Man-Kzin Wars XII, Larry Niven [readnow .TXT] 📗

it all I could see was the silver mirror surface. The mountings that held it in place attached from underneath, which made sense because any other arrangement would have blocked part of the mirror.

For a moment I considered throwing something down the tube to break the mirror and take it out in pieces, more to relieve my own frustration than because the shards would serve us much purpose. I resisted the temptation and climbed down.

"We aren't getting that mirror out."

In response Bodyguard hissed and spat something in the Hero's Tongue, slashing the air with his claws. I backed away and didn't try to translate what he'd said. Eventually he calmed down. "We will go back to our ambush."

I went with him and went back to work on my second spear, but I kept my mind busy trying to think up other ways of getting out. Watchbird Alpha was up there, feeding surface imagery to the Goldskins, among others. If we'd been on the surface we could have drawn rescue symbology to attract their attention, a rarely used planetary emergency system I'd learned along with cold-water survival, six different ways to make fire, and a bunch of other planet skills, just in case I ever made an emergency landing on some uninhabited part of a world. Singleship pilots are like boy scouts, prepared for anything.

Only we weren't on the surface, and so rescue symbology wasn't an option and I really wasn't prepared for the situation I found myself in. Bodyguard seemed oblivious to my distraction, his relaxed concentration fixed completely on the airlock door. There was a laser amid the optical instruments, and it occurred to me that if I could figure out how to boresight it with the telescope I could use the scope to aim it at Watchbird Alpha and signal the Goldskins in Morse. I went and looked at it again and proved the triumph of hope over reality. It was a little ten-milliwatt device, good for checking optical systems, but unable to put a visible beam on a satellite a thousand-odd kilometers overhead, and anyway we couldn't move the scope. My eyes went back to the big mirror with the idea of using it as a heliograph but its focal length was only three meters, so getting a spot on Watchbird wasn't an option. There were some flat mirrors in among the lenses, but they weren't nearly big enough, and the sun was already setting.

I went back to the spear again, promising myself that if I managed to get out of this alive I would never again take a contract of questionable legality. No smuggling, no mysterious cargoes, most certainly no brain-blank drugs, and absolutely no kzinti. I would sell Elektra if I had to, and work as a rockjack. I went back to sharpening with a vengeance, and was so concentrated on that and my dark thoughts that I didn't hear the airlock cycle. I was yanked back to awareness by a paralyzing kill scream and looked up in time to see a blur of orange fur. Hastily I grabbed up my other spear and ran to follow Bodyguard. I found myself staring into the open airlock and a pair of muscled security thugs with leveled mercy guns. Bodyguard was piled in a heap at the end of the airlock, unconscious. There was a woman there too, her face tense. I dropped my spear. I had no wish to endure another anesthetic headache. One guard covered me while the other shoved the woman into the garden dome, then pushed Bodyguard's unconscious body after her, a heavy and awkward burden even in the low gravity. They smirked and powered the lock door shut. They had come prepared for ambush.

The woman gave me a sardonic smile. "Captain Thurmond. I'd like to say I'm pleased to meet you again, but under the circumstances I'm not."

I looked at her blankly. "Do I know you?"

She came forward and offered me her hand. "I guess the drugs do work. Opal Stone."

I shook her hand, stunned. She wasn't the woman who was at the Constellation that night, but she could have been her sister. "But you . . ."

". . . are on Jinx?" She laughed without humor.

". . . are dead," I finished. I looked her up and down. She had the same build as the woman I'd met in the Constellation, and now that I noticed I could see that she moved the same way, but her face was completely different.

"Reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated." She looked at Bodyguard's unconscious form and the humor left her voice. "Although they may turn out to be only slightly premature."

"You don't look . . ."

"Plastic surgery, thanks to your ship's autodoc, and the artistic skills of the best plastic surgeon in the Belt."

I sat down on a planter. "Explain please."

She sat down across from me. "I suppose there's no reason to keep it secret now. The escape to Jinx was faked. We took Dr. Helis of the Helis clinic on board. He worked my face through your autodoc. I came back here and went underground until I could get another ship."

Even I had heard of the Helis clinic and the man who ran it. He was merely the best 'doc-driver in the Belt. "But why?"

She laughed bitterly. "Why do you think? I sold out Reston. You don't expect to do that and live. He'd track me to the end of the universe to kill me, even from jail. Jinx is no obstacle to him. The only solution is to vanish."

"So what are you doing back here?"

"I'm the fox doubling back on her tracks. The hope was he'd believe I was dead, but if he didn't then Jinx would be a dead-end trail. I'm meant to be boarding Nakamura Lines for Wunderland right now with my new face and a hundred million stars in my beltcomp." She shrugged. "It didn't work out that way. Reston's a smart boy."

I looked at her critically. "I liked your old face better."

She smirked. "I don't imagine you'll have