enclose the lock opposite and grip with molecular forces. The search program got busy as directed, stimulating crystals into vibrations that it detected and analyzed. It found the combination that would activate the mechanisms. Quantum levels fluctuated, utterances of command. Engines in the outer and inner portals of the kzin hull swung the valves aside. Gas billowed into the tube. Instruments verified that, while not in any normal state, it was not potentially destructive. Caroline's lock opened.
Heat rushed over Tyra in a flood. Protected, she felt it only slightly. The suit could maintain her in the oven for several minutes at least. She was flashingly, selfishly glad she could not smell whatever stenches the inflow bore. Raden sprang forward. She followed as far as the airlock chamber and halted. Raden spun upward. His heels kicked ridiculously as he went out of her sight. The gravity polarizers inside the sundiver had failed too, she understood. Well, he knew how to handle himself in microgravity.
After a few hundred heartbeats his voice reached her. 'Come on through, Tyra. There's just one of them. He's in bad shape, but alive. Come help me bring him over to us.'
15
Heroes scream when they leap to do battle. They bear pain in silence. That was a battle of its own. Ghrul- Captain had never dreamed how long and lonely it could be. Often he wanted to make an end. If necessary, he could claw his throat across.
But his folk might yet regain the spacecraft. Finding his body, they would see how he died. If he had endured to the end, always watchful for the chance to somehow strike back, they would bring home his praise. His kin would gain pride, and renewed standing. He would live on in memory, song, fame. If what he had done turned out to be to the good of the Race, he might be given a shrine and yearly blood sacrifices.
If nothing else, they would remember how he had dared. Something no kzin had ever done before. Something no monkey ever would.
Yes, let him keep this before him, that he was not a monkey who whimpered and fled, but a Hero.
He bobbed about randomly. Now and then he bumped into a side of the cabin. Though the lining was a soft insulator, every touch seared, and he jerked free with the breath hissing between his fangs. His fur was singed, his whiskers scorched, his tail one blister from end to end. Each shallow breath filled his breast with pain. His ears were clenched tight. He seldom opened his eyes to the parching, baking air. Dreams had begun to weave distortedly through the darkness behind the lids. He tried to fight them off.
If only death would come, the cool, kindly night- No, he must not think so, the wish was unworthy of a Hero. Let him rather hold that fact to his bosom, and the victory over the monkeys he had achieved.
It was what meant most, he thought whenever the tide of delirium ebbed back for a while. If only within his own spirit, he had struck a blow at them. Someday they would find out how deeply the blade had gone in. One stab, true, one out of the millions it would take to bring them down and avenge the Race, but his. Something stirred, something made noise. He hauled himself to full awareness. A shape, not a vision, a real thing that touched him-anguish lanced; he almost cried out-and gabbled. Behind its helmet was a face like the face of a flayed corpse.
Monkey.
Another soared in. He snatched for recollections. Strong Runner swung afar. The monkeys, the rich, battening monkeys had sent boats out. One had laid alongside his.
What did they want? To take him captive, maybe try to sell him back to his folk to seize the knowledge his vessel had won from the wreck of a world-or hand him over freely and gloat?
It hardly mattered. They were monkeys, victorious.
They were pulling and shoving him with them.
No, never. A kind of joy gleamed through the pain that had become Ghrul-Captain's universe.
Monkeys crawled around in their tree. They jeered at the hunter below and pelted him with dung. But all the while, their bough was bending under their weight, until they were in reach of him.
To kill these would be his vengeance for the Race and himself. What happened afterward mattered little. He might or might not be able to pilot their craft back to Strong Runner in time for the medic to save him. Certainly their fellow monkeys would shriek and jabber; but they'd do nothing decently warlike. Certainly, too, his achievement would go far toward inspiring the Race, would help hasten the day of reckoning.
His warrior skills returned to him. He should bide his time, let them carry him off to where he'd have weight under his feet, where he'd draw some lungfuls of air like the air of home. Then he'd be ready. Enough strength would flow back for long enough. Later he could rest in the blessed cool, rest and rest, sleep and sleep.
To loosen his muscles was the start of his preparing. He shut his eyes again and tried not to wince or gasp when the monkeys touched a burnt spot. They didn't mean to. There drifted through him a recollection of a teacher at his academy, discussing the monkeys, saying, 'What they call conscience makes cowards of them all.'
16
'Easy, now, easy,' Raden said. 'The poor devil. You or I wouldn't have survived this long, or wanted to. We can't let him crash on the deck when we enter our gravity field.'
'No,' Tyra agreed, 'but we can't drag him to the first aid station either. He weighs,' that huge body.
'Yes. I think probably we'd do best to turn off the polarizer while we convey him. First, though, for God's sake, we have got to get him out of this damned kiln.'
They maneuvered the kzin through the gang tube. Straining, they eased his sudden ponderousness to the deck beyond. He lay sprawled, seemingly barely conscious. The eyelids weren't quite shut, a yellow slit gleamed between. Raden straightened and tapped instructions for airlock closure. Ventilators whirred, sucking away the hot air. Tyra imagined that, through her suit, she felt the freshness gusting in. She stepped a pace aside to catch her breath. Her glance flitted across scorch marks, blisters, raw fire wounds. I suppose this was our duty, she thought. Do we have any analgesics that work on kzinti? Maybe they can tell me on our ship or maybe we can only make haste there.
The giant stirred. He struggled up. For half a minute he stood unsteadily, breath harsh in his throat. Bloodshot eyes glared.
'What the hell?' Raden exclaimed. 'Don't be afraid. You're with friends now.' Silly, flashed through Tyra. The kzin probably doesn't know English. And if he did, would he listen?
He didn't quite scream and leap. He uttered a hoarse, broken cry and lurched toward the man. Claws slid forth. He swiped a mighty arm. The spacesuit fabric ripped.
'No! Don't! Are you crazy?' Raden stumbled backward. The kzin followed. Again he slashed. Raden barely dodged, into a corner.
And we have no weapon, Tyra silently shrieked.
Maybe I do! She wheeled about and fled. Growls, snarls, and human yells pursued. Up the companionway. Down the passageway. A remote part of her knew how fast she bounded and ran, but it felt nightmarishly slow. Swivel through a doorway into the tiny galley. The largest knife she had brought gleamed in a rack. Her father had taught her always to keep cutting tools sharp. She snatched it and sped back.
She half expected to find Craig disemboweled. But he knew his martial arts, sidestepped, ducked, weaved, dropped to the deck and bounced up again. The kzin was slow and clumsy. Though red flowed from half a dozen shallow gashes, the dance of death went on.
The kzin didn't see her, or reckon her for anything if he did. She got behind him and sprang. Her legs clamped around his great barrel of a body, her free hand dug into an ear and hauled. The knife struck.
The kzin coughed a roar and reached back. She clung while she worked the blade across his throat. Blood spouted. She felt claws rake through her own suit. She clung and cut.
The kzin buckled. She let go and jumped clear. The kzin went to his knees, to all fours, onto his belly. He
