Man-Kzin Wars IV by Larry Niven (graded readers .txt) 📗

velocities are desirable, kzin ships weren’t able to travel much above eighty percent of light speed through normal densities of interstellar gas without bleeding to death from “blue shine.”

While a gravity polarizer was accelerating it converted mass to energy, when it decelerated it converted that same energy back to mass. Its power requirements were orders of magnitude less than a torchship, needing power only to make up for the losses involved in field interactions with the local media.

* * *

The hunting pack was practicing the standard maneuver. Come in high over the Swarm, then attack down through it at a moderate velocity. There was much bantering back and forth between the offensive team and the defensive team during an “engagement” debriefing. All kzin insults weren’t delivered in anger—the real meaning lay in the inflections of the spit-hisses. Ssis-Captain was fond of calling his opponents baboons because they had been ordered to “think like monkeys.” Amiably they dubbed him “Kshat-Lunch,” referring to a herbivore who was known to eat offal.

It took them twelve days, not two, to work their way across the Swarm on patrol/attack status, instruments scanning at full vigilance. The Blood of Heroes recorded static from the Tiamat industrial world: instructions to some lonely rockjack in his torchship, calls for part replacements, a medical emergency. Doppler shifts alerted monitors.

Of the man-ships they saw only glimmers flicking across detection screens. Somewhere among the stones armed feral humans grubbed about, plotting revenge—but the Blood of Heroes saw none, though its instruments were looking. These sullen beasts were mostly no more of a nuisance than fur-ticks but they made good target practice when found. On this run the Heroes sparred only with tumbling rubble.

Trainer-of-Slaves was an experienced gunner by the time they reached the cloud-streaked globe of Wunderland. He was not yet an experienced politician.

CHAPTER 13

(2402 A.D.)

In its simplest design, the kzin gravity polarizer just floated. If it was shoved toward a mass, energy was fed into its polarizer field—which forced it to rise. If it was pushed away from a mass, energy was drained from its polarizer field—which forced it to fall.

The shuttle “platforms” that transported freight and passengers into and out of Wunderland’s mass-well were straight modifications of this primitive device. Descent was controlled by electromagnetically bleeding the field to charge molecular distortion batteries. Ascent was controlled by feeding the field from those same batteries. Horizontal velocity was controlled by a torsion field interaction that spun-up or spun-down Wunderland’s rotation.

The cycle was highly efficient, leaking some spillover energy at the electromagnetic-gravitic interface and some in tidal friction. When dropping from orbit around Wunderland to the surface, the shuttle’s polarizer rose only a few degrees in temperature.

Munchenport was a depressing introduction to the fabulous wealth that Trainer-of-Slaves had heard about all his life. A proper spacedrome had yet to be constructed. They settled onto an open field that was serviced by extruded buildings of recent fabrication, all square and ugly, all laid out and finished by forced labor. The Wundervolker wryly called it the “himmelfahrt”—both because it was from here that one ascended to the heavens and because so many of them had “gone to heaven” building it.

The number of unleashed man-beasts was appalling, lined up with their baggage, milling around, shuffling through the weapons scanners, arguing with attendants. Most of them were looking for work in the military industries of the Serpent’s Swarm, needing the wages badly enough to be willing to build weapons that would be used against their father system. They smelled of unwashed bodies and poverty, a peculiar sweet-sour odor blending with the machinery-and-synthetics smell of the building and the residual ozone from cheap electric vehicles.

Ssis-Captain knew the routine. He hired some man-beasts of burden to carry his and Trainer’s luggage to the aircar terminal. The clean cool breeze inside the car was a relief. “We’ll go to the old city. It’s better there,” he said.

To a Hero born in space on a hostile outpost near a dying star, Munchen was odd for a city. This was a city? The low-pitched tile roofs weren’t airtight and the windows opened to the atmosphere. From some views the buildings were hidden by the trees that shaded streets. The broad blue waters of the Donau cut through parks of palms and blooming frangipani. Of what use was the steel steeple of the Saint Joachim cathedral?

Ssis-Captain found a room for them in an old four-story brick mansion that had been converted for kzin use by knocking out the tops of all the interior doors. He gave their luggage to an old man-female who staggered under the load, finally setting it down to breathe before dividing her job into two trips.

“She’s ready for the glue-factory,” commented Ssis, who was three times her size.

“It’s a she? But she took your instructions!”

“Of course.”

He stared at the old lady. Dumb male-animals, Trainer-of-Slaves could understand, but females who comprehended sentences? He tried to imagine his mother speaking in whole phrases. He had talked enough to her, and sometimes … sometimes he had imagined that she was listening, such big round eyes she had.

It was a powerful deception. A kzinrret always gave the impression of being intelligent. Once as a spoiled kit in the Chiirr-Nig household he had been so taken by this illusion that he had given his mother an adventure picture-book to read to him at nap-time. She had chewed the book to pieces.

But enough of amazement. They beeped their automatic car on its way, settled into their room, and set about to pad the rest of the way to the Admiralty by foot.

Trainer-of-Slaves had been close to only two monkeys in his life and found a city-herd of them disconcerting. Ssis-Captain just ignored the animals while they scurried around him or waited against a wall. They all wore clothes—a fact somehow surprising to Trainer—though obviously they belonged to no military unit. Since Chuut-Riit’s hunt on Hssin, he had imagined that naked was the natural state of all man-beasts.

The Admiralty could have