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

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 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