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

began wondering what was wrong with the trees, just past where the original shoreline had been. Ship's equipment included two crawlers; Jan, of course, had believed in having a spare. Peace drove out to the treeline to cut samples, then brought them back only to realize that the analysis had to be done by the autodoc. She thought, then had the computer isolate everything not needed in stasis. Each system and each compartment had its own field generator. Jan must have been really rich at some point. Then she took the samples in, staying in her suit the whole time as she couldn't very well decontaminate without destroying the samples, and ran them through the doc. It might just be some local blight, but if not . . .

It wasn't. The trees had been tailored to take up useful elements—not well enough to kill the trees, but well enough to make it worthwhile to use their ashes instead of the local soil. Peace could have done it with Cockroach's facilities, but it would have taken too long for the trees to grow. One of the previous expeditions must have been badly wrecked, and done the work before the plague killed them.

Cheerfully, Peace had the computer sterilize the ship's interior while she was still in it; of course she wore her pressure suit. When the cycle was completed she left, of course to load equipment before moving the ship.

And the computer of course no longer had any control over the interior of the airlock.

A trace of dust got into the ship from the airlock.

When she came back, of course she had the airlock clean off her suit before she went in to the control cone. She moved the ship over to the trees, then went back out to set things up—instead of soil being dug up, trees would have to be cut and burned. She used a few pounds of metal foil to make up a huge funnel on legs, then put it in stasis and set it over the intake hopper. The machinery she set to cutting up trees and dumping the chunks in the funnel, and she used a laser at wide aperture to char some from underneath, through the hole, to get them burning. It took some time; they were green, and kept going out. Finally the fire was going, though, and ashes started falling into the hopper. Burning wood, too, but the mechanism of the refiner was built to do worse than that itself.

And when she came in, of course it was only natural that she felt hot, and wanted to sleep.

Before she drifted off, it occurred to her that the fat was just going to be replaced by muscle if she had to work like this. She'd be awfully strong by the time the kzinti showed up.

Pleased, she settled into the sleep of the despicable. (It is of course the innocent whose rest is uneasy; true villains slumber undisturbed by anything but an occasional chuckle.)

The gas giant had the usual litter of moons. Fury landed on one, refueled, and took off immediately. The prey ship had been found within hours, in stasis—perfect reflection, no neutrino output. What Gnyr-Captain had wanted to do was plunge in, grab the crew (probably only one, but they could be lucky), return to Kzin at once, see to it Manexpert got a Name, and if permitted make helpful suggestions to the prey's torturers before being executed for disobedience. Fathers would wean their sons on the tale of Gnyr-Avenger for 512s of years. It was a proud and public thing, to be a kzin.

Unfortunately, records of its departure indicated the old courier ship was just a touch too big to fit into the destroyer's hold. They would have to land, wrap it in a net, disable its stasis, and take it home. And the prey might not even be inside! Bringing back the ship, with its useful arms features, would be honorable enough to save his crewkzin from execution along with Gnyr-Captain, but Manexpert would probably never get his Name. The thought shamed Gnyr-Captain. "Take us near the prey, planer only, and hover," he told First Flyer.

Approaching the planet was disturbing. Clearly it had undergone asteroid bombardment, but the targets had obviously been cities (and oceans, judging by the oversized icecaps), in what must have been a deliberate attempt to destroy the population. Industrial areas, certainly, but what kind of monster would a conqueror have to be to incinerate a potential labor force?

The prey had landed near the only remaining town, some kind of coastal industrial facility. It couldn't have housed more than two or three 512s of humans from the size of it, but parts of it were warm. Somebody must indeed have been using colony facilities to try to repair the ship, an excellent sign. They couldn't have had much success, judging by the amount of equipment that was lying around in pieces.

"Find them," Gnyr-Captain told Strategy Officer.

"Yes, sir. —Look for pressure suits," he told Second Tactician. (Naturally First Tactician was standing by with the landing party.) "Batteries may be chemical instead of electronic. Also look for gaps or rings in the neutrino background; someone may have put a conical reflector into stasis."

"There's a human-sized warm spot among those leafless trees, sir," said Second Tactician.

"No, their suits are well-insulated, and would show up as a small very hot spot. Must be an animal."

"Yes, sir. It's just that it was moving from one metallic object to another—"

"Animals mark things."

Gnyr-Captain looked properly impatient, though privately he agreed; he'd once seen a ftheer do that to an electric fence. It was surprised.

Unexpectedly, Power Officer signaled. "Gnyr-Captain, the feeder lines to the fusion tubes will not operate."

Gnyr-Captain grumbled, then said, "Is our storage fully charged?"

"Yes, sir, but as I cannot find a cause I thought it might be some form of—"

And the lights went out.

The next word would have been "attack."

* * *

Manexpert had been seething. He had found the prey, he should be