The Man-Kzin Wars 06

Chapter One Relativistic Hunt

We were only a half light-year out from Sol, but it took me a moment to find that bright point among so many other suns. Somehow it looked no warmer than the other brilliant dots. Probably my imagination.

The more immediate target was obvious. A finger pointed straight at it—a radiant finger a hundred thousand klicks long.

The slowboat was huge, even by the standards of the kzin troopship that had carried me across four light-years. Distant stars glittered coldly around the image-enhanced shape on the viewscreen. It was a relief to see a starscape not distorted and squashed by relativity, fore and aft. The Doppler shift was almost imperceptible at 10 percent of lightspeed.

I felt an itching sensation all over my body, but I didn’t look away from the viewscreen to scratch. My little singleship had to be within their sensor range by now, and the crew had no way to determine if I was friend or foe.

I waited to die. I almost hoped for it.

No such luck, of course. Not that I was special. All of humanity was running out of luck.

Goosing the viewscreen magnification up a bit, I studied the target across two hundred kilometers of deep space. The slowboat was a fat cylinder sitting on the hard white blaze of a fusion drive. Even with the jury-rigged gravitic polarizer, it had taken me an hour to maneuver far around the deadly plume of the drive wash pushing the R. P. Feynman back to Sol. Getting anywhere near that column of fusion fire would have fried me thoroughly.

Reaction drives can be effective weapons, in direct proportion to their power. Such was the kzinti lesson, according to rumors overheard from the singed-tailed ratcats returning from at least two attempts on Sol. I frowned. If only…

Too bad Centauri system hadn’t gotten more large fusion drive units in place a few decades back, when the kzin first arrived. Things might have gone very differently for both Serpent Swarmer and Wunderlander. My whole life would have been different, and I would never have ended up here and now.

The singleship control board began to ping. That meant the first faint lines of magnetic force were brushing by the main sensory array of my singleship. I keyed up a false color display of the magnetic field structure at the front and flank of Feynman. Stark crimson lines stretched across my viewscreen into a huge and intricate pattern.

The ramscoop field reached invisible fingers outward for hundreds of kilometers, an invisible throat. It funneled interstellar hydrogen and icy dust microparticles into the fusion drive section at the core of the slowboat. Anything with a slight electrical charge, the mags picked up and gobbled.

Like any good Belter, I sat very still and studied the viewscreen with great care, trying to find a clear path through the closely packed field lines. The ramscoop fueling the slowboat wasn’t a big belcher, like the unmanned ramrobots that could run up to nearly 0.9 lights. This one was pushing hard to make 0.1. The exhaust plume’s ion excitations showed it was at ram-limited cruising velocity.

Slowboat, indeed, despite its incandescent power scratching across the starscape. It was ridiculous, compared to the kzin spacedrive. A trip time of forty years, Wunderland to Sol.

Which is why the passengers in there were stacked up in cryo like canned goods. It had been a long way back, this close to Sol. The Feynman crew must have traded off cruise watches with their sleepers through several shifts now.

Desperate people. And they weren’t going to make it. The slowboat looked to be in good shape on extreme mag. The awake crew must have done repairs on the fly; the slowboats were meant for one-way trips, Earth to Wunderland.

And Feynman looked old. Pitted, blotchy. Even the most recent of the colony ships had orbited Wunderland, empty and ignored, for over fifty years.

It had been a near thing, getting all of the old colony slowboats repaired, crewed, and on emergency boost outsystem. Prole and Herrenmann and Belter, working together for once, before the ratcats arrived in victory. But all three of the slowboats had made it. The kzin made only a half-hearted attempt to stop them.

And for what? I reminded myself bitterly. The rest of us had lost almost everything—rights, dignity, property, countless lives—to let a few Herrenmannen lords and ladies run away from the kzin.

And I knew that better than most. Knew it in my guts.

Feynman’s magnetic funnel was not as lethal as a ramrobot’s, but plenty dangerous to any living thing with a notochord. I would have to be careful, maneuvering closer to the plasma tongue. Mag vortices curled and licked and ate each other there. High turbulence. It could reach out with rubber fingers and strum this little ship like a guitar string. At 0.1 lights, not recommended by the manufacturer.

As if anybody, even a kzin, had ever tried this before.

The navigational computer held my position relative to Feynman as I studied the field line intensifies more closely and plotted a weaving path through the invisible macramé of magnetic force. The ripping-cloth sound of the gravitic polarizer muted to a low crackle. I rubbed my forehead for a moment, then inhaled deeply. The kzin had installed a minimal space drive in my singleship, nothing like their warships or transports. It warped space unevenly the unbalanced gravitic emissions always giving me a splitting headache.

It was show time.

I took a long sip of tepid water from my suit collar nipple. I cleared my throat and keyed the omnidirectional commlink.

“Feynman, Feynman,” I sang out crisply forcing a professional tone into my voice. “This is Free Wunderland Navy emissary spacecraft Victrix. Code Ajax. Do you copy?”

The lie felt thick and bitter on my tongue, like bad coffee. Trojan Horse or Judas Goat would have been better names for my peaceful-looking converted singleship. I steeled myself. No Wunderlander, ground pounder or Belter, owed these running cowards a thing.

It still didn’t feel right. It never would.

But I had little choice. I had my reasons for serving the kzin. Four of them, in fact.

But I’m no Jacobi.

I had been telling myself that for months, over and over, like a mantra.

Again I waited for my sensors to bleat their alarms. That would be the first warning as the slowboat’s signal laser blasted my singleship to vapor. The only warning, maybe a half-second of it.

No reply to my transmission. Just a faint lonely hiss over the shipboard commlink. Backwash emission at the plume’s plasma frequency. The stars looked very far away, cold and uncaring. Sol looked warm, unreachable. Why had we ever left her?

I repeated the transmission. Nothing. I set the commlink to autorepeat, left the receiver volume amped, and waited. I peeled a ration bar, and chewed the fibrous lump slowly. Swallowed. Tried not to think about the damned ratcat holo in my pocket, and my four good reasons to serve the kzin.

I took another bite, the ration bar even more tasteless than usual. Slave fodder. Monkeyfood.

Maybe the crew were all dead and had left the slowboat on autopilot. Yet repairs and modifications had been carried out on the old colony ship at some point after its escape. The scope image enhancers showed fresh-looking weld stains, jury-rigged antennas, replaced flux generators with sloppy seals.

They were in there, all right; sitting fat and happy while the rest of us were slaves to the damned ratcats.

I crumpled the ration bar peel in anger. First trouble insystem, and the Herrenmann ruling elite abandoned their high and mighty code of honor. They ran back to their Solward brethren, like any common Prole.

I couldn’t understand why they had bolted in the first place, other than cowardice. Wunderlanders had quickly learned that the kzin gravitic polarizers changed the strategies of warfare. The tabbies could get it up to 0.8 lights within a week or two, and could hull the slowboats anytime the whim took them. It would have been better to fight, to take a few tabbies with them. But the Herrenmann cowards cut and ran.

The noble slogans meant nothing. Honor. I frowned in distaste, remembering. They were just saving their own precious hides.

The autorepeat dragged on. No reply. The music of the spheres remained mostly static with dead spaces. I finished my ration bar and ate the wrapper, not that there was much difference in taste or texture.

Now I hoped that the crew were all dead onboard. It would make my job a little easier. Not much, but a little. Best be done and gone…

Did I have a choice? I swallowed past a foul taste in my mouth that had nothing to do with salvaged singleship rations. The shipboard commlink suddenly hissed to life. “Victrix, Victrix. This is Feynman. Return signal on tightbeam at once, both visual and multiplex datalink.”

They didn’t need to actually threaten me directly. It was all implicit. A slight change in the ramscoop fluxnet configuration, and the magnetic field would scramble every nonoptical byte in my shipboard computers. Probably burn out my brain, too.

If that wasn’t enough, I was certainly in range of their main laser array. It was designed to punch messages across light years, but was equally suited to vaporizing unwanted visitors.

I took another sip of warm flat water and got to work. The singleship computer quickly gave me a fix on the transmitter they were using. Standard five-meter mica dish setup, tucked into the back third of the slowboat. Snug in its prowbay, a phased array. The modulated laserlink was standard too, at 420 nanometers. I tweaked my signal laser frequency to that wavelength and targeted the dish in the crosshairs. I thumbed on the data handshake subroutine. My own signal laser hunted a bit, then settled on the dish array. Lock—and I was still alive.

Communications data flashed across the main screens, and a low tone sounded. Transmission datalink belted in.

It was time to move to the next act.

I thumbed the channel open. Weak color, jittery fuzz all over. But it showed a youngish man with the idiotic asymmetric beard worn by Herrenmann dandies back in München on Wunderland. Either he had been in coldsleep for most of the trip or he had carried along a supply of very expensive anti-aging drugs.

After all, they had been en route for over thirty-five years. His face was immobile with the typical arrogant expression of the ruling class, the Nineteen Families. Prunefaced and straight backed in his crashcouch. That asshole expression was no longer common in München, even on collaborationist faces. Things had changed, courtesy of our kzin masters.

Come on. Can’t let any of that show. A lot is riding on this. I forced my expression into a friendly smile. The hybrid Germanic tongue of Wunderland nobility sliding easily across my lips. “Guten Gross-Tag, Herrenmann. Ich heissen…”

“There is no cause,” he interrupted, “to speak Wunderlander.” His eyes were hard and proud and suspicious. No trace of an accent in his clipped voice. “You are clearly a Serpent Swarmer, and should not put on airs to which you are not entitled. Speak Belter Standard, if you please.”

“As you wish.” I smiled. Arrogant fool. How would he like his children to become hunt-toys for some kzin noble’s young sons? “I was merely going to introduce myself in a polite fashion.”

I paused and waited for my haughty little friend to gesture me to continue. “My name is Karl Friedrich Höchte. I bring you good news.”

Fake, of course. My real name would have surprised him, made him instantly suspicious. So I had selected another good noble name to reassure the Herrenmann crew of the Feynman. An extended member of the Nineteen Families, by the sound of it. Just the kind of purse-mouthed dandy who’d use his middle name when introducing himself. A convincing little touch, that. Maybe.

He was good, I had to give him that much. No hint of curiosity as to how I had arrived at his slowboat, only a little over half a light-year from Sol. Even his long Herrenmann ears did not twitch.

“My name is Klaus Bergen,” he replied, still expressionless. “You were mentioning news? I remind you that we do have defenses.”

I leaned forward. Earnest expression, enthusiastic. “Klaus, my friend, we beat them.”

“Impossible.”

Okay, so he wasn’t profoundly stupid. “We were lucky. Most of them left—we still aren’t sure why—and we took the garrison force they left behind. And most of us died. But we did it, drove them out of Wunderlander space.”

Now Bergen’s ears twitched with interest. He raised a haughty eyebrow in disbelief. Might as well stick to the prepared story I figured. Don’t improvise more than you have to. “And we follow them all the way, flaming their rat tails as we go, I can assure you.”

“You exaggerate, surely.” His eyes were flat and hard.

“It’s true,” I insisted. “I have come out to Feynman on behalf of the rest of Wunderland. We cracked the secret of the ratcat gravitic polarizer drive, and the Serpent Swarm Resistance,” —I paused and patted my control console affectionately—“learned to build warcraft of our own to match the tabbies. There were a lot more of us than of them, after all.”

There was a long pause. Here was the worst point, if he didn’t buy it…

Bergen stared, still without expression other than a cocked eyebrow. He looked to one side, out of range of his camera eye, and listened intently. He nodded once and turned back to me.

“You will understand our suspicions.” The same clipped, up-yours tone, but a hint of excitement got through. Good. “I presume that you have proofs for our inspection.”

I grinned harmlessly, gesturing behind me at the cramped lifebubble. “Herr Bergen, you can see that Victrix is unarmed, and I am the sole occupant. Even now I am at your mercy, my friend. A larger ship waits farther out to install a gravitic drive and make other modifications to Feynman. We felt that Victrix would be less threatening, so I came to you as an emissary.”

I held back a grimace at the way the words tasted. There was at least a kernel of truth in what I said.

The Herrenmann said nothing. I was getting worried. “After all,” I continued, “you’re poking along. Once Feynman is retrofitted, you can be at Sol in a matter of weeks.”

He blinked. It must be pretty foul in there. The prospect of reaching Earth’s opulence so soon… That’s what I had working for me. Herrenmannen will be Herrenmannen.

I changed the subject. “As for bonafides, I would think that Victrix’s own gravitic polarizer would be proof enough. But I do have holos and datadisks for your inspection, sir. They detail our victories against the ratcats.”

“I would like to see them,” replied my arrogant little friend across the empty kilometers. He did not sound convinced.

Time to play my trump card.

As if on sudden impulse I laid it down. “I do have one further piece of evidence you may find more persuasive,” I said in a carefully cheerful tone, reaching into the clear organiform bag I had kept clipped next to my crashcouch. “Or, more accurately, pieces of evidence.”

Smiling into the camera eye, I held up the engraved metal ring. Dozens of mummified kzinti ears swung gently in the slight breeze from the airplant ventilator gull. I selected one ear in particular, stretching it like an old fashioned Chinese parasol, displaying the crimson tattoos scrawled across the dried white tissue.

“Herr—Bergen, my friend, you are familiar with tabby rank? This particular ear was taken from a fleet captain, as you can see from the tattoo pattern.” I paused, flicking the edge of the ear with a finger for emphasis. “He did not approve of its removal, but I was indifferent to his remonstrations.”

Again, I had not lied.

Bergen’s voice was hoarse, and no longer haughty. “How many do you have on that trophy ring?”

I could see many emotions in his eyes, thawing of Herrenmann reserve. They had not left the dried ears.

“Thirty-one. And your unspoken guess is quite correct, as well. It’s a kzin trophy ring.”

“How could you possibly—”

“Taken from yet another ratcat captain. Again against his will. Many of us in the Free Wunderland Space Navy have taken similar souvenirs. I thought that my own small trophy was an appropriate item for its present purpose, nicht wahr?”

The Wunderlander once more looked off camera for a moment, then squared his jaw. “I confess I find your evidence persuasive. And anyway, a ratcat warship would not bother with such a shadow play. They would hull us from outside our fields and have done.” His eyes became once again hard, making his asymmetric beard look still more ludicrous. “Herr Höchte, you may now negotiate through the ramscoop field lines to our main airlock—”

“Viel dank.” It is always best to let the customer draw the desired conclusions.

“—where you will be met. We remind you that you are being watched most carefully, and we have… resources… with which Feynman can be protected.”

Try to look concerned. “You still harbor suspicions, then?” I got it out calmly, with the slightest trace of sarcasm flavoring my words.

“We mean no insult—if you are who you claim to be.”

“I’m telling—”

“You must understand us, Herr Höchte. We carry the hope of Wunderland with us, and can take no chances with such a precious cargo.” He paused, his features once more unreadable.

Time for the icy, insulted manner. “I am a fellow human, as you know.”

He ignored it. “You understand that we cannot reduce or shape out our magnetics?”

“I know your specs, ja.” I let more irritation show in my tone and face. Careful…

Bergen paused for a moment, his iron Herrenmann expression softening just a bit. “Herr Höchte, I believe your story. After all, anyone meaning us ill could easily destroy us from a distance, is it not so?”

Yes, I thought to myself, that is one way to think of it. I nodded at Bergen with false satisfaction.

Bergen nodded back once in reply, his face again tight and haughty. “Feynman out.”

So far, so good, I thought grimly.

The viewscreen dissolved to holographic snow. I had been dismissed. No matter that I was supposedly saving his ass. Is still just a ground-grubber Prole in his book.

I took a few deep breaths to calm my nerves. Then back to work, careful work. No room for mistakes.

It took half an hour, just optimizing the gravitic polarizer to full power. Then I laid in my macros, routines which would take me slipping through magnetic field lines. My now-familiar headache began to pound once again as the polarizer came fully on line, and carried me toward the slowboat.

It took over an hour to gingerly navigate among the magnetic field lines, headed toward the main airlock of Feynman. The fields here were strumming with tension-ten kilo Gauss, easy Magnetic field lines are like rubber bands that can never break—but you can stretch them. I had to worm my way through the steep gradients, while plasma hailed against my hull. The field lines stretch, all right—and they can snap back. That would not be good.

Each klick I slithered through felt like it took a day. I knew the slowboat crew could kill me instantly with the slightest change in the fluxline configuration. Or boil me to vapor with the signal laser, if they wanted to make a nice gaudy splash.

Not that it would be so damn bad. At least it would be over then. And why wait for them to make a move? Part of me wanted to die, vectoring right in under full acceleration, say, into the white-hot plasma plume—

But I knew what Kraach-Captain would then do. Who would really suffer as a result of my oh-so-noble gesture?

I was a traitor, yes, but not like Jacobi. Nothing like Jacobi. I had my reasons for serving the damned ratcats, four very good reasons: Sharna, Gretha, Henry and Hilda.

Kraach-Captain would keep his side of the bargain, if I kept mine. Maybe that was the only good side to the kzin. Come hell or high water, they kept their word. Predator’s honor.

Unlike almost any human-especially unlike Jacobi. Horrible to know that I could trust the word of an alien monster more than a fellow human.

Burnt-gold plasma curled and lashed around me. I kept away from the drive wash but errant coils fought up and down the field lines, bow turbulence. The gravitic polarizer whined that thrumming effort. Careful, careful… My target loomed large, a huge hull, raked and burned.

A slight jar as I grounded Victrix next to the main airlock. It loomed huge through the viewscreen, as did every visible aspect of the slowboat. I activated the magnetic grapnels. A hollow boom startled me—I was that tense—as we locked firmly against the slowboat.

On the viewscreen I could see the crew tunnel slowly arching toward my own airlock. Like an elephant’s trunk from an old history holocube, from a time when there had been elephants.

Clunk, whir—the slowboat airlock adapted to the geometry of my singleship airlock. The status board winked green and I keyed the airlock cycle.

You’re on, kid. This first part was easy…

I popped a stimulant to take the ragged edge from my fatigue. Everything depended on the next few hours. Everything.

The singleship airlock chimed and swung open silently. My ears popped a bit with a slight pressure drop. I left my helmet open in what I intended to be a demonstration of harmlessness. Yawning, concentrating on my lines, I grabbed access loops, and swung hand over hand into the dimly lit crew tunnel.

The far end of the crew tunnel was closed, of course. Final inspection time. Try to look like Karl Friedrich Höchte.

I crouched casually, bracing a foot and hand against the microgravity and smiled directly into the camera eye next to the airlock. The slowboat air in the crew tunnel smelled oily and slightly rank. I doubted that many of Feynman’s systems worked optimally. Here was the first proof.

The lock slowly irised open. Here I was, and all I had wanted to do was get in one last bit of smuggling, a million years ago…

Chapter Two Smuggler’s Blues

The asteroid swimming in Victrix’s viewscreen had no official name on the navigation charts. The distant glint was listed as 2121-21, the twenty first asteroid catalogued during the 2121 A.D. survey of the Serpent Swarm. To the temporary rockjack crews living there, the asteroid had also developed an obvious nickname: Blackjack.

Blackjack was a slow-spinning oblong of stone twenty kilometers across its long axis. Rich veins of water ice and nickel-iron riddled it, along with deposits of carbonaceous chondrite. Pockmarked and battered by other asteroids in the Serpent Swarm over the eons, it had slowly swung in its orbit, half a billion kilometers from Alpha Centauri A. The rock had raw materials, access to energy, and was in an orbit easily accessible to singleships.

There were many thousands of rocks just like it in the Swarm, but Blackjack was a little different. For a few weeks, this whirling piece of an unformed planet would be home to the few human beings still resisting the iron claws and sharp teeth of the kzin.

I intended to do my part to help them, at least this one last time. Sure, some of the rebels were more pirate than freedom fighter, more interested in lining their pockets than collecting kzinti ears. But an old Earther saying came to mind: “The enemy of my enemy is a friend.” If only it were always true.

I unlimbered the signal laser remotes. Squinting against the sun glare, I set the aiming crosshairs on the tiny flash of the receiver dish a thousand kilometers away. The laser guide prowled slowly in a small arc, seeking. A thin beep—a target lock.

I paused before I set up the recognition signal trigger, and eyed the highly illegal monopole detector array mounted above my control console. I studied it with great care, as if my life depended on it.

Which it did.

Three rows of amber lights shone steadily at me in the cramped lifebubble. All clear. No ratcat ships were within range of the detector. I made a few adjustments, increasing the range, and studied the lights again.

The kzin gravitic polarizers used large quantities of magnetic monopoles. Easily identified—if you had access to the now-illegal tech, that is. Our kzin masters were many things, but stupid was not one of them. The detector array pinged sleepily after a moment, confirming that no large monopole sources were within at least a hundred thousand klicks of Blackjack.

Opening the commlink port, I carefully inserted the tiny chip I had been given at the Nipponese restaurant in Tiamat. The ready lights blinked green. I triggered the downlink recognition code sequence. Multicolored lights rippled across the readout as the signal laser downloaded its smuggler’s message.

Caution was everything in my business. It really wouldn’t do for our mighty felinoid masters to be in the neighborhood while I carried out my last smuggling run for that Prole bastard Jacobi. One more load of equipment that the Resistance needed: monopole detectors, submolar assemblies, nano units, fusion point components. I had carefully double-recorded the cargo back in Tiamat, then loaded the contraband along with my own completely legal cargo.

The kzin were not good at accounting; it did not fit with their ideal of the Warrior Heart. How could a Hero scream and leap his way to a Full Name while recording a long series of cargo manifests onto a handlink?

Their five-red, five-armed, warty Jotoki monsters, ever watchful and nosy, were another matter. I had waited until I was unsupervised on my loading dock shift, then covered the computer traces most carefully. It was easy; men and women had designed and programmed those computers, not aliens. And what a Jotok can’t see or hear, it can’t report to its furry rat-tailed masters.

Contraband stowed and hidden, I had hitched the cargo pod to Victrix, and started on my kzin-approved trade and delivery route, zigzagging across the Swarm. Tiamat to Avalon. Avalon to Lodestar. Lodestar to Archangel. Now an undocumented stop at nearby Blackjack, the dicey part. Then I’d shape orbit back for Tiamat. It had been five long months, and I was lonely for Sharna and the children.

The route would have taken days with the ratcat gravitic polarizers instead of my fusion drive, but such kzin tech was not for “slave races.”

The commlink warbled in response to the recognition signal. Smuggler’s handshake. Everything was going according to plan which worried me a little.

Still, I followed my instructions. No overt communications traffic, even by tightbeam. I tuned up the fusion drive. It thrummed and headed Victrix down to Blackjack at a nice sedate vector. It never pays to stand out, even when you are not being watched. On the screen, the asteroid swelled from a glint to a toy pebble to an irregular brick.

Not long after the initial kzin assault on Wunderland, Blackjack had been abandoned. Immediately after suppressing military resistance there, the kzinti had moved on the Serpent Swarm, but most of the Belters had focused on protecting Tiamat, with its shipyards and bubblefarms.

Not that it mattered a damn in the long run. Singleship fusion drives were no match for the ratcat space drive. The damage to the densely colonized asteroids like Tiamat and Thule was heavy, and took time to repair. The smaller rocks, like Blackjack, were left relatively intact—very useful to smugglers and pirates. Or as the noble kzin called them, “feral humans.”

As Blackjack slowly filled the viewscreen, I organized the cargo manifest and thought about how to spend my ill-gotten gains. My smuggler’s money had kept my family well insulated from the ratcats, and I intended to keep it that way. Jacobi had gone so far as to suggest that this delivery could earn enough credits to buy my children a billet in the Proxima cometary manufacturing plants.

Kzin almost never went to Proxima. It was not sufficiently Heroic.

About two kilometers above Blackjack, I saw the rhythmic blinking of the landing beacon next to a bubble-domed minehead. I switched to chemical jets so that I wouldn’t have to hike in the microgravity to the airlock. As we slipped in I closed my suit helmet and started pumping the lifebubble air back into the tanks. No sense wasting even a few lungfuls when I popped the airlock.

Wan sunlight gleamed on solar collectors and vacuum fractionating columns near the minehead. I drifted closer to the landing beacon. You don’t land on an asteroid as small as Blackjack, you rendezvous. Attitude jets held my singleship steady as I carefully shot a mooring line through a landing loop, then made Victrix fast against the bulk of Blackjack.

A few minutes later I was in the minehead airlock, listening to the deepening whistle of pressure building up.

All according to plan, smooth as water ice. The airlock telltales finally winked green, and the inner door cycled open.

The first thing I saw was Jacobi’s sneering smile. But even before that image fully registered, I smelled the spicy-sour scent of excited kzinti. Which had to be imaginary, since my suit helmet was still sealed and dogged down.

Jacobi stood braced in front of the airlock door, dart pistol in hand, eyes bright in his scarred face. Flanking him were two kzin in combat armor—predator fangs bared in identical smile-threats. Before I could make a move to hit the cycle keypad in the airlock, something slammed into my upper right arm. I swung my body in response as Belter micrograv reflexes kept me on my feet.

I looked down. A large, hollow dart, designed to foil the suit’s self-sealing mechanism, protruded from my shipsuit. Crimson spheres of blood began floating out of the wound. They wobbled slowly away in the microgravity… if I cycled the lock now, with my ruptured suit, I would be breathing vacuum in seconds. Pain suddenly flooded my arm and into my gut, folding me in two, my feet leaving the deck.

“So good to see you again, Herr Upton-Schleisser,” I heard Jacobi hiss with irony.

I swore to myself as the snarling figures in battle armor, each over two meters tall, snatched me from midair like kittens batting at yarn. Black spots clouded my vision. I did the only reasonable thing. I passed out.

The bite of a stimulant slapshot in my neck brought me to my senses. My shipsuit and helmet were gone. I was dressed in a standard falling jumper. My right arm throbbed badly, but I could see a ratcat field dressing on the wound. The bandage was easily three times larger than necessary; medicine on a kzin-sized scale. Bindings cut into my ankles and wrists, holding me securely to a packing crate.

I looked up and saw Jacobi seated on air a few meters away, a thin line mooring him in place against the ventilator breeze. We were in a small storage room, with glaring mining lights. The cold air smelled of oil and steel. And of kzin, of course. I shook my head to clear my thoughts. It didn’t help.

“Jacobi,” I said as calmly as I could, my neck still stinging from the drug, “I had no idea that you were a pussy-kisser collabo.”

He made no reply, just stared at me. It was hard to read any expression on the ruins of his face. When I was a boy, Tomás Jacobi had been a leader among the Serpent Swarmers during the kzin invasion. His forces had held back the invasion troopships from Tiamat for most of a week. Then his lifebubble had been lasered open during the final assault, searing his face and giving him decompression scars. Later, Jacobi had become one of the major smugglers in the Swarm and a supplier to the Resistance. A criminal, but a human criminal.

Just like me.

How could he of all people become a collaborationist?

Jacobi’s eyes were ice blue, and peered impassively from the runnels and scars of his face. He made a clucking sound with his tongue. In my years of dealing with Jacobi, he had always tried to act like a kindly uncle to me. I knew better.

“Kenneth, Kenneth,” he said softly, “there is no reason to be insulting. I had to make sure that you didn’t leave suddenly didn’t I? An impression had to be made on my, ah, employers as well. In any event, I tended to your wound myself. No real harm done.”

I kept all expression from my face, my tone level. “Valve that sewage. You sold me out to the kzin.” I took a deep breath, thinking of my family. “You might as well kill me, Jacobi. I won’t go collabo and work for the damn ratcat tabbies.”

“Hush.” He made a throat-cutting gesture with his free hand. “Kraach-Captain speaks Belter Standard, Wunderlander, Jotok, and Principle knows what else. Do not insult his honor or his person.” He looked sternly at me out of that ruined face. “As for selling anyone out, I do not need to justify my decisions to a petty small-time smuggler.”

I allowed my expression to show how I felt then and Jacobi sighed in exasperation. He reached down with a free hand and untied his mooring line. Both of his legs were missing; another legacy from the kzin armory. He reached out to a wall-ring, pushed off, and floated down next to me. His grip was very strong. Jacobi’s mouth was centimeters from my ear.

“Kenneth, my friend,” he whispered, “you are to be taken before Kraach-Captain. So this can go one of two ways after I untie you. The first is for you to overpower me, which would not be difficult for you. Yet if you do, what will you then do?”

“Break your neck.”

“And then? There are over fifty Heroes here on Blackjack Will you fight them all? And if so, to what purpose?”

He paused for a moment, looking at me carefully. It was that look he used when dickering over contraband cargoes. Shrewd and knowing. I said nothing.

“On the other hand,” he continued, “I can call a few Heroes to escort you to Kraach-Captain personally. But I do not wish to do so. It is better, more dignified, that we go to the Captain together. Better for both of us. Surely you would prefer to go under your own power, not as an unconscious lump carried by kzinti guards.” Jacobi waited for my response, scarred lips twisted.

Finally, I nodded curtly. Deftly, Jacobi untied my bonds. I grasped a wall ring to keep from floating off the deck in the tiny gravity of Blackjack. He gestured me to follow, and pushed off for the doorway.

“Just tell me one thing,” I asked Jacobi’s back. “‘Why would you work for the ratcats? You have spent your entire life fighting them. And even if you are a traitor by nature, still they crippled you, Finagle take it!”

His back stiffened at my words, but he did not reply.

We carefully leaped from wall-ring to wall-ring through the corridors of the minehead station. The legless Jacobi was graceful in the microgravity, using just the tips of his fingers to correct each jump. As I followed him from handhold to handhold, I swallowed back my anger and tried to think of a way out of this. Nothing occurred to me.

The low-gray conditions might become yet another problem in considering options and choices. Kzinti hated microgravity, having used gravitic polarizers for centuries; once their monopole-laden ships returned to Blackjack, they could provide some artificial gravity.

Kzinti didn’t deal well with the fluid buildup caused by microgravity; they got a little… short tempered, even for kzinti.

It was a silent five-minute trip to the unused comm center. Jacobi knocked once, the hatch opened, and I followed him into a large room. The ceilings were tall enough to allow a kzin to stand upright. Three kzinti in full space armor stood guard at the doorway, weapons glittering in the orange filtered lamps. As we passed them they hissed softly.

A very large table was fixed to the floor in the center of the room. Clips held holocubes and data platters in neat arrays within easy reach of the obviously high-ranking kzin who sat there working, giving no sign that we had been noticed. Jacobi and I crouched motionless in front of the table, eyes averted, waiting. I could feel the collective gaze of the kzinti at the door on me. The air was cold and very dry.

Finally, one of the guards growled softly.

The kzin behind the makeshift desk looked up from a portable thinscreen display, and blinked at us. His black nose sniffed wetly in our direction. Enormous violet eyes held mine for a moment, weighing and judging. His short muzzle was shot with gray, and I could see the ridged battle scars on his face and arms. Very old for a kzin. There were no old, stupid kzinti.

Jacobi began to hiss and spit in the falsetto human version of the kzin language. I wasn’t surprised that he knew it, given recent events. But the kzin at the desk bared his teeth and roared for silence. The room seemed to echo for a moment.

“Better,” the seated alien rasped in passable Belter Standard. His voice was octaves lower than human. “Except under necessity, humans should not defile the Hero’s Tongue. No Warrior Heart. No honor. I tell you when to speak.” He paused. We remained silent. Satisfied, he continued.

“I am named Kraach-Captain,” the old kzin grated. His eyes speared me. “How are you called, slave who may soon be meat?”

“I am called Kenneth Upton-Schleisser,” I said slowly, knowing better than to meet the kzin’s eyes directly. My word choice was intentional to a kzin, names are earned, not given.

“Sssoo,” Kraach-Captain rambled. “It is as the legless monkey says. The Jacobi beast is as without honor as legs, but at least on this occasion truth issues from his slave mouth. Your two fathers, they fight Heroes when we first come to Ka’ashi?” I shook my head, not understanding. The old kzin finally snarled a hissing oath and gestured at Jacobi with a careless hand, claws glittering.

Jacobi leaned close and whispered in my ear, “Kraach-Captain means your father and mother, Kenneth. Kzin females aren’t sentient.”

“I know that,” I interrupted loudly, still feeling confused. I shut my mouth abruptly as one of the guards growled a warning behind me. I could smell fear-sweat on the other man.

“Don’t do that again. They expect me to have explained all of this to you.” Jacobi urged me to continued silence with a hard glare. “Explaining details to slaves is a duty for slaves, not for a Hero. Now, listen carefully. They know about your father and mother, Kenneth, but their females aren’t intelligent, so I told them—”

“I get it,” I whispered back, cutting Jacobi’s explanation short. I was not interested in whatever bizarre rationale had led to gender morphing of my female parent.

I took a deep breath, feeling a familiar almost comforting anger rise in my guts, partially displacing the roil of emotions already churning there. My parents. Henry Upton had been a good rockjack Belter in the Swarm, a humanitarian interested in promoting better Swarm-Wunderland relations. It worked so well that he had married the ice queen Herrenmann daughter of the First Family Helga Schleisser. I had been their only child, five years old when the kzin came. My father died holding off the ratcats.

My mother left with the slowboats. In the chaos of the invasion, I ended up as indentured labor.

I looked back up at Kraach-Captain. “Yes,” I said. “My… fathers… did battle with Heroes at that time.”

His huge eyes were searching my face again. Apparently he was familiar enough with humans to at least attempt to read expressions. “You seem a clever beast. Perhaps you shall be allowed to live.”

I said nothing, eyes partially averted. It was safer not to volunteer anything to a kzin, unless an actual question was asked. Part of me was surprised at how quickly I recalled the manners appropriate to staying alive around a kzin. Slave manners were reemerging, a hated reflex.

“I have need of a slave-human—one with knowledge of the feral-human ways,” the kzin added.

“Dominant One,” I said slowly and distinctly, hating the servility, hating my desire to keep on breathing, “Jacobi is much wiser in the ways of the feral-humans.” Jacobi sucked in his breath.

The old kzin looked at me for a moment, blinking. Then he coughed ratcat laughter, licking his thin black lips with a lolling tongue. “Most amusing, human. Jacobi is crippled. Worse than a cull from the sickliest litter of the most lowborn monkey. Useless for a Valiant One’s plan.”

“I do not understand,” I said.

“The Jacobi-beast will now explain to you my Hero’s plan. You will serve me in its execution, indeed you will.” Kraach-Captain began to methodically groom his pelt. Chinese parasol ears unfolded to listen better.

Jacobi leaned closer. “Kraach-Captain wishes to regain his full Name. He has permission from the Conquest Governor to take a small troopship to one of the slowboats on the way back to Sol.”

“Doesn’t make sense,” I said. The slowboats were almost to Sol by now. The ratcats could have destroyed them at any time. For some reason, they had chosen not to bother. Perhaps it just wasn’t worth their time to do so. Why now, when the costs would be significant?

He didn’t respond to my reaction, just continued emotionlessly, refusing to look at me. “The kzin have gotten bloodied trying to penetrate Sol’s perimeter defense. Kraach-Captain wants to put a crack force of kzinti and weaponry inside a commandeered slowboat. He will then use the slowboat in a surprise attack on perimeter defenses, allowing a follow-on kzin fleet into solar space.” Jacobi paused. “A Trojan Cat, as it were.”

Shock kept my voice low. “You Judas!”

Kraach-Captain stopped grooming for a moment and looked at me closely. Perhaps I had raised my voice a bit after all. He scented the air wetly and rumbled.

Jacobi continued to speak softly. “Kenneth—we owe the Earthers nothing.”

“We’re still—”

“They’ve left us to the kzin for nearly forty years. What have they done for us? And the Herrenmannen in the slowboats… well, you have even more reason than most to hate them.”

“I’m no Prole, Jacobi,” I told him firmly.

“I’ve left out a few details, Kenneth.” Jacobi said nothing for a moment. “The slowboat that the kzin have targeted is the R. P. Feynman.”

My mother had left Wunderland space aboard Feynman.

It was too much. Jacobi had always been a sadistic bastard at his core. If he was to be Judas, then he intended to use me as a Judas goat. Using my own hated past as a bargaining chip. I braced myself carefully with my hands, face blank. I leaned down, then kicked Jacobi as hard as I could. Alas, less a stranger to micro-g combat than I, he managed to rotate slightly on his vertical axis; in reaction, I floated across the room toward the opposite wall. One of the kzin guards launched himself at me like a three-meter furry orange missile.

Kraach-Captain shrieked a banshee wail. The guard streaked past me, rebounded against the wall, and came to attention. The old kzin then hissed and spat orders to the other growling guards.

In a few moments, Jacobi and I were in front of Kraach-Captain’s desk again. The guards stood over us this time, ready to cuff any more slave outbursts. Jacobi wheezed a bit and moved to ease the sprained ribs that had taken the blow intended for vertebrae.

“Upton-Schleisser,” Kraach-Captain growled, “I approve of your spirit. The Jacobi-beast is indeed an eater of grass. Still, we will reward him with the legs and face he wishes, if our quest is successful. And wealth and females, of course.” He blinked, heavy-lidded. “None of this will give him even monkey honor, however.”

My brain whirled. When the kzin invaded, one of the first things shut down were the organ banks. To the kzinti, an organ bank was a restaurant.

Jacobi was selling out humans for a pair of legs and a new face.

I sat tight, thinking. There wasn’t anything to do. Jacobi had sewed up things too thoroughly. He must have planned this years in advance. There was only one option. I looked up at Kraach-Captain and stared him directly in the eye. The guards began to rumble with menace at my intentional rudeness.

“You cannot make me serve you,” I said. “I have one thing to say, Kraach-Captain.”

The kzin blinked in curiosity. Time to take my shot.

“Ch’rowl you!” I shouted in falsetto kzin at the top of my lungs. The kzinti curse would surely be my death sentence, but at least I would go clean. The room was deathly silent as I thought of my wife and children, so far away in Tiamat. I felt the guards’ huge hands clamping down on my shoulders, holding me in place, and prepared to die.

Nothing happened. I could hear blood singing in my ears.

Even the guards were silent.

Finally, Kraach-Captain coughed in laughter. “The Jacobi-beast is correct yet again!” He pointed an ebony clawtip at Jacobi. “This slave did exactly as you predicted. You indeed deserve your legs.” In a burst of generosity he added, “And I will see that they are taken from a well-muscled youthful specimen of precisely your height or a little taller. Fresh killed, of course. It is well worth the loss of a Hero’s meal!”

Jacobi said nothing, simply stared straight ahead at a blank wall.

The kzin turned his head toward me. In what passed among kzinti for warm benignity he said, “Again I salute your courage, little slave. It is like that of an undisciplined kitten, but courage just the same.” His violet eyes turned suddenly hard and opaque. He hissed, “But know this, slave: you will serve us.” Kraach-Captain jabbed a claw at a small cryobox on his makeshift desk. “Open it.”

I reached forward and pulled the cryobox free of the Velcro strip holding it down. It was the kind of container used to store low-temperature medicinals for autodoc supplies. Numbly I toggled the keypad. Seals hissed and unlocked. The lid to the box slid smoothly open.

There was a human hand in the container.

A left hand.

Then I recognized the ring on the third finger. The one I had placed there. On Sharna’s hand.

I could not speak. My eyes would not focus.

From very far away, I heard Jacobi’s voice. “She is still alive, Kenneth. It was I who convinced them that your wife would be more useful alive than dead. Remember that, boy.”

I said nothing, still staring into the box. Frost gleamed on my wife’s severed hand. Then a giant four-fingered black hand eclipsed the smaller one and took the box from my grasp. Kraach-Captain sat back in his seat, axing the cryobox back to its Velcro strip.

Jacobi continued, his voice almost drowned out by the pounding in my temples. “It’s still viable. They’ll reattach it if you work for them. Just like they are going to give me new legs and a new face.”

My lips were numb. “My children?”

The scarred little man next to me was quiet for a moment. “Kenneth,” he said at last, “Kraach-Captain will do nothing to you or your family if you work with him. He’ll even make you a member of his household. Protection, see?” He cleared his throat, continued. “Refuse, and he’ll… eat your wife. His teeth will be the last thing she sees.”

I was just breathing, taking it in. There was a ringing in my ears.

“Your children will attend. Then they will be hunted for sport by Kraach-Captain’s sons.”

I dared not look at Jacobi. I would try to kill him if I did. Someday, some way, he would pay for his treachery. But for now I turned my attention back to the captain. I had to be clear, for their sake.

“Kraach-Captain,” I said, the words dead and empty in my mouth, “how do I know you will abide by this… agreement?”

The guards growled and grumbled at the implication, but the old kzin merely blinked at me. “Little slave,” he rumbled, “a Hero’s Word is binding. I stake my Name on it, my lands, and my sons.”

Kraach-Captain did the kzinti equivalent of a shrug. “Do not fail.”

Kraach-Captain tapped a clawtip on an innocuous-looking holocube sitting on his desk. He picked it up and extended it to me. “Take this recording. Watch it, then carry it with you as a reminder.”

“What is it?” I asked dully, taking it. But I knew the answer.

“It is a recording of my session with your mate, when I removed her hand,” the old kzin rasped. “This interview is concluded.”

The guards’ hands released my shoulders, and Jacobi murmured in my ear. “Come on, Kenneth. Kraach-Captain has laid in everything we need. There is much to plan.”

I let Jacobi lead me away.

Chapter Three Catspaw Gambit

Lies. They made a sour lump in my chest as I stood waiting in Feynman’s airlock.

Control was everything at this point, but it was difficult to stay focused. I thought of my children. My wife. I thought of the cryobox on that huge table back at Blackjack. I thought of Kraach-Captain’s oath, delivered four light-years away. My children’s faces swam in my memory. Did little Gretha remember me? She was not so little now, it occurred to me suddenly; it had been four years in absolute time, a few weeks to me.

The damned holocube seemed a massive weight in my inner pocket, reminding me of what was at stake. I could not let any of my children become a plaything in a kzin hunting park. Not even to save elitist, cowardly Herrenmann lives. No choice. So I swallowed my bile and looked at the opening inner lock with false calm.

The hatch to Feynman finished sliding open with a metallic grinding and a blast of compressed air. My little Herrenmann friend stood just inside the lock, a welding laser held meaningfully in his hands. Not much of a weapon, but one that would do the job, yes. His eyes flicked swiftly from side to side, scanning the airlock behind me. A young Herrenmann woman stood near a doorway about ten meters away and watched us intently.

“Ah, Herr Bergen, I presume,” I said, forcing a smile to my lips and tone. Hard to do, but what choice did I have?

Act like Jacobi, yes, perhaps—but don’t become like him.

Bergen pointed the big laser at my chest and waved me inside with his free hand. “You are to please keep your hands away from your body where I might see them.” The little dyed tufts of his asymmetric beard made Bergen look like a goat I had once seen at a zoo in Tiamat.

“I understand your caution,” I said. Reassuring tone, bland face. All the while, my wife’s voice and children’s faces were in my heart like a knife. I spread my hands carefully and stepped inside the slowboat. The airlock cycled shut behind me, sealing with a hiss like an angry kzin.

Bergen watched me and took a few steps backward. He handed the welding laser to the woman. She braced herself in marksman position, trim and efficient. He whispered to her, then came toward me again, magnetic soles of his shipshoes clicking on the deck. He reached into a toolpouch on his belt.

“It is good to see you again, my friend,” I said easily. Too friendly? Got to get the right tone.

Bergen ran a small box with blinking lights over the outlines of my shipsuit and carryall, looking for energy weapons or inappropriate electronics. He grunted approval and put the box away. The woman with the welding laser did not relax.

“Trust is a wonderful thing,” I observed. Ironic? Witty? What character was I playing here? No one replied.

I popped my helmet and left it on a Velcro patch near the airlock. I picked up my carryall and raised an eyebrow at Bergen in question. A nod. He escorted me toward the doorway. The silent woman came behind us. I could feel the itch of a laser sight in the small of my back. The shot would flash-boil the water in me like a steam jet.

Suspicious elitists, yes. But then, they would soon discover that they had reason to be suspicious. Not that the fact made me feel any better.

Feynman had been designed to run nearly automatically. Crew of three to five, carrying well over three hundred coldsleepers, with a sizable cargo bay. The life support sections we walked through were therefore small and cramped. Huge slowboat, tiny lifebubble. Well kept, though, even neat. Large wallscreens with complex automated monitoring readouts caught my eye as we passed.

The 0.1 g was enough for a strong up-and-down orientation. Magnetic shipboots kept us from leaping like Wunderland zithraras down the hallways. Soon, I could see the slight curve to the main ring corridor, which gave true perspective to the size and bulk of Feynman.

It felt huge, empty lonely. Dim corridor lights, chilly echoing halls. Walls stained by time, stinks flavoring the air, aromas both biological and mechanical. Only a few crew could be awake on Feynman; life support systems couldn’t handle more. Many doors and hatches were closed along the main ring corridor, some with oxidized seals. Some led to the cargo bay, I knew, and others to ship function areas. A few would lead to the liquid nitrogen chambers.

Coldsleep. There had to be a passenger manifest somewhere. I had sworn to myself that I would have a little talk with my cryogenically suspended mother at some point soon. I wanted her to see where her cowardice had led.

We stooped through one low hatchway and down a short corridor. It opened to the small control room for the slowboat. An old woman sat in front of a console, her face dimly lit from the control boards. On one of her screens I could see a wide spectrum scan of Victrix running. The old woman looked up, eyes tired.

“You are Höchte?” she snapped. A voice cracked and brittle. Her hair was ice-white and thin. This woman had taken no anti-aging drugs. Time had carved deep lines into her face, which was dark and leathery with a fusion drive tan. She must have spent too much time at the core of Feynman, monitoring the fire fed by the ramscoop fields. But her eyes were bright and alive.

I kept my smile intact. “That is correct, Madame. And to whom have I the pleasure to speak?” She carried herself like an old-school Herrenmann women, like the great aunts I met while my parents were alive, or some of the collaborationist doyennes I had seen in München. No jewelry, a wiry frame in a simple shipsuit. Her expression was more than merely haughty, though. There was another quality to it, one I could not quite name. Disturbing.

She stared at me coolly for a moment, then chuckled low in her throat. “I am Freya Svensdottir. I command on this shift. You have met Klaus Bergen, and his silent but efficient wife, Madchen Franke.”

“I am pleased to make your acquaintance.” Murmured pseudo-formalities took a moment while our eyes assessed each other. There could only be one or two more crew awake, if that. The lifesystem capacity was small. This would be simpler than I had planned. But something about the woman made me edgy, eager to get it over with as quickly as possible.

Her expression did not change. “And you bring us news that the ratcat kzinti have been defeated? Driven from Wunderland?”

I nodded. “It is my distinct pleasure to tell you so.” Gesture with the carryall. “May I?”

She nodded. I opened it and removed the items that Jacobi and Kraach-Captain had so carefully prepared during the voyage out to Feynman. Holocubes. False historical records. Even the loop of kzinti ears I had shown Bergen earlier over tightbeam. Kraach-Captain had earned those himself, dueling for authorization to form his expedition to the slowboat.

For the next hour, I explained about the mythical Free Wunderland Navy and its equally mythical victories. About driving the ratcats out of Wunderlander space. Great stories. I had spent plenty of time on them.

If only they had been true.

The crew had no way of knowing the truth, after all. There had been no attempt by the slowboats to contact Wunderland. Sol had not been in contact either, so far as any human knew. Hard to do, through the plasma plume and the forward bow shock.

We Wunderlanders had been left on our own by our so-wise Solar brethren. This slowboat was in the same predicament.

Bergen grew slowly enthusiastic as I told my stories. His wife simply stared at me. Maybe the isolation of the slowboat crew shift did not agree with her psyche. Svensdottir stared at me, too, but with a weighing gaze; she was clearly in command, the one to convince.

I told my hosts about the vessel some distance out from Feynman that had carried me here. I explained how it would retrofit Feynman with a gravitic polarizer drive, allowing the slowboat to make it the rest of the way to Sol in a matter of weeks.

Bergen stroked his chin thoughtfully. “So we would need to deactivate the ramscoop fields, yes?”

I nodded agreement. “The tender vessel is large. I don’t think that it could work its way through the fluxlines, even with the protective field from the gravitic polarizers.”

“This would take time,” Svensdottir said. “We must avoid instability of the field as it is being shut down. The fusion drive is most delicately balanced.” She stood. “I will go below and begin programming the shutdown mode.”

I blinked. I had anticipated some more doubt, maybe even opposition, debate. But then, they were desperate in here. The long years had worn them. Then I knocked on their door, bringing safety freedom, hope.

I swallowed what I was feeling. Concentrated on images of innocent faces, a woman’s severed hand.

After the old gray woman left I looked over at Bergen. “She seems a bit hard edged.”

“That is true. But she has kept Feynman going, all this time.” He smiled a bit, against his innate Herrenmann sobriety.

“You mean she’s been on duty the entire trip?”

He nodded. “From the time we boosted away from Wunderland, just ahead of the kzin. She took one look at the destruction of the Serpent Swarmer fleet behind her, and refused coldsleep.” Bergen looked pensive. “Since the lifesystems on board don’t work terribly well, we take frequent shifts. But the old woman… well, she has stayed on shift for nearly forty years.”

“Odd,” I replied.

“Space is deep, Herr Höchte. We are the same age, she and I,” Bergen said. “I slept most of the time.”

“Could you have not talked her into shifts? After all, spending one’s life this way…” I pursed my lips, gestured around me at the slowboat.

He shrugged. “She insists.”

Typical Herrenmannen behavior.

I nodded. “A formidable woman. You have all been brave. Earth will hail you.” Might as well hand out the compliments. It relaxed people. Madchen Franke smiled, clearly a rare expression for her.

I shrugged. “Well, while your estimable leader is looking over the fusion drive shutdown parameters, we have one more order of business.” I reached into my carryall and very casually removed a stylus. I wanted to take care of this as quickly as possible, just in case there were further complications. I did not want anyone doing anything to ship systems without my supervision. Too much risk.

Careful to breathe through my nose I twisted at the cylinder I was holding. An invisible, inaudible puff—complete surprise. An incipient shock on Bergen’s face glazed to a sleeping mask. The welding laser thumped uselessly on the floor below Franke’s nerveless fingers. Her expression was little different, awake or asleep.

Quick and neat.

Invisible nose filters no longer needed—the gas degraded to harmlessness in less than thirty seconds—I heaved a great gasp of the ship’s pungent air. Pocketing the stylus, I carefully laid them out flat on the control room floor. Then I reached for the welding laser. Time to do a little hunting.

“I knew it.” Suddenly I realized that I had half expected the voice from the hatchway—but why? I turned around to face the fragile old woman. The laser would not be necessary. Svensdottir, unarmed, ignored me completely. She was looking at the bodies of Bergen and Franke.

I said nothing. She ignored it.

Her eyes finally raised to mine. “Are they alive?”

“Yes,” I told her calmly. Soothing. “A simple nerve gas. It will wear off in a few hours.”

“You are working for the kzin.” Not a question.

I nodded again, removing the nose filters and stuffing them into a pocket. I didn’t want to insult her or myself by explaining my actions. How could she possibly understand?

“I suppose that you will put me down now, like some kind of inconvenient pet.” I could see the harsh lines deepen around Svensdottir’s mouth in the control-room light. Disapproval carved those features, like a great-aunt surveying some broken dishes left by a clumsy toddler on an unwanted visit.

“Hardly,” I told her. “My… employers… will need you left alive, as guides and teachers.”

Her eyes narrowed, then widened. She seemed to instantly grasp the Trojan Cat gambit. “Never.”

“That is what I said,” I said softly, almost kindly. “Now look at me.”

“Well, what is next, traitor?” I couldn’t look at her eyes. Didn’t want to see the accusation peering from that old face.

I paused, wet my lips. The words were difficult. “There is something you can do for me.”

The old woman said nothing, stony-faced. I could see that she was a hard woman, had always been a hard woman. She fairly vibrated with her hatred at my betrayal.

“Tante,” I said softly.

She looked up at me sharply, face gone rigid. Her pale eyes stared into mine, studying, studying. Her wrinkles seemed etched deep by pain and loss. I knew how she felt. She raised a wisp of an eyebrow, her Herrenmann ears long and incongruous on her thin face. “You shouldn’t call me your auntie,” the old woman said at last, her tone almost gentle. “You are a traitor.”

“Did you know Helga Schleisser?” I finally asked, ignoring her insult.

Another long silence, then she sighed. “Ja. She was a proud woman; perhaps too proud.” Dry crackling precision. “She had her duty and honor to carry out. It was a heavy burden for her to bear.” Svensdottir considered it for a moment. “Perhaps too heavy.”

I snorted in derision.

The old woman poked me hard with a gnarled, fearless finger. “Do not make light of honor and duty nor their weight, Herr Höchte. They are qualities that set us apart from the beasts.” A frown deepened her wrinkles. “Yet too much attention to those qualities makes us little different than the ratcat teufels, is it not so?”

I nodded. I couldn’t stand much more of this. The stylus was a burning weight in my pocket. I suddenly remembered Sharna’s bell-like laugh in the welcoming darkness of our compartment.

“What happened to Helga Schleisser?” I persisted.

“I’ll show you,” the old woman replied, and motioned me toward the corridor. I let Svensdottir lead the way. She was unarmed. My micrograv reflexes were better than hers. I had nothing to fear.

The curving corridor finally led to a sealed hatch, which the old woman unlocked with an identikey from around her neck. The hatch sighed and slid aside, releasing foggy, bitterly cold air into the corridor. I shivered. A chilly brush of the liquid nitrogen at 77 degrees Absolute. A touch of the grave—though a temporary one. Dim lights flickered on inside the ceramic chamber.

I followed her into a connected series of cargo holds, filled from floor to ceiling with row after row of identical cryosuspension bunks. Svensdottir seemed to know exactly where she was going as she passed the stacked ranks of coffinlike containers. Finally, she stood in front of one lower-tier coldsleep bunk, gestured. I could see the name illuminated by glowing lights on the case: HELGA YAKOBSON SCHLEISSER.

The coldsleep bunk was empty.

I looked back at Svensdottir in confusion. Just in time for the magneto wrench to catch me in the pit of my stomach.

I drifted to my knees in the low gravity gasping, grabbed for her legs—and she clubbed me again, behind the ear this time. Sharp pain. Contracting vision.

“I couldn’t do it, my son,” she told me sadly. When I could open my eyes, bright lights swam before them. Somehow she had gotten a welding laser and was pointing it at me. Cool, stern. She had set all of this up. Set me up, smooth as water ice. “Uh, I—”

“I thought that it was wrong to sleep away the decades, to let others bear my burdens. I had lost Henry, you… everything. All I had left was keeping Feynman going, and reaching Sol. Just honor and duty.” She gestured at the stacks of coldsleep bunks. “These are all the experts we could find on the kzin, people who knew what little we had learned about fighting them. We even have some kzinti warship wreckage as cargo. Maybe the Earthers can do a better job at understanding the ratcat tech.”

I tried hard to catch my breath, my mind racing. “You knew it was me all along.” The laser did not waver.

My mother nodded. “The years have not been kind to me, watching the fusion fires of Feynman bum, and keeping the systems functioning. Useful work but it had its price. But you, Kenneth, have become the image of your father; how could I not know you?”

She stared at me for a long time. Her eyes were deep, unyielding. Yet I could remember them now from other, ancient days. An imperious weight on me.

I did nothing. What was there to say?

“We have a few coldsleep bunks open. I will put you into one, and deal with this trouble at Sol.” She gestured with the laser for me to get up. “The kzin can kill us, but they will not board us.” I believed her utterly.

“Don’t you want to know why?” I asked her.

She shook her head, bird-quick. “Not particularity. I had expected a possibility like this one. Just not a son of mine leading the betrayal. We can sort all of that out in six months or so. There is no time now. I have preparations to make, to deal with your masters.”

My mother paused for a beat, then continued. “The signal laser has been down since the kzin near-miss when Feynman left Wunderland. We don’t have the spare parts to fix it. So I cannot tell the status of Sol, Wunderland, or the kzin. I had to be careful. It was well I had prepared.”

I started to get to my feet, reaching out a hand for support.

“Easy now,” she warned, backing away from me.

“Without the signal laser, you couldn’t have stopped the kzin from boarding Feynman.” I was angry, suddenly. My sacrifice was not even needed. All of this, for nothing!

A cold smile. “Perhaps it would be worth trying for the kzin, but with the ramscoop fields and fusion drive, I think we could keep the ratcats at bay.” She gestured more insistently with the laser. “Get up.”

“You don’t understand,” I told her, standing upright. “I had no choice.”

The lines in her face deepened. I could see her flush beneath her fusion tan. She snorted, features sharpening in a sneer. “You were only following orders, I suppose?”

“Hardly.”

She gestured at me once more with the welding laser, toward one of the coldsleep chambers. Once inside, the autodoc routines would sedate me and start the chill-down cycle. I didn’t have long to think of something. Her right hand covering me with the laser, my mother’s left danced across the keypad. She stood out of the way as the readouts beeped musically.

The panel in front of me hissed as a series of lights blinked green across its diagnostic readout display. The coldsleep bunk access opened, like a sideways coffin lid. I paused.

“Mother. Please listen.” I met her icy gaze sideways. It was my last chance.

She said nothing, but neither did she shoot me. If I failed, Kraach-Captain would send his message back to Wunderland, and my family would die. An image of sharp white teeth, designed to shear through living flesh, came into my head unbidden.

“This means nothing to you, perhaps,” I found myself saying urgently. “The ratcats have my family. Your grandchildren. I had no choice.”

It was time. Bet a little, bet it all.

I leaped backward. The laser spat a high-energy pulse where I had been a moment before. Where it hit the coldsleep bunk electronics fried and sputtered. An alarm shrieked.

I swept the welding laser from my mother’s grasp. It pinwheeled across the chamber. I ducked with Belter reflexes, rolled, and came up with the gas stylus in my hand.

“Sorry,” I said, the words out of my mouth a surprise. My mother looked at me, shock and resignation tightening her face. She didn’t beg. I’ll give her that.

“Is it true?” she asked.

“What?”

“About your family?”

Her question surprised me. “Of course. Any other threat I could have answered with suicide.” I reached into my shipsuit pocket and pulled out the nose filters, pushed them in, breathed deeply—and the stylus hissed. The gas puff cloaked her face instantly.

She shook her head as if to clear it of cobwebs, and slowly slid to the deck. “Not your fault,” she muttered. “Never had the chance… to raise you as… a Herrenmann.” Her eyes flickered, closed. The lined mummy face smoothed with unconsciousness.

I recovered the welding laser and slung it over my shoulder. I picked her up and carried her to the control room. She was feather-light in the microgravity.

Around me the ship hummed on. Anybody home? It would be like her to hide backup crew member, or booby traps. I was angry, jittery with reaction.

I kept the laser ready but the corridors stayed empty. In the control room I put her on the floor with the other two and did some quick analysis with the shipboard computers. They were little different from the computers in the Swann; the kzin discouraged innovation.

INTERNAL INVENTORY: ACTIVE: IR. No other infrared radiators at 37 °C in Feynman. No movement other than small cleaning and maintenance autobots. Good. I’d had enough surprises for one watch.

Time to complete my job. I looked at the three bodies at my feet and breathed heavily. It had been a very near thing. I checked them over quickly again. Vital signs were all strong and steady, even my mother’s. Jacobi had not lied about the nerve gas. The three of them would be needed in good health by my ratcat masters, to explain the operation of Feynman.

I hated the way those thoughts sounded in my head. The deck thrummed under my feet. It was very quiet in the control room. Was this triumph? I thought of what my treachery had bought. I was different from Jacobi; I did what I had to for my wife and my children. My mother’s stem, weathered face accused me even while unconscious.

Jacobi was buying legs and a face. What had I bought? I was delivering my children’s children, and their children, into slavery to the kzin. But at least they would be alive. There comes a time, I realized, to do what is right. Not what is best, actually. Nor what one would prefer to do.

What is right.

I thought of slavery and defeat and my family. Of honor. Of empty platitudes about freedom versus the harsh reality of a frost-rimed severed hand in a cryobox. I thought of orange striped shapes flashing through a forest, pursuing human children.

My children.

It was time to send for Kraach-Captain and his Heroes, to turn Feynman into a Trojan Cat full of kzin hardware, soldiers, and weapons. To help that Trojan Cat prepare to break the back of the defense perimeter around Sol, to allow the next kzin fleet to destroy and conquer as they had at Wunderland. But at least I was not helping the aliens in exchange for a new pair of legs, no.

I was better than Jacobi… yet a tiny voice jibed in my head. Nicht wahr? How, exactly?

My body seemed on autopilot as I walked away from the sleeping bodies, down the main ring corridor. The holocube felt very heavy in my inner pocket as I walked back to the airlock and I re-entered the singleship. My fingers automatically went so far as to orient Victrix’s signal laser correctly. I could tightbeam the message directly.

My fingers paused. First, it would take me some time to unravel the shipboard instructions for shutting down the ramscoop fields and fusion drive.

In my mind’s eye, I could see the kzin armada breaking the back of Sol. Tightening their grip over all of human space like a clenching fist. I could see my great-great-grandchildren, close-mouthed slaves in some kzin household, wielding blowdriers and brushes on their indolent predator masters.

Just another slave race, eventually no better than a degenerate Jotok.

The image sickened me. I could imagine those future generations reviling my name in private, slaves whispering to other slaves in low voices while their masters slept. Tiny humans scurrying around huge kzin households, secretly cursing the names of the humans who had sold their birthright, their future. My descendants would not remember them. But I did. The hated names flowed easily over the tongue, echoing in my mind.

Arnold.

Quisling.

Chien.

Easterhouse.

Upton-Schleisser.

I turned away from the commset. Quickly, not thinking any more, I left my singleship. Back into Feynman. I walked to the three lying in a drugged stupor. I looked down at them, emotions warring within me.

My wife, my children: they would die if I failed, yes. All life’s sweetness, gone.

But they would at least know that I, husband and father—and most of all, human—finally believed in things larger than myself.

One human can make a difference, no matter what people like Jacobi said.

And perhaps it was not too late.

I made my decision. Swearing gently, I reached into my pouch for the antidote ampoules to the nerve gas. My fingers shook a little, but I ignored it. I stabbed my mother’s wrinkled neck with the drug and waited for her to wake up.

This was going to be hard. Owning up to who you are usually is.

My mother had been right, damn her stern soul. Once a Herrenmann, always a Herrenmann.

She coughed once, her eyes fluttering, and tried to sit up.

When she finally became coherent, I told her everything.

Chapter Four Punica Fides

Go out like a rocket, boy, not like a fizzled, wet match.

My mother had said that. It had a certain dark ring that appealed to me.

Once again I made the journey from the kzin troopship to Feynman, across the Deep between stars. This time, though, I did so in a small kzin fighter, not my tiny singleship Victrix. The ship interior was huge, orange-lit, built on a scale for kzin. The air was cold and dry, making my sinuses ache. I moved unobtrusively to one of the gunners’ stations, the straps at their tightest ludicrously loose on me. Jacobi was strapped in across from me. I refused to look at him.

The engines thrummed softly and I could hear Kraach-Captain and Alien-Technologist hissing and spitting from the control cockpit forward. The sour-spicy smell of anger filled the cabin. I tried to ignore the angry sounds. At least this gravitic polarizer didn’t give me a hammering headache.

Victrix had been left just outside the kzin vessel, under heavy guard. I had told the kzinti by tightbeam that the fusion point generators were different than those used in the Swarm, and that I was bringing a sample for their Alien-Technologists to study.

Which was true, in a manner of speaking.

At the same time, I told Kraach-Captain that I could not torture information out of the humans onboard Feynman. Nor could I determine how to shut the system down myself. I needed expert help. I suspected sabotage, and booby traps, as well.

Jacobi didn’t trust me, but Kraach-Captain saw me as a reliable beast-slave. The kzin thought that he understood the nature of the leash around my neck. Still, he had brought Jacobi along to keep an eye on me.

Up front, Kraach-Captain and Alien-Technologist sat huddled over their thinscreens. They snarled arguments about the ramscoop fields and our route through the tangled web of force. Kzin do not care for close quarters, and the differential in rank made Kraach-Captain temper quite short. It was his place of honor as Conquest Hero, though, to board and deactivate Feynman in person. I believed that he would have insisted on this, even if I had reported it possible to shut down the slowboat by myself.

None of this would work without the kzin worship of the Warrior Heart. Gamble after gamble after gamble, but the only game in town…

Jacobi and I could see little from where we were packed next to one another in the back of the ratcat fighter. He smelled sour with fear, sweaty. What had broken in the kzin fighter to turn him into what he had become? I ignored him as best I could, and looked at the dots-and-comma script of the kzin language on various pieces of ratcat tech in my field of vision.

“Kenneth,” he whispered to me quietly.

I didn’t look at him. Instead I continued to scan the interior of the spacecraft, lit in garish orange. I doubted that any humans had seen as much of kzinti spacecraft as the two of us had over the last few months.

I for one didn’t understand much of what we had seen. Kraach-Captain had kept us in a largish cabin during the trip out to Feynman, with our own supplies and autodoc.

The occasional trip outside the cabin looked like the kzin fighter ship around us: cavernous spaces, orange lit. Oddly shaped devices, flickering thinscreens. Could that kind of information ever be of use? I shook my head, trying to make sense of the alien spaces around me. I was a singleship pilot and part-time smuggler, not a genius.

Jacobi’s voice was an insistent whisper, like a pesky insect. “Did you find your mother, boy?”

Now I turned and looked at him “Yeah,” I grated. Stay in character. “I did what I must. I do not thank you for it.”

Jacobi nodded. “In the coming years, Kenneth,” he replied, “you will come to see that I had your best interests at heart.” Jacobi started to reach out to me, perhaps to pat my arm.

My expression stopped him cold, as I studied his ruined face, and smiled like a kzin. “I give you respect of sorts, Jacobi, even as a traitor. Because of the scars you earned fighting the kzin. But don’t push me.”

Outrage glinted in his eyes. “And what are you? A saint?”

“I am nothing like you, Jacobi. Nothing. Now seal it and lock it down, before I see how long it would take Kraach-Captain to get back here and pull my hands from around your miserable throat.”

He fell silent.

The rest of the trip was quiet, except for more unintelligible snarling arguments in the Hero’s Tongue from the command cockpit. From Jacobi I could have found out what Kraach-Captain and Alien-Technologist were saying, but I think that I understood the gist. Irritation seems quite universal among sentient beings.

I had left the outer airlock open when I had departed Feynman in Victrix. That way the kzin crew tunnel mechanism could adapt and seal the two vessels together. We were instructed to leave our helmets open and to come along. The old kzin was clearly impatient, ready to get started on the real job.

Kraach-Captain paused for a moment before we left the kzin airlock. He bent nearly double and put his face near mine, rasped, “Think of your cubs and your mate. Their fate is in your hands.”

“I know that, Kraach-Captain.” I studiously looked to one side of his huge eyes.

He coughed and spat in reply, then he and Alien-Technologist herded us into Feynman. Alien-Technologist had a complicated device clipped to his forearm. It beeped at intervals.

I felt a heavy weight on my shoulder. A four-fingered black hand squeezed like a vise. “Lead us to the control lair,” Kraach-Captain rumbled. I walked them along the main ring corridor. The kzinti had to stoop. I thought that I heard Alien-Technologist hiss-spit something at Kraach-Captain, who coughed kzin laughter in reply. Perhaps a joke about the edibility of the passengers in cryosuspension.

I lead them into the cramped control room, feeling the tension build. I pointed to the sleeping bodies on the floor. Careful, careful…

“Your sources of information, Kraach-Captain,” I said. “They altered the ship systems such that I cannot turn off the ramscoop.”

Kraach-Captain sniffed through his open faceplate, looking around the control room. “We will deal with them in a moment,” he rasped. “Show us these ship systems.”

I smoothly called up the various subroutines on the main viewscreen. Jacobi was leaning over my shoulder to see better. First, the safety interlocks. Since the fusion drive used interstellar matter swept up by ramscoop fields, shutting the fields down was a delicate matter. I showed them encrypted block after encrypted block at every step of the shutdown commands. The kzinti rumbled and hissed their impatience. Claws tapped at keypads as they called up diagnostic subroutines far more quickly than I had expected.

I snuck a glance at the chronometer above the central console. It was almost time.

Kraach-Captain turned to me. “Prepare one of these for interrogation.” A claw flicked at the three sleeping bodies.

I carefully lifted the body of my mother, and moved to put her in a chair.

“No,” thundered Kraach-Captain. “That one would be too fragile.” He hissed and spat at Alien-Technologist, who yowled in reply.

Jacobi looked thoughtful. “Dominant One, may I speak?”

A careless wave of unsheathed claws.

“It could be,” Jacobi continued, “that an older human would be a better choice. Heroes have… ah, a tendency to overestimate human tolerances. The writhings of a young male might be misinterpreted as defiance.” He carefully looked away.

“Hrrrr,” mused Kraach-Captain. “You could well be right, cull. Prepare her.”

I moved to tie my mother down in the chair.

There was a sudden broad-band squeal across all commlink frequencies. The two aliens shrieked in pain and surprise at the sound. It was loudest from the huge wristband on Alien-Technologist. Kraach-Captain looked at the main viewscreen in time to see a multicolored bloom of ionized gas fluorescing where his vessel waited.

The kzin stared at the screen, not breathing. The cloud of gas glowed, changing from blue to yellow to reddish as it cooled and expanded. Behind their backs, quick as an eyeblink, my mother shot from the chair into the corridor, bounding in the low gravity.

Kraach-Captain’s impressive ears drooped suddenly, then folded tightly into knots. The orange ruff visible around his helmet seal puffed out in rage. “Death Cry,” he growled past thin black lips.

The old kzin turned and looked at me, smiling like a… like a kzin. “What have you done?”

I looked him back in the eye, carefully moving to one side. “The fusion-point generator I brought back in Victrix was sabotaged. It just fried the inside of your troopship, Kraach-Captain.”

Alien-Technologist started to snarl something, but Kraach-Captain slashed a gesture for quiet. His claws unsheathed, he gathered himself to leap. Nervously I prepared myself as best I could to dodge the elderly kzin’s attack.

From behind the huge alien, Klaus Bergen suddenly leaped up like a child’s toy from his false sleep in the microgravity. He thrust a sharpened power conduit into Kraach-Captain’s massive back. The kzin spread his huge arms in an enormous embrace, his scream going up and up in frequency—

— into silence. He hung limply in midair as his pelt began to smoke.

Madchen Franke shoved an electrode into Alien Technologist. She was quick, but the kzin caught her with one spasming swipe, tearing her arm off. As she slammed into a bulkhead, blood spurting from a fleshy gaping socket, Alien-Technologist roared and collapsed in convulsions.

Bergen’s face was a mask of grief, but he never eased his grip on the electrode lodged in Kraach-Captain’s back.

My mother peered into the control room, a laser aimed and ready. She looked around quickly, tossed me the laser.

Quickly, she grabbed the electrode piercing Alien-Technologist, standing above the concussed woman lying on the deck.

Jacobi looked wildly from side to side at the twitching kzinti. At two crew carefully holding the electrodes steady. His eyes jerked toward me.

“You,” he exclaimed.

“Me,” I replied, puffing down the laser.

Then I broke his neck with my own hands. I felt nothing.

We had Trojan Horsed the Trojan Cat. Or perhaps Trojan Monkeyed the Trojan Cat.

My mother stood over us with the welding laser while Bergen and I quickly but very carefully bound the two unconscious kzin. Franke had lost consciousness immediately. We could leave her for a few minutes without risking significant further damage. If there was one thing the crew of Feynman knew, it was cryosuspension.

I entered the kzin fighter ship in search of medical supplies. I was careful not to touch anything. This fighter was a very important prize now. There could be booby traps anywhere. Strange devices, complicated controls. I couldn’t make sense of it. Perhaps wiser heads than mine could.

“Well done, my son,” I heard my mother say to me as I sealed the kzin ship behind me. “I am proud.”

I smiled tightly, but shook my head a little. I did what I had to do. Still, I would never know the price I paid, nor what I had bought.

But at least it felt right.

Later, I stood in the tiny control room of the Feynman. Stars filled the screen, a riot of gaudy pinpoints against velvet blackness. With some thought and careful orientation, I was able to pick out Sol. The sight still didn’t warm me, nor make me feel victorious.

I heard a voice behind me. “Son?”

“Yes, mother?” I replied, not needing to turn around.

“It’s time.” Her voice was old, yes, but it still crackled and burned with a trace of Herrenmann command.

I felt the familiar argument rise in my throat. “I don’t see why we can’t at least try to understand the ratcat drive. If we succeed, we would…”

“If, if, if,” she interrupted softly. “You know perfectly well that the kzin booby trap their devices to keep them out of slave-race hands. And we dare not risk either of our captives to explain the failsafes here and now.”

She was right, irritatingly right, Both Kraach-Captain and Alien-Technologist would be invaluable to unlocking the secrets of kzin technology when we reached Sol. But the aliens were far too large and strong to keep conscious. That was an unacceptable risk in a small lifebubble. Life support was already beginning to breakdown on Feynman. It stank. We had rigged two coldsleep chambers for our alien captives and iced them down for the trip.

But only after we had carefully deep-suspended Madchen Franke. She would reawaken on Earth intact and healed.

Kraach-Captain had never really wakened before we chilled him down. His kzin physiology had put his body into hibernation state without the biochemical tricks we humans needed for suspension. I never had the chance to explain to the alien ratcat about human honor.

Or human vengeance.

My mother and I watched the stars together for a time in silence.

I said nothing. Why should victory taste of ashes?

Finally she spoke. “Remember this, my son. Had you succeeded in the original plan, you would have saved their lives, true. But as slaves.” She gestured Solward. “Perhaps, with our new cargo, we have a chance at leveling the playing field with the kzin. We can start to erase their technological advantage, to drive them back.” She was right. An intact kzin fighter and crew was a prize indeed. But still…

I felt my mouth form a tense line across my face. “It isn’t enough. Sharna and the children—they need to know that I did not betray them.”

“They cannot—and must not—know. The kzin must think that their Trojan Horse expedition failed utterly.” I heard an ironic smile in her voice. “But think, Kenneth: you judged me yourself, did you not? A coward and a traitor, I believe. Both of us did what we did. What we had to do.”

Would Sharna have faith in me? Would my children see me as pawn to the kzin, or as a hero? Would they ever know how I really felt, what I had done?

Deal with it. My mother’s words echoed in my head. This was honor, the thin reassurance that I had done the right thing? It could not compare to seeing my wife and children again. To telling them in person.

I felt a tugging at my arm, and looked down to see a gnarled, blue-veined hand at my elbow. I could see how the long years of exposure to the ramscoop fusion drive had aged her, burning away everything but her devotion to a cause. And I knew how empty victory could make you feel.

“It is time for you to take the coldsleep,” she said simply. “You will awaken at Sol, a hero. Perhaps you can convince the Earthers to let you return to Wunderland, to battle for what you believe.” There was a sly smile playing about her aged face.

Even smiling, the face seemed stern. A mirror to my own, as I had recently discovered. How had I not seen it? I had been blinded by my own knotty conflicts.

“No,” I told her. “I’ll stay awake—with you.”

A slight squeeze on my arm. “Kenneth, Bergen knows Feynman far better than you.”

“There is nothing Bergen knows that I cannot learn.”

She smiled wanly. “No, there is nothing you cannot learn. But still, you must sleep.”

“You deserve to sleep, then.”

“As for me, I am too old to take the rigors of coldsleep, except for deep suspension.” She chuckled a bit. “But do not worry, Kenneth. Klaus and I, we make quite the team.”

I couldn’t find the words in my Herrenmann mouth to express how I felt. I nodded agreement.

“It is all right,” she soothed, standing up a bit straighter. “I may be feeble, but never confuse that with weakness. Do not forget that I am Herrenmann, as are you.” A chuckle in the dim control room. “I will be there to waken you at Sol, my son, as I used to do when you were a child. I never expected to have that honor again.”

Finally I simply nodded. I had no words.

I started to adjust the viewscreen, to get a last glimpse of Alpha Centauri before leaving the control room. To see the faint glimmer of light that four years ago had shone on my wife and children, Principle willing. But even as I began to touch the keypads, my mother’s hands gently turned me around. She peered intently into my face.

“Never backward, Kenneth.” Her voice was old, yes, but very strong. “Always look forward. That is what every Herrenmann must do.”

That is what Herrenmannen do. I nodded tightly. The future had to be focus, for now.

We walked together away from the warm lights of the control room. Toward the coldsleep chambers. I thought of the sunny seas of Earth, the salty waters, and tried to ignore the images flitting behind my eyes, images of small pale shadows fleeing hopelessly through leafy glades.