“Nice try,” Jason told her.
“She cannot hear you,” said Nessus.
“I know she can’t hear me.”
“Then why—? Never mind. What did that rocket setting look like to you?”
“A rocket.”
“Using what fuel source?”
“Is it important?”
“Jason, I know nothing of warfare or of weapons, but my species has been making and using machines for some considerable time. Why did the projectile weapon not include its own projectiles? Why did it throw them away when it changed shape?”
“Oh. Okay, it can’t throw away its own mass.” Jason thought about that. “You’re right. It can’t be using its own fuel. Nessus, it’s a jet. There was an intake somewhere that nobody noticed. Waitaminute. You couldn’t use it in space.”
“One would affix a gas cartridge at the intake.”
“Oh. Right.”
“One could not be sure a given atmosphere would burn. How is the gas heated?”
“A battery in the handle? No, it couldn’t put out enough power, not-without—But there has to be one. Nessus? The Kzinti could be listening.”
“I think it does not matter. The Kzinti will know all about the weapon soon enough. Only the captain can profit from learning more before he turns the weapon over to his superiors.”
“Okay. That battery must use total conversion of matter.”
“Could you not build a fusion motor small enough to fit into the handle?”
“You’re the expert. Could you? Would it give enough power?”
“I do not think so. The handle must contain a wide variety of mechanisms to control the changing of shapes.”
They watched the Kzin test out the laser form.
“You could do it direct,” said Jason. “Change some of the matter in the reaction gas to energy. It’d give you a terrifically hot exhaust. Nessus, is there any species in known space that has total conversion?”
“None that I have heard of.”
“Did the tnuctipun?”
“I would not know.”
“Things weren’t bad enough. Can you see Kzinti warships armed and powered with total conversion?”
A gloomy silence followed. The Kzinti were watching the weapon change shape. The boss Kzin had not spoken; he may or may not have been listening to their discussions.
Anne-Marie made small protesting sounds. She opened her eyes and tried to sit up. She swore feelingly when she found that the web was holding her in her cramped position.
“Nice try,” said Jason.
“Thanks. What happened?” She answered herself, her voice brittle and bitter. “They shot me, of course. What have I missed?”
The seventh setting was a blank, flat-ended cylinder with a small wire grid near the back. No gunsight. It did nothing when Chuft-Captain clicked the trigger button; it did nothing when he held it down, and nothing when he clicked it repeatedly. It had no effect on the target rock, the puppeteer, the humans. Its only effect on Slaverstudent was to make him back warily away, saying, “Chuft-Captain, please, there is an energy discharge.”
“A singularly ineffective energy discharge. Take this, Slaverstudent. Make it work. I will wait.”
And wait he did, stretched comfortably on the permafrost, his suit holding the cold a safe tenth of an inch away. He watched Slaverstudent’s nerves fray under the fixity of his stare.
“What have I missed?”
“Not much. We’ve decided the jet that knocked you down converts matter to energy.”
“Is that bad?”
“Very.” Jason didn’t try to explain. “The sixth setting was a more-or-less conventional message laser.”
“The seventh does not work,” said Nessus. “This angers the captain. Jason, for the first time I regret never having studied weapons.”
“You’re a puppeteer. Why should you…” Jason let the sentence trail off. There was a thought he wanted to trace down. About the weapon. Not any particular form, but all forms together.
“No sentient mind should turn away from knowledge. Especially no puppeteer. We are not known for our refusal to look at unpleasant truths.”
Jason was silent. He was looking at an unpleasant truth.
Nessus had said that it didn’t matter what the boss Kzin overheard. He was wrong. This was a thing Jason dared not say aloud.
Nessus said, “The Slaver expert wants to go inside with the weapon. He has permission. He is going.”
“Why?” asked Anne-Marie.
“There is a microphone grid on the seventh setting. Jason, could a soldier use a hand computer?”
“He—” wasn’t a soldier! Jason clamped his teeth on the words. “Probably could,” he said.
Presently the Slaver expert returned holding the tnuctipun weapon.
To Jason, the artifact had taken on a final, fatal fascination. If he was right about its former owner, then he could stop worrying about its reaching the Patriarch of Kzin. All he had to do was keep his mouth shut. In minutes he and Anne-Marie and Nessus and the four Kzinti would be dead.
Slaverstudent said, “I was right. The artifact answered me in an unknown speech.”
“Then it is another—” signaling device, he had been about to say. But it would have been built to signal tnuctipun, and the tnuctipun had been extinct for ages…yet the thing had answered back! Chuft-Captain felt his back arch with the fighting reflex. There were ghost legends among the Kzinti.
“Chuft-Captain, I believe it to be a computer. A hand computer could be very useful to a warrior. It could compute angles for him as he fired explosive projectiles. It—”
“Yes. Can we use it?”
“Not unless we can teach it the Hero’s Tongue. It may be too simple to learn.”
“Then we pass to setting number eight.” Chuft-Captain moved the guide down to the bottom setting.
Again there was no gunsight. Most of the genuine weapons had had gunsights or telescopic sights. Chuft-Captain scowled, but raised the weapon and aimed once again at the distant, shattered rock.
Jason cringed inside his imprisoned skin. Again the weapon was writhing, this time to the final setting.
There were so many things he wanted to say. But he didn’t dare. The boss Kzin must not know what was about to happen.
The gun had twisted itself into something very strange. “That looks familiar,” said Nessus. “I have seen something like that at some time.”
“Then you’re unique,” said Anne-Marie.
“I remember. It was one of a series of diagrams on how to turn a sphere inside out in differential topology. Certainly there could be no connection…”
The boss Kzin assumed marksman stance. Jason braced for the end.
What happened next was not at all what he expected.
Unconsciously he’d been leaning on the police net’s force field. Suddenly he was falling, overbalanced. He straightened, not quite sure what had happened. Then he got it. The police net was gone. He slapped Anne-Marie hard on the butt, pointed at the Court Jester, saw her nod. Without waiting to see her start running, be turned and charged at the boss Kzin.
Something brushed by him at high speed. Nessus. Not running away but also charging into battle. I was right, thought Jason. He’s gone manic.
Chuft-Captain pushed the trigger button. Nothing happened.
It was really too much. He stood a moment, marshaling words for Slaverstudent. A brand-new kind of weapon, and it wouldn’t do anything! Half the settings were duds!
He knew it as he turned: something was wrong. The danger instinct sang in his nerves. He got no other warning. He had not seen the ship lights go out. He heard no sign of pounding clawed feet. The sounds of breathing had become a trifle heavy…
He started to turn, and something hit him in the side.
It felt as though an armored knight had run him through with a blunt lance. It hurt. Chuft-Captain lost all his aplomb and all his air, bent sideways as far as he could manage, and top
pled.
He saw the world turned sideways, glowing through a blue fog. He saw the human female struggling futilely in Slaverstudent’s hands; he saw Flyer aiming a stunner across the ice. He saw two running figures, human and puppeteer, trying to reach the other ship. Flyer’s stunner didn’t seem to affect them. The human had the tnuctip artifact.
He could breathe again, in sharp, shallow gasps. That blow in the side must have broken ribs; it could hardly have failed to, since Kzinti ribs run all the way down. That blow had felt like a puppeteer’s kick! But that was ridiculous. Impossible. A puppeteer kick a Kzin?
The puppeteer reached the ship far in advance of the slower human. He paused a moment, then turned and ran on across the white undulating plain. The human also paused at the ship’s entrance, then followed the puppeteer. Flyer was running after them.
Behind Chuft-Captain the ship lights were dim, but brightening. Hadn’t they been dark when he fell? And the stunners hadn’t worked. And the police webs…
So. The eighth setting was an energy absorber. Not a new thing, but much smaller than anything he’d heard of.
But what had hit him?
There was a hissing in his ears, a sound he hadn’t noticed. Not breathing. Had somebody’s suit been punctured? But nobody had been attacked. Except—
Chuft-Captain slapped a hand over his side. He yelled with the pain of motion but kept his hand pressed tight while he reached for a meteor patch. He risked one look under his hand before applying the patch. There were four tiny holes in the fabric. They might easily have marked the claws of a puppeteer’s space boot.
The boss Kzin held his marksman’s stance. Jason was moving toward him at a dead run. He had to get the weapon before the Kzinti realized what had happened.
Nessus passed him like a live missile. The puppeteer reached the Kzin, turned skidding on two front legs, and lashed out. Jason winced in sympathy. That kick had been sincere! It would have torn a man in half, crushed his lungs and rib cage and spine and life.
The mad puppeteer had barely paused. He ran straight toward the Court Jester. Jason scooped up the fallen weapon, skidded to a halt, and turned.
A Kzin had Anne-Marie.
We’ll see about that! His fingers moved to the weapon’s adjustment guide.
A second Kzin held a stunner on him.
The stunner would start working the moment the tnuctip weapon shifted shape. He’d lose everything.
He could hear Anne-Marie swearing tearfully as she fought. Then her voice came loud and clear. “Run, dammit! Jay, run!”
He could throw the weapon to Nessus, then charge to the rescue! They’d get him, but … but the puppeteer was well out of range … and couldn’t be trusted anyway. A puppeteer who kicked something that could kick back was beyond psychiatric help.
Anne-Marie was still kicking and using her elbows. Her Kzinti captor didn’t seem to notice. The boss Kzin lay curled like a shrimp around the spot of agony in his side. But the third Kzin held his pose, still bathing Jason in an imaginary stunner beam.
Jason turned and ran.
He saw Nessus leave the Jester’s entrance and go on. He guessed what he would find, but he had to look. Sure enough, the door was soldered shut.
The laser setting would have melted the steel solder away from the hullmetal door. But the third Kzin was finally in motion, coming after him, still trying to use the stunner.
Jason ran on. The puppeteer was a diminishing point. Jason followed that point, moving into a cold waste lit by a fiery arch with one bright glare spot.
“Flyer, return to the ship at once.”
“Chuft-Captain, he’s around here somewhere. I can find him.”
“Or he could find you. Return to the ship. The rules of this game have changed.”
The Kzin was gone. Jason had stalked him for a time, with his weapon set to the energy-absorbing phase and with his thumb on the guide. If he had seen the Kzin, and if the Kiln hadn’t seen him … a variable-sword, a hair-thin wire sheathed in a stasis field, would have cut one enemy into two strangers. But it hadn’t happened, and he wasn’t about to follow the Kzin back to home base.
Now he lay huddled in the hole he’d dug with the rocket phase.
“Jay!” It was Anne-Marie. “Have to talk quick; they’re taking off my helmet. I’m not hurt, but I can’t get away. The ship’s taking off. Bury the weapon somewh—”
Her voice faded and was gone. The public band was silent.
Nessus’ voice broke that silence. “Jason, turn to the private band.”
He had to guess which band Nessus meant. He was third-time lucky.
“Can you hear me?’
“Yah. Where are you?”
“I do not know how to describe my position, Jason. I ran six or seven miles east.”
“Okay. Let’s think of a way to find each other.”
“Why, Jason?”
He puzzled over that. “You think you’re safer alone? I don’t. How long will your suit keep you alive?”
“Several standard years. But help will arrive before then.”
“What makes you think so?”
“When the Kzinti pilot entered the pressure curtain, I was calling my people for help.”
“What? How?”
“Despite recent changes in the fortunes of my people, that is still most secret.”
Telepathy? Something in his baggage or surgically implanted under his skin? The puppeteers kept their secrets well. Nobody had ever found out how they could commit painless suicide at will. And how Nessus had done it didn’t matter. “Are they coming for you all the way from Andromeda?”
“Hardly, Jason.”
“Go on.”
“I suppose I must. My people are still in this region of the galaxy, in the sixty-light-year volume you call known space. Their journey began only twelve years ago. You see, Jason, my people do not intend to return to this galaxy. Hence it does not matter how much objective time passes during their journey. They can reach Andromeda in a much shorter subjective time using normal space drives. Our ships approach very close to lightspeed. Further, they need brave only the dangers of normal space, which they can handle easily. Hyperspace is an unpredictable and uncomfortable thing, especially for those who would spend decades traveling in any case.”
“Nessus, your whole species is crazy. How did they keep a secret like that? Everyone thinks they’re halfway to Andromeda.”
“Naturally. Who would stumble across the fleet in interstellar space? Between systems every known species travels in hyperspace—except the Outsiders, with whom we have agreements. In any case, my people are within reach. A scout will arrive within sixty days. The scouts are fitted with hyperdrive.”
“Then you’re safe if you stay hidden.” Damn! thought Jason. He was all alone. It was a proud and lonely thing to be a costume hero. “Well, good luck Nessus. I’ve got to—”
“Do not sign off. What is your plan?”
“I don’t have one. I’ve got to see the Kzinti don’t get this back, but I’ve also got to get Anne-Marie away from them.”
“The weapon should come first.”
“My wife comes first. What’s your stake in this, anyway?”
“With the principles behind the tnuctip weapon the Kzinti could command known space. My people will be in known space for another twenty-eight human years. Should the Kzinti learn of our fleet, it would be an obvious and vulnerable target.”
“Oh.”
“We must help each other. How long can you live in your suit?”
“Till I starve to death. I’ll have air and water indefinitely. Say thirty days, upper limit.”
“Your people should not cut costs on vital equipment, Jason. My people cannot arrive in time to save you.”
“If I gave you the weapon, could you stay hidden?”
“Yes. If the ship came in sight, I could shoot it down with the laser setting. I think I could. I could force myself—Jason, will the Kzinti call other ships?”
&
nbsp; “Damn! Of course they will. They’d find you easily. What’ll we do?”
“Can we force entrance to the Court Jester?”
“Yah, but they took my keys. We couldn’t use the drives or the radio or get into the lockers.”
“The laser would let us into the lockers.”
“Right.”
“Have you weapons aboard?’
“No. Nothing.”
“Then the Court Jester would be no more than a place from which to surrender. I have no suggestions.”
“Chuft-Captain, the eighth setting must be the way the artifact is recharged. It does not itself seem to be a weapon.”
“It can be used as one. As we have seen. Don’t bother me now, Slaverstudent.” Chuft-Captain strove to keep his tone mild. He knew that his rage was the companion of his pain, and Slaverstudent knew it too.
Neither had referred to the fact that Chuft-Captain now walked crouched to the side. Neither would. The Kzinti captain could not even bandage himself; though when they reached space, he could use the ship’s medical equipment to set the bones.
The worst damage had been done to Chuft-Captain’s ego.
Had the puppeteer known what he was doing? His small clawed foot had shattered more than a couple of ribs. One day Chuft-Captain might have been Chuft, the hero, who found the weapon that beat the human empire to its belly. Now he would be Chuft who was kicked by a puppeteer.
“Chuft-Captain, here comes Flyer.”
“Good. Flyer! Get your tail in here and lift us fast.”
Flyer went past at a quick shuffling run. Slaverstudent shut the airlock after him, helped Chuft-Captain strap down, and was strapping himself in when Flyer did his trick. The ship rose out of the ice, dripping opalescent chunks and shining blue-white at the stern.
On the smoky arch of Beta Lyrae the bright point had reached its zenith. Behind their permanent veil the two stars had pulled apart in their orbits, so that the vague brightness shaded into an orange tinge on one side and a green on the other.
“One thing we do have,” said Jason, “and that’s the weapon itself.”
“True. We have a laser, a flame-throwing rocket, and a shield against police stunners. But not simultaneously.”
“I think we may have overlooked a setting.”