Choosing Names: Man-Kzin Wars VIII by Larry Niven (the best books to read TXT) 📗

cats’ eyes. Telepath led them to a service duct and they clambered in, like clumsy mice into a hole.

* * *

It was not like the tunnels of the Eleventh Sense. This was a passage like a Kzinrett’s birthing burrow that I threaded, the monkeys too noisy behind me.

In darkness I felt the monkey minds very close, the Selina’s for some reason much closer than the male Rick’s. I was fearful, but I pressed on. Death awaited me, but it would be death on my own terms. I might die as Hero, not in foul degradation of burn-out.

Sleeping minds all around. Heroes on duty watch, bored, two fighting in the combat arena with sheathed claws, as Feared Zraar-Admiral had ordered. Junior officers and crew staring at screens that showed energy-pulses of unwavering regularity, or the blackness of space. A brief touch against Feared Zraar-Admiral’s mind, and a quick shying away.

The monkey minds: the Rick apparently resigned to whatever might become, but with something else stirring that even the Rick was not aware of, the Selina mind that seemed almost too easy to enter now.

Dangerous always for a Telepath in dark tunnels without sleep or distraction. For all my hurrying (I slowed my pace as I heard the monkeys panting and breathless behind me) it was easy to think too much.

Honored Maaug-Riit had long made plain what was expected of me: to report to him should Feared Zraar-Admiral show signs of overmuch ambition. He had given me his word that, though it might be eights of years in the coming, I might have a posthumous partial name if I performed this well. The Patriarch had many ears into which I might speak.

Yet Feared Zraar-Admiral was my leader. He had complimented me. I would betray him now, but it was a betrayal only to save myself. That was permitted: so many stories said.

The boat-deck was vast, like a plain between mountain walls. There rode whole ships, scouts that needed large specialized crews. I and the humans were almost lost as we moved through a ducting-service corridor to the array of smaller Space-craft.

Gutting Claw carried several ready-reserve battalions of Heroes in sleep who, in the event of an inhabited world being discovered, could supplement and spearhead her crew as infantry. There were ranks of specialized armed and armored landing-craft as well as the normal ship’s boats and small fighters. There were bins of spare parts and workshop and machine spaces, at present all secured. I still felt no waking Kzinti minds near.

Zraar-Admiral’s barge was parked near the massive doors, ready for instant service. There too was the Happy Gatherer’s boat, canted over on one side where the gravity-jacks had dropped it.

“See there,” I told the monkeys. “Now I think the Fanged God is minded that our jest with him shall have success. He has given the means to cause enough damage to mask our escape.”

In the same floor-space a gravity-motor and its housing had been set up, part of Weapons Officer’s project to offset the possible future use of drives as weapons by monkeyships. It was still experimental and very small-scale, but involved generating a tight vortex to in theory either deflect particles or, like a reaction-drive, act as a gun. In this sleep-period it was unattended.

“Help me!” I ordered.

Weak I was but far stronger than the strongest human. Between us we dragged the gravity-motor round so that its field would cover the nearest main entrance. But I did not activate the field yet. That would need to be done, I calculated, from the barge just after the diversion appeared on the computer display and I opened the blast-doors to Space. I showed the monkeys the controls for its traverse and focus. This prototype was based on one of the smallest standard motors, taken from an infantry lifting-sled—the housing of even a boat’s motor would be far too massive for power-driver assists of the size fitted here. I had hoped to use it to propel missiles but I now saw with anger that Weapons Officer obeyed procedures and all ammunition was locked away.

There was no problem getting aboard the barge. I had taken the door-codes from Coxswain’s mind for my secret loading of the Kzinretts and there was normally no need for great security for an Admiral’s personal equipment: unauthorized Kzin would not board without good reason. The barge was ready for instant use. Apart from other functions, it could serve as the Admiral’s emergency headquarters in battle. Its central command position was a miniature replica of a battleship’s bridge and there were Hero-sized couches round a central computer terminal for a nucleus staff.

I curled down in the Command chair and took another minimal dose of Sthondat-drug. I was prowling through most delicate cover. No vegetable would I disturb so that its crown might sway against the wind and warn that I moved through that undergrowth.

The sleep period was ending. More senior officers were awakening and eating. They would be reporting for their duties soon. My mind touched, dancing on lightest velvet . . . clawed feet, against one officer and then another. Systems Controller, Navigator, Chief Programmer, First Technical Chief, Lesser Technical Chief, snatching any tiny prey I had not taken previously into my claws with the quickest, subtlest of slashes. Yes, Telepath’s claws could be sharp for this work, honed long in invisible caves no Kzintosh warrior knew! More I took from the Rick-monkey’s mind, leaping then from a high point to look down upon it all.

Strained and fearful were the humans when I returned from the white tunnels. Well might they fear. Heroes in Space do not like being shut away from any vista, even if it is but a vista of the blackness between worlds, and the barge had bigger viewing ports than the human boat. They were normally clear save in battle. Any Kzin coming onto the boat-deck might have seen them. They pressed themselves down as far as they might and lay in silence.

A combatant Hero might have been surprised