close enough that the right medicines could alter the chemical balance of your neural system. The techniques that cure a schitz can also be used to push the right person the other way. It took some careful reprogramming of the autodoc, but you’d be amazed at what a determined practitioner can do.”
“What? You made me schitz?”
“No. I keep telling you, not schitz. Just unbalanced. At least by the standards of our age. By the standards of any other time, you’d probably be considered perfectly normal. It’s our situation that’s abnormal, not you”
“But why?”
“Because the rest of us are too conditioned, too well-balanced. We can’t even consider the possibility of using violence to accomplish anything. You were the only person who was borderline enough to be pushed over the edge. Pushed into becoming a warrior.” Tom looked away. He knew what he had done to me. Herd done it for the best of reasons. But now, like Doctor Frankenstein, he was afraid of his creation.
“But Ib, you can’t go off unprepared like this,” Tom continued. “You’ll be killed. Maybe your body has been pushed into being aggressive, but you don’t have any training as a fighter. You’ve got to fight with your brain, not
