Tyra's pulse jumped. 'What is it?' Her voice sounded shrill in her ears. It must involve the kzin sundiver. Freuchen and Samurai were peering with high-tuned instruments, as the thing came out of Pele's blinding glare and deafening plasma. But they were almost two light-minutes farther away than Caroline had ventured. They had sent their request that the boat likewise keep watch. Orbiting ahead of them, the kzin mother ship currently had the sun between it and its explorer. Whoever was in command there had not deigned to respond to the human offer to relay information as soon as it was received.
Raden gestured. 'Look.'
Tyra peered over his shoulder at the viewscreen before which he sat. Magnified, chosen wavelengths dimmed or amplified, the image was hardly more than a schematic. To her eyes, a small segment of Pele was a purple rectangle filling a slice along the left side of the screen. Prominences were tendrils, the corona a ghost-shimmer. A starlike speck gleamed nearby. That must be the best that the boat's sensors could do at this remove, lacking interferometry, she thought almost mechanically. Raden's finger pointed at the displays and readouts beneath the video.
'The spectroscope gives no hint of water molecules or OH,' he said starkly. 'She ought to be venting yet, to maintain an endurable temperature till she gets clear of the peristellar zone. Instead, the infrared emission is like an oven's, or worse. And doppler shows she isn't boosting to escape. Hyperbolic trajectory, slung off by the planet at terrific speed but not fast enough. Something's gone terribly wrong.'
It would be obscene to rejoice. However, Tyra could not find pity in her heart. 'What may have happened?' she inquired.
'God knows, at this stage. Close examination ought to give an idea or two.' Raden turned his head to stare at her. 'Meanwhile, though, the crew are being baked alive!'
'If they haven't already. Or he. Whichever. What do you want to do?' 'Try saving them. Nobody else possibly can.'
'How can we?' The figures he had mentioned to her spun through her head. If the sundiver's periapsis grazed through the significant fringe of Kumukahi's distended atmosphere-and what other course would a kzin plot?-the planet had hurled it forth at more than a hundred KPS, far over stellar escape velocity, bound for the stars… But the plan must have been to decelerate till the craft could swing around to rendezvous with its mother.
Raden swiveled about in his seat. His fingers danced across a keyboard. Meanwhile he voice-activated transmission. 'Caroline to Freuchen and Samurai. By now you'll have seen that sundiver's in trouble. The other kzinti can't match velocities and lay to till long after the ones aboard are dead. I propose to make rendezvous and rescue them if they aren't, yet. If this craft has the capability. That's being checked. Assuming a positive answer, we'll need to skite off immediately. I'll await your response.'
Three or four minutes- 'Have you gone crazy?' Tyra protested.
He gave her a lopsided grin. 'No, in my opinion I'm being more sane than most. If the computations tell me what I hope they will… Ah!' He swung his chair again to stare at the readouts. She stood above him, behind him, helpless, listening to his monotone. 'Yes. Just barely feasible. Killing our present vector, boosting to match while approaching, yes, it calls for accelerations up to ten gee. Within stress limits for our craft, though an engineer would probably shake his head a bit. The thermostatic system will be overloaded too, but not overwhelmed if we're quick. And we'll squander energy. We should have enough delta vee left afterward to make it home. If not, the difference by then will be slight, and Samurai has a tug plenty well able to meet us and haul us back. We can do it.'
Abruptly his tone rang. 'Therefore we must.'
The comscreen lightened, view split to show two faces. 'This is lunacy,' growled Worning. 'No!' and Bihari, quietly, with her ironic smile: 'The kzinti aren't noted for gratitude. My recommendation is a decided negative.'
'Ma'am and sir,' Raden replied, 'let me respectfully remind you that while this vessel is in free space, I'm in command, with discretionary authority. If I'm mistaken, a board of inquiry will pass judgment later. Now I've no time to lose. We're on our way.'
He rapped his piloting instructions. In a moment or two the boat left free trajectory. The interior gravity polarizer field kept weight steady under Tyra's feet, but she saw the stars whirl into a new configuration and felt a brief surge of power fully aroused, a shiver in the deck and through her bones. 'Well, you are within your legal rights,' Bihari said. 'I am not so sure about the moral ones. You understand, do you not, that we can do nothing to help you until much later in this game.'
'And the devil knows how the kzinti will react,' added Worning.
'Contact them, of course,' Raden answered. 'Explain the situation. That I-we have no intention of more than a rescue attempt, and we'll lay no salvage claims or anything like that. In fact, I promise to leave whatever kind of black box they have, the data this flight gathered, alone, for them to retrieve. Let me suggest you offer them any other help you can give. That's traditional, after all.'
He laughed. 'Don't worry about us. We're within our safety factors. Quite an adventure!'
He cut off transmission, pending further reception, rose, looked into Tyra's eyes, and reached for her hands. She withheld them.
His smile was gone. 'There will be hazards,' he said low. 'Aren't there always? I rejoiced to have you along, darling, but now I'd sell my chance of having an immortal soul-no, that's too cheap a price-I'd give everything I own for you to be safely back aboard Freuchen.'
Every material thing, maybe, she thought. The bank accounts, the royalties, the vacation home, the sailboat, whatever. But how could you divest yourself of your reputation, your fame? This deed can only add to them.
Her bitterness shocked her. It wasn't reasonable. Was it? 'Well, I'm not there,' she said, 'nor sorry.'
As if to reinforce her, the comscreen brought Worning and Bihari back. 'Playing the noble knight may be very well, Raden,' Worning snapped. 'But you're spending the resources of our expedition, and putting critical assets at risk, for no other gain.'
'Oh, God, can't you see?' Raden exclaimed. 'That's a living, sentient being yonder, maybe two, with a ghastly death ahead of them. Could you stay idle in my circumstances and still call yourself a man? I don't believe that, Captain Worning. I don't believe you would.'
This time he left transmission going while he appealed to Tyra. 'Nor would you.' With a quick, wry grin: 'And call yourself a woman. Which you are, incredibly much.'
'I think you're confused about the issue,' she told him out of the ice within her. 'A human being, or a-a dog, yes. Kzinti, no. They're something else.' He seemed appalled. 'You can't be serious!'
'Yes, they're as intelligent as we are, in their fashion. Maybe they can feel pain as much, in their fashion. But it doesn't mean the same to them. They have nothing like sympathy, compassion, anything we humans have had such a struggle to keep alive in ourselves. Craig, I've seen what they do. I've lived with it.' Dada-man, snatched away from everyone he loved and who loved him. Mother, dying of grief, unjustly disgraced. Ib, betrayed into dishonor. The endless years of the occupation, friends killed, crushed, hunted down like game animals, eaten. The murderous assault at the black hole… And those were merely things she had witnessed or heard of at firsthand. She knew of too many more. She heard the shock: 'But this is racism. The old horror. Jews made booty of, Amerindians massacred, Africans enslaved… I grant you, it's a horrible culture, but they can learn better. The Mongols were once the terror of half a world. They became one of the most peaceful people on Earth-'
'If you please,' interrupted Bihari, answering Raden's reply to Worning, 'I daresay you suppose you're making a goodwill gesture, which will go toward improving relationships. I have my doubts, but since you are on your way and not open to argument, we will communicate with the kzinti, fully and frankly, and stand by to render any assistance we can that they will accept. We will keep you informed. Meanwhile, we shall be on alert status.'
'Ja,' rumbled Worning. 'Good luck. You'll need it.'
The images blanked. Neither captain meant to nag, nor would they allow anyone else to stammer best wishes.
'We've got a couple of hours to make ready,' Raden said. 'First aid, for openers. A very near thing at best. Prepare for unpleasantness, Tyra. A cooked corpse or… worse.'
'I've known worse.'
His expression, stance, voice pleaded. 'Do you really feel we're altogether wrong to do this?'
It was not simply that she happened to be with him and got no choice, it was that she was with him, for as long as might be. Maybe for life. 'No,' she made herself say, and confessed inwardly that he did have a certain
