Locklear grasped his right elbow as support for that aching collarbone. “I was surveying life-forms on purely academic study—in peacetime, so far as I knew,” he said. “The old patrol craft I leased didn’t have a weapon on it.”
“You lie,” the navigator hissed. “We saw them.”
“The Weasel was not my ship, Tzak-Navigator. Its commander brought me back under protest; said the Interworld Commission wanted noncombatants out of harm’s way—and here I am in its cloaca.”
“Then it was already well-known on that ship that we are at war. I feel better about killing it,” said the commander. “Now, as to the ludicrous cargo it was carrying: what is your title and importance?”
“I am scholar Carroll Locklear. I was probably the least important man on the Weasel—except to myself. Since I have nothing to hide, bring a telepath.”
“Now it gives orders,” snarled the navigator.
“Please,” Locklear said quickly.
“Better,” the commander said.
“It knows,” the navigator muttered. “That is why it issues such a challenge.”
“Perhaps,” the commander rumbled. To Locklear he said, “A skeleton crew of four rarely includes a telepath. That statement will either satisfy your challenge, or I can satisfy it in more conventional ways.” That grin again, feral, willing.
“I meant no challenge, Grraf-Commander. I only want to satisfy you of who I am, and who I’m not.”
“We know what you are,” said the navigator. “You are our prisoner, an important one, fleeing the Patriarchy rim in hopes that the monkeyship could get you to safety.” He reached again for Locklear’s shoulder.
“That is pure torture,” Locklear said, wincing, and saw the navigator stiffen as the furry orange arm dropped. If only he had recalled the kzinti disdain for torture earlier! “I am told you are an honorable race. May I be treated properly as a captive?”
“By all means,” the commander said, almost in a purr. “We eat captives.”
Locklear, slyly: “Even important ones?”
“If it pleases me,” the commander replied. “More likely you could turn your coat in the service of the Patriarchy. I say you could; I would not suggest such an obscenity. But that is probably the one chance your sort has for personal survival.”
“My sort?”
The commander looked Locklear up and down, at the slender body, lightly muscled with only the deep chest to suggest stamina. “One of the most vulnerable specimens of monkeydom I have ever seen,” he said. That was the moment when Locklear decided he was at war. “Vulnerable, and important, and captive. Eat me,” he said, wondering if that final phrase was as insulting in kzin as it was in Interworld. Evidently not… “Gunner! Apprentice Engineer,” the commander called suddenly, and Locklear heard two responses through the ship’s intercom. “Lock this monkey in a wiper’s quarters.” He turned to his navigator. “Perhaps Fleet Commander Skrull-Riit will want this one alive. We shall know in an eight-squared of duty watches.” With that, the huge kzin commander strode out.
After his second sleep, Locklear found himself roughly hustled forward in the low-polarity ship’s gravity of the Raptor by the nameless Apprentice Engineer. This smallest of the crew had been a kitten not long before and, at two-meter height, was still filling out. The transverse mustard-tinted band across his abdominal fur identified Apprentice Engineer down the full length of the hull passageway.
Locklear, his right arm in a sling of bandages, tried to remember all the mental notes he had made since being tossed into that cell. He kept his eyes downcast to avoid a challenging look—and because he did not want his cold fury to show. These orange furred monstrosities had killed a ship and crew with every semblance of pride in the act. They treated a civilian captive at best like playground bullies treat an urchin, and at worst like food. It was all very well to study animal behavior as a detached ethologist. It was something else when the toughest warriors in the galaxy attached you to their food chain.
He slouched because that was as far from a military posture as a man could get—and Locklear’s personal war could hardly be declared if he valued his own pelt. He would try to learn where hand weapons were kept, but would try to seem stupid. He would… he found the last vow impossible to keep with the Grraf-Commander’s first question.
Wheeling in his command chair on the Raptors bridge, the commander faced the captive. “If you piloted your own monkeyship, then you have some menial skills.” It was not a question; more like an accusation. “Can you learn to read meters if it will lengthen your pathetic life?”
Ah, there was a question! Locklear was on the point of lying, but it took a worried kzin to sing a worried song. If they needed him to read meters, he might learn much in a short time. Besides, they’d know bloody well if he lied on this matter. “I can try,” he said. “What’s the problem?”
“Tell him,” spat Grraf-Commander, spinning about again to the holo screen.
Tzak-Navigator made a gesture of agreement, standing beside Locklear and gazing toward the vast humped shoulders of the fourth kzin. This nameless one was of truly gigantic size. He turned, growling, and Locklear noted the nose scar that seemed very appropriate for a flash-tempered gunner. Tzak-Navigator met his gaze and paused, with the characteristic tremor of a kzin who prided himself on physical control. “Ship’s Gunner, you are relieved. Adequately done.” With the final phrase, Ship’s Gunner relaxed his ear umbrellas and stalked off with a barely creditable salute. Tzak-Navigator pointed to the vacated seat, and Locklear took it. “He has got us lost,” muttered the navigator.
“But you were the navigator,” Locklear said.
“Watch your tongue!”
“I’m just trying to understand crew duties, I asked what the problem was, and Grraf-Commander said to tell me.”
The tremor became more obvious, but Tzak-Navigator knew when he was boxed. “With a four kzin crew, our titles and our duties tend to vary. When I accept duties of executive officer and communications officer as well, another member may prove his mettle at some simple tasks of astrogation.”
“I would think Apprentice Engineer might be good at reading meters,” Locklear said carefully.
“He has enough of them to read in the engine room. Besides, Ship’s Gunner has superior time in grade; to pass him over would have been a deadly insult.”
“Um. And I don’t count?”
“Exactly. As a captive, you are a nonperson even if you have skills that a gunner might lack.”
“You said it was adequately done,” Locklear pointed out.
“For a gunner,” spat the navigator, and Locklear smiled. A kzin, too proud to lie, could still speak with mental reservations to an underling. The navigator went on: “We drew first blood with our chance sortie to the galactic West, but Ship’s Gunner must verify gravitational blips as we pass in hyperdrive.”
Locklear listened, and asked, and learned. What he learned initially was fast mental translation of octal numbers to decimaclass="underline" What he learned eventually was that, counting on the gunner to verify likely blips of known star masses, Grraf-Commander had finally realized that they were monumentally lost, light-years from their intended rendezvous on the rim of known space. And that rendezvous is on the way to the Eridani worlds, Locklear thought. He said, as if to himself but in kzin, “Out Eridani way, I hear they’re always on guard for you guys. You really expect to get out of this alive?”
“No,” said the navigator easily. “Your life may be extended a little, but you will die with heroes. Soon.”
“Sounds like a suicide run,” Locklear said.
“We are volunteers,” the navigator said with lofty arrogance, making no attempt to argue the point, and then continued his instructions. Presently, studying the screen, Locklear said, “That gunner has us forty parsecs from anyplace. Jump into normal space long enough for an astrogation fix and you’ve got it.”