Man-Kzin Wars XI, Hal Colbatch [story books to read .txt] 📗

to make out in the huge bank of white steam boiling around it. The laser had not been cooling efficiently. Either it had burnt out—not unlikely given that it had probably not been systematically serviced for the last ten years, and its cooling system was designed for firing in space anyway—or the Jotok thought them dead.

Meanwhile, thought Vaemar, the outriggers that would have been their means of escape were gone. Even the dead tree that had carried them here was burning fiercely. Alpha Centauri A had fallen far towards the horizon and night would be only a few hours away. There was no point in thinking about what to do with Rosalind/Henrietta now. He summoned the others.

"We will wait until it begins to grow dark," he told them. "Then we must set out to swim to the next island. And the next after that."

They would have to try to keep Swirl-Stripes afloat with the aid of his inflated Jotok, but Vaemar did not feel optimistic. If the returning Jotok adults pursued them they would have no chance. And even without the Jotok there would be dire problems for swimmers. The further they got away from the dead area and the Jotok, the more numerous the crocodilians and other predators would become.

Vaemar was confident that his, and Karan's, teeth and claws would see him and her through, and in other circumstances he would have reveled in such a chance to hunt and kill, especially as the channels got narrower and the water shallower towards the edges of the swamp, but he had other charges. "Do not show yourselves on the skyline!" he ordered. There was no point in letting the Jotok know they were alive. Swirl-Stripes was still drifting in and out of consciousness, but seemed to be slowly sinking. They fed him a little water when he could take it, and some compressed food from their last remaining ration pack. That reminded Vaemar of another problem. He himself was beginning to get hungry. So, he imagined, was Karan. He knew he could control his own hunger for a while yet, but in an extremity of hunger a kzin, especially, and sooner, a young kzin, could lose control and mind and attack any living thing in a mad frenzy. As Chuut-Riit's last surviving kit he had especial reason to be reminded of that. Let me not forget I am a Hero, he asked the Fanged God. Time passed.

The fires on the islands beyond them were beginning to die down now. The dry dead plant-stuff had not lasted long. Then in the distance he heard, or rather felt, the drumming of an engine. Marshy's boat partially surfaced in the wide channel between two of the smoldering islands. Weapons pods and sensors were extended on it.

Vaemar knew their body-heat would not show up in infrared—not with half the land masses around them still red-hot. Though the fur on his back crawled with the expectation of a laser-blast, he leapt to the highest point of the ridge, waving his arms and roaring, the tightly-focused kzin roar that can carry for miles across land or water. He saw the boat alter course towards them and dropped again. It approached and grounded in the shallows. Marshy, wearing a battle exoskeleton and carrying a beam rifle of a pattern forbidden to civilians on Wunderland of either species, leapt through the water and dropped down beside them. Vaemar, Hugo and Anne began to tell him what had happened. Then Rosalind/Henrietta screamed.

It was a scream of pain that almost shocked the kzin as his glands reacted. She was thrashing in the sand, clutching her head. A convulsive lurch took her whole body clear of the ground, then she fell back limply. She was plainly dead.

Vaemar turned to Marshy, seeking some explanation. Then he saw the old human's face was also contorted with pain. He was struggling desperately out of the exoskeleton. He flung it aside and leapt away from it, almost naked now like the rest of them.

"Heat!" he cried.

At the same moment Vaemar felt a burning against his skin, on his hands and between his shoulders. The metal fastenings of his belt, the only substantial thing he was now wearing, were hot, as were the rings keyed to the guns. He smelt a new burning smell, one that reminded him of the battle in the redoubt: burning kzin-hair. They had just now burnt through his fur. There was also smoke raising from Swirl-Stripes, but with his nerve-damage he would be unable to feel anything except his hands, which were tearing at each other. Vaemar stripped the belt from him, with no time for gentleness, and felt its metal components and compartments burn his hands. The rings followed. He tore off his own belt and rings. The humans were doing the same, Hugo with one arm having a difficult time of it. Between Vaemar's shoulders was a point of agony as if a rusty nail was being driven into a nerve-trunk.

"Heat-induction!" cried Marshy. "It's the heat-induction ray!"

The Jotok in the hulk must have been playing it on the islands and the surrounding water for some time. It heated metal first, nonmetallic substances and living tissue much more slowly. Some ceramics were nearly proof against it and the weapon's own containment chamber was ceramic. But it heated everything in the end. It was too slow to be useful in space-battles, but it was standard equipment on kzin warships also outfitted for ground-attack, and a terrible weapon in the right circumstances, like these. The kzinti had developed it to boil the seas of Chunquen, when the natives of that watery planet had tried to resist their invasion from primitive missile-armed undersea ships. It was the weapon that had boiled the heart out of Grossgeister before.

Vaemar yelled to Karan, explaining through clenched fangs what had to be done. Her claws made quick work of slicing through the loose skin between his shoulders and removing the locator. Then they did the same for