struggled for a while as the life pumped out of him.
Tyra had left the knife in his neck. She and Raden fell into each other's arms. 'Are you all right?' she choked.
'N-nothing serious, I think. You?'
'Same.'
They stood thus, shuddering, until the body slumped and lay quiet. Blood reddened the chamber; excrement befouled the deck. So much for a heroic death, thought Tyra vaguely.
'What shall we do?' Raden mumbled.
She rallied a little. 'Take care of our injuries. Disengage the spacecraft. Call our own. And… and send this corpse out the airlock.' Unwillingly, she thought: Let him go on to the stars. 'Set the pilot for rendezvous with Freuchen, and go to sleep. Sleep and sleep. Later, we can clean up this place. And think.'
They trembled for an hour or more. A kzin wouldn't have. But they were merely human.
17
The captains met with them in Bihari's cabin aboard Samurai. She wanted complete privacy.
'You were wise not to report more than the bare minimum on your way back,' she said. After they arrived and gave her the whole story, the medical program ordered them to sickbay for two daycycles under sedation. Released, calmed, they would need a while more to feel entirely fit. However, a flit across to the lancer was, if anything, refreshing-a sight of stars, Milky Way, majesty and immensity.
Worning nodded. 'Ja, we can't be quite sure the ratcats don't keep a few little receivers orbiting about; and you didn't have the equipment to encrypt.' Raden winced. 'I, at least, didn't trust my judgment in this case either,' he confessed. 'How might the kzinti react to a… a terrible incident?' 'I could have told you that,' Tyra said. 'I'm damned glad we have a better warship than they do.'
'They don't have the news to react to in any case,' Bihari stated. 'When they discovered that you'd made a short contact with the sundiver, they finally replied to my messages, demanding to know the details. I put them off until you came. Then I informed them that you found the pilot dead. Ghrul-Captain, he was. The master himself.'
'Daft,' snorted Worning. 'You don't send a skipper off like that. They're maniacs, the whole lot of them.'
'They're different from us,' protested Raden.
'Which makes them deadly dangerous,' Tyra retorted.
He sighed. 'I've admitted to you, darling, I've been shocked out of, of what seemed like realism. Yes, we do need to keep on guard all through negotiations. Well, I was afraid the blunt truth might antagonize them. So I left it to you professionals, Captain Bihari, to explain things tactfully.'
Tyra shook her head and clicked her tongue. He was honest, he'd change an opinion when the facts convinced him it was wrong, but down underneath he'd always be an idealist. Which probably was part of his being lovable. 'What did you say to them?' she asked.
'That you'd made a gesture,' Bihari answered. 'Because his vessel wouldn't cool down before he was roasted like a food animal, you gave him space burial. A mark of respect and honor. Shayin-Mate, the present master, seemed pleased, perhaps a bit relieved. I added that you did nothing else aboard, never touched the databases, which they could verify as soon as a mission of theirs overhauled the derelict.'
Raden's haggardness lighted up. 'Excellent, ma'am! Tyra and I won't let the secret out either, will we, darling?'
'I'd like to,' Tyra replied. 'You were so brave and-'
'Scarcely like you.' His hand reached for hers.
She shrugged. 'Needs must. The story wouldn't give them a pretext for starting the next war. They aren't ready yet.'
He frowned slightly but kept silence.
'Maybe it could complicate diplomacy a little, though,' Tyra went on. 'And surely it'd complicate relationships here at Pele. All right, ma'am and sir, it won't go beyond the four of us.' I'll keep the glory to myself, and wish he'd share it with me, but he never will, she thought.
He relaxed and laughed. 'I couldn't have robbed that database anyhow,' he said. 'Couldn't have endured the heat and wasn't acquainted with their systems.' 'I wish you had been,' growled Worning. 'I'll hate seeing that knowledge fall into their claws.'
'It cannot be critically important,' Raden reassured him. 'Once we've established a permanent scientific presence-robotic, no doubt, but permanent we'll soon have all of it and much more. Meanwhile, we've gotten the truly invaluable piece of information. Not just that there's a hazard we must protect future probes against, but that there's an extraordinary phenomenon. Whether or not my hypothesis about the iron proves out, we hold a clue to understandings we never even knew we lacked.' His voice dropped. 'Tragic, that a sentient being died for it. If only we could commemorate him somehow-'
Jesus Kristi, thought Tyra, after he did his best to kill us? Then, ruefully: That's my Craig.
'But we have learned,' Raden said, with a lilt in his voice that she also knew. 'This alone justifies our expedition. Let the kzinti take what he earned for them.'
'As a matter of fact,' answered Bihari, 'they aren't going to.' Startled gazes sought her. 'Shayin-Mate told me he would launch a missile-he told me exactly when, giving us plenty of time to track and stand alert-that will overhaul and destroy the sundiver. It started off about half an hour ago. He also said, um-m, 'The Heroes have accomplished everything they intended, and will return home very shortly.' The latest indications are that preparations for departure are already in train.'
'Kzinti-simply giving up?' asked Tyra.
'Well, perhaps they have no boat capable of rendezvous with one on such a trajectory. Caroline barely was, and the parameters were more favorable than they are by now. Under no circumstances would the kzinti make us a free gift of anything the mission gained. On the other hand-I can't prove this, it's an intuition, but rising from experience. I strongly suspect Ghrul-Captain was the driving force behind their entire venture. The acting master may well be seizing an opportunity to minimize his role, or actually make him out to have been a fool. Thereafter Shayin-Mate becomes the paragon who frustrated the humans, salvaged everything that could be salvaged, and brought his ship home to fight another day. He can hope to be made Shayin-Captain. Kzinti have their own internal politics.'
Tyra grinned. 'Not altogether unlike ours, hm? You're right about that much, Craig.'
Her look upon him remained soft. He returned it. The humans wouldn't be here much longer either. She'd insist he take several weeks' leave of absence, or vacation or whatever they called it in Earthside academe, to spend with her. She wanted him to meet her father. She wanted to show him the merry old inns of Munchen, the ancestral house and sea cliffs at Korsness, the scenery and geysers of Gelbstein Park, the tremendous overlook from the peak of the Lucknerberg, the dancers in Anholt, all the wonders of Wunderland. Maybe later he could take her likewise around Earth. Maybe then they could think about making a home.
HIS SERGEANT'S HONOR
Hal Colebatch
Chapter 1
'There is a 'cease-fire.' '
The word was not new to kzin military terminology, though used rarely. The kzinti’s' forebears had offered a cease-fire to the remnant of human resistance on Wunderland once.
The smoke stung Raargh-Sergeant's eye and nose but he held himself rigidly alert.
