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

need to keep on guard. Although 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—"

Jesu 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 kzintis' 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.

There were black commas with dangling limbs drifting high in the air with the smoke, he saw: a group of dead kzin and human fighters still held aloft by lift-belts, debris of the previous weeks of fighting. The wind brought the sound of bells pealing from the monkey temple as well as drifting smoke from the burning city and from the straggle of huts beyond the monastery gates. A gust of wind drove two of the floating bodies together. A side arm that one of them still clasped fired a few random bolts into air and ground, throwing up rock and flame. Neither kzin moved.

"We have our orders," Hroarh-Captain said again. "You are not permitted to die heroically. Go to barracks and remain there until you hear further, either from me or another proper authority. I go to seek Hroth-Staff Officer.

"You are, as you know, the senior surviving Sergeant," he added. "I look to you to help preserve what order and discipline there may be in the Patriarch's armed forces . . . all that is left of them. We are Regulars. We are professionals, not wild outland barbarians, and our Honor is in that. We have taken oaths and