Man-Kzin Wars IX, Larry Niven [leveled readers TXT] 📗

that they are coming safely back to us, we will destroy you. Yes, they will die too, but a Hero understands what honor demands. I require your immediate response."

Blankness.

"Whew!" gasped Tyra.

"Now the burden falls on you," Bihari told her gravely.

"What? How?"

"To make them see at home that this has been the only way."

"But, but you may lose your whole career—"

"Much worse, the movement for preparedness and a firm stance will suffer. And so a new war will become all the more likely. I think you can help make that clear to the human race. Will you?"

"I'll t-try my damnedest," Tyra promised. Whatever it may cause between Craig and me.

Bihari smiled. "I haven't misjudged you. Nor do I think I have underestimated you."

They waited in silence, together.

Ghrul-Captain snarled while the translator gave: "So be it, then. To treat with your hysteria would be unworthy of Heroes. Your wretched slinkers may return to you, and good riddance. But beware of coming near that planet again."

Bihari nodded. "We grant you that. The third planet will be off limits for us, within a ten-million-kilometer radius. Please note that nothing else in the system, except your vessels, will be. Let this agreement be made in full honor, and our original terms of relationship continue in force. As soon as I learn that our people are bound back unharmed, I will take my command off battle footing. Please acknowledge."

The screen blanked anew.

Tyra felt and smelled that she had been sweating. A chill passed through her. Fire followed. "That was wonderful!" she cried.

Bihari smiled as if unperturbed. "Thank you. They'll be nearly out of their skins with rage, driven to do something or other showing they actually are superior to the monkeys. Let us hope it won't be too dangerous—to us, at any rate." She leaned forward. "I also hope, and I believe you can, when you tell the story, you will soften it, make it seem as minor an incident as possible."

"Yes," Tyra murmured, "that would be best, wouldn't it?"

8

Every deployed robot and observatory, every probe, each of the boats when sent forth, transmitted continuously back to Freuchen. The computers printed ever-changing displays and images. Aboard, Tyra could follow moment by moment.

"Yes," opined planetologist Verwoort. "The catastrophe will begin any day now."

Kumukahi writhed, distorted and in torment. The night side flickered with enormous lightnings, shimmered with their glare cast back from roiling clouds the size of Earth or greater, flashed with the red sparks of explosions, or whatever it was going on in the upper atmosphere, all above a dull glow of sheer heat. The day side seemed afire. Bursts of incandescent gas leaped from it like flames. Some broke free and whirled off, vanishing as they dissipated, toward the sun. Storms mightier than Jupiter's Red Spot, and perhaps of greater age, fought to keep their structure as they poured along the steepening slope of the inner tidal bulge. A segment of Pele's disc, dimmed by the imagers to seething purple, filled the right edge of the big screen.

"The spectrum grows more and more strange," said his colleague Takata. "In the past few hours I have been finding an increase of iron, largely hydrides . . ." Her voice trailed off.

"Spewed up from below, I suppose," suggested the physicist Padilla. "Should heavy elements not have sunk to form a core?"

"No," answered Verwoort. "They exist, yes, and they would be more plentiful in lower layers, but with as vast a mass of hydrogen and helium as this, the percentage is so small that it must always have been diffused. The core is metallic hydrogen, maybe pressed into a still denser form than in Jupiter. This upwelling should tell us much about the gaseous atmosphere."

"It is not the only peculiar chemistry," Takata said. "Jens will have plenty to consider when he gets back."

"What will we see when the whole thing breaks apart, before it falls into the sun?" asked the steward Hauptmann. While he was intelligent enough, science was not his forte, and with as many people to look after as there were on this voyage, he had been too busy to keep track.

Kivi shook her head. "It won't break like a melon," she explained. "The planet's self-gravity will hold it together as it fills its Roche lobe. We can't predict events with any precision, and no doubt we will be surprised. However, we can say that turbulence within may well eject great gouts of material, forming a spiral that streams into the star. The magnetic effects—but that goes too far into speculation. Eventually the planet will take a teardrop shape, filling its Roche lobe, and pouring its substance down that spiral until it becomes an accretion disk. This will go on at an accelerating rate for some undetermined time. Decades at least, possibly centuries." She sighed. "How I wish we had probes that could observe from sunside!"

A goodly number were aflight, but those that had gone between planet and star were suicides, sending only bare glimpses before heat and radiation killed their electronics. Tyra's mind strayed for a moment to an image she had seen two daywatches ago. Samurai's long-range observations had, earlier, picked up a craft that emerged from Strong Runner and went out to the ice moon of Three. Now it had returned, presumably loaded. Spheroidal, with broad fins, blinding-bright reflective, it was of a size to account for the mother ship apparently having only three other boats along in spite of being designed as a carrier. The view that Samurai's computer reconstructed and shared with Freuchen showed it maneuvering about, a test run. Spectroscopy revealed it venting some water vapor from widely over its surface.

Craig Raden had been with her then, gazing as intently. "A sundiver for certain," she had said. "Not nearly as big as the one Captain Saxtorph encountered, and probably not as well outfitted. It can't have life support for more than one or two. A prototype, pressed into service."

"You seem to have studied the subject rather thoroughly," he drawled.

She felt how she flushed.