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

He shrugged. "Anything you like. If I upset you, I'm terribly sorry and want to make amends."

So he had read her mood in spite of her effort to seem her usual self. "No, I'm not upset, not offended." She managed to give him back his smile. "A compliment, really, and if I couldn't accept, I did appreciate." How honest was she? She didn't know.

He took her elbow. "Look, it's early in the watch for a drink, but on that account we should have the wardroom to ourselves. No harm in nursing a beer. Can we sit down and simply talk? I promise not to go importunate on you."

It wasn't possible to refuse, was it? She liked the idea, didn't she?

Yet she must work to keep from showing her tension. To gaze across the table into his handsomeness reawakened the old pain and whetted it. She'd laid it aside, she'd actually been happy, now she must start over.

Self-pity wasn't in her nature. Resentment took its place. Oh, she had more sense than to blame him. He'd had no way of knowing what a nerve he touched. For that matter, she hadn't known it was still so raw. To rail at dice that fell wrong was idiotic. However, the anger had to strike at something.

"Yes, we'll be busier than a one-armed octopus," he was saying. "Perhaps with the kzinti too."

"God, I hope not!" burst from her.

"I'm hoping for it, actually. I'll see what I can do toward bringing it about, in whatever degree."

Startled, she asked, "What?"

"We might manage some scientific collaboration. You know how fruitful, how inspiring and stimulating, our exchanges with other races have been," he said earnestly. "We're overdue for an interaction with the kzinti that isn't hostile."

"How?" demanded scorn.

He raised his brows. "How not? They're intelligent, sentient beings. Their civilization surely has its own riches. What might we learn from them?"

"New ways of murder and torture, maybe," she sneered.

"You can't be serious, Tyra. Yes, they've been aggressors, they've committed atrocities, but that's been true of humans in the past. Read your history. Nor have we lost the potential, I'm afraid." He gulped from his stein. "Blood guilt is one of the most vile and dangerous concepts our race ever came up with. We've got to put it behind us, for decency's sake, for survival's sake."

She unclenched her teeth. "I'm not talking about inherited guilt. I'm talking about inherited drives and instincts. The kzinti are what they are. You can no more deal with them in good faith than you can with a—a disease germ."

"They live among us, Tyra!" he protested.

"A few. In their enclaves. Eccentrics, misfits, atypical—abnormal, for kzinti. But don't ever turn your back on one."

His whisper sounded aghast. "I didn't imagine you were a racist."

"I didn't imagine you were an utter fool." The flare damped down. "Craig, I know them. I grew up under their occupation. I saw what they did to my people. I felt what they did to—my father, my family—" The tears stung. She blinked them away. "And then I myself—but that doesn't matter. They tried their best to kill my friends and me, that's all. What does matter is how often they've succeeded with others."

"Culture— Ethnic character is mutable. It can grow in the right directions."

"When enough of their most murderous are dead, out of their gene pool, maybe then," she said. "You and I won't live to see the day, if it ever comes. And first the weeding has to be done."

"This is appalling." Raden sighed. "Well, evidently the attitude is a common one. We'd better drop the subject."

"Yes," she said coldly. She knocked back her beer and rose. "Thank you for the drink." She left him.

The relationship continued amicably, but warmth had gone out of it.

6

While Freuchen accelerated sunward, the first observer probes shot forth from her and began transmitting their readings and images. When a synthesis of the sights was ready, everyone aboard crowded into the wardroom to see it on the big screen. Excitement swiftly became awe.

In itself the star was nothing unusual, a type G dwarf. It had formed from the primordial cloud only about a billion years ago, and as yet shone with only about 65% the luminosity of Sol or half that of Alpha Centauri A—fierce enough! Though not naked-eye visible, material was still raining into it in vast quantities. Optical programs, selectively and suitably taming fieriness, showed it wildly turbulent. Spots swirled in flocks, flares and prominences fountained, corona shimmered as far as a million kilometers outward.

Six planets went about it in eccentric orbits. The inmost would not survive much longer.

It had formed at a distance where the growth of a gas giant was possible, and it became one in truth, a mass of ten Jupiters. But already the unbalanced gravitational forces of an irregularly distributed proto-system had been spiraling it inward. Its pull on itself remained so strong that it lost little or nothing as it neared the sun and temperatures soared. The atmosphere distended, though, until now an ovoid 280,000 kilometers long glowed furnace hot, chaotic with storms that could have swallowed Earth or Wunderland whole. Friction with the thick interplanetary medium had almost circularized its path, and worked together with resonances to make this ever shorter. Stripped of moons, it raced through the coronal fringes a million kilometers from the stellar photosphere, around in eleven and a half hours, each time faster and faster. Rotation had been slowed by the huge tidal bulges until cloud whorls needed fifteen hours to face out to the dark again.

Such were the facts and figures. The reality was roiling, seething, terrible magnificence. It was as if the bloodbeat in the ears of humans struck dumb by the sight faintly echoed those surfs, eruptions, hurricanes, and violences.

After many minutes of silence, Raden said very quietly, "Yes, our luck has held, barely. I got the latest computation earlier this watch. The planet's practically at the Roche limit. It's due to start breaking up."

"When?"