"I have a variable-sword," said Speaker-To-Animals. "I urge calm."
It took a moment for the words to register. Then Louis turned, slowly, making no sudden gestures.
The kzin stood against a curved wall. In one clawed fist he held something like an oversized jumprope handle. Ten feet from the handle, held expertly at the level of the kzin's eyes, was a small, glowing red ball. The wire which joined ball to handle was too thin to be visible, but Louis didn't doubt it was there. Protected and made rigid by a Slaver stasis field, the wire would cut through most metals, including — if Louis should choose to hide behind it — the back of Louis's crash couch. And the kzin had chosen a position such that he could strike anywhere in the cabin.
At the kzin's feet Louis saw the unidentified haunch of alien meat. It had been ripped open, and, of course, it had been hollow.
"I would have preferred a more merciful weapon," said Speaker-To-Animals. "A stunner would have been ideal. I could not procure one in time. Louis, take your hands off the controls and put them on the back of your couch."
Louis did. He had thought of playing with the cabin gravity; but the kzin would have cut him in two if he'd tried it.
"Now, if you will all remain calm, I will tell you what will happen next."
"Tell us why," Louis suggested. He was estimating chances. The red bulb was an indicator to tell Speaker where his invisibly thin wire blade ended. But if Louis could grab that end of the blade, and keep from losing his fingers in the process — No. The bulb was too small.
"My motive should be obvious," said Speaker. The black markings around his eyes had taken on the look of a bandit's mask in a cartoon. The kzin was neither tense nor relaxed. And he stood where he was almost impossible to attack.
"I intend to give my world control of the Long Shot. With the Long Shot as a model we will build more such ships. Such ships would give us a killing superiority in the next Man-Kzin war, provided that men do not also have designs for Long Shot. Satisfactory?"
Louis made his voice sarcastic. "You couldn't be afraid of where we're going."
"No." The insult slid right past him. How would a kzin recognize sarcasm? "You will all disrobe now, so that I may know that you are unarmed. When you have done so I will request the puppeteer to don his pressure suit. We two will board the Long Shot. Louis and Teela will stay behind, but I will take your clothing and your luggage and your pressure suits. I will disable this ship. Doubtless the Outsiders, curious as to why you have not returned to Earth, will come to help you long before your lifesystem fails. Do you all understand?"
Louis Wu, relaxed and ready to take advantage of any slip the kzin might make … Louis Wu glanced at Teela Brown from the corner of his eye and saw a horrible thing. Teela was bracing herself to jump the kzin.
Speaker would cut her in two.
Loins would have to move first.
"Don't be foolish, Louis. Stand up slowly and move against the wall. You shall be the first toooo …"
Speaker let the word trail off in a kind of croon.
Louis halted his leap, caught by a thing he didn't understand.
Speaker-To-Animals threw back his big orange head and mewed: an almost supersonic squeal. He threw his arms wide, as if to embrace the universe. The wire blade of his variable-sword cut through a water tank without slowing noticeably; water began dripping out on all four sides of the tank. Speaker didn't notice. His eyes didn't see, his ears didn't hear.
"Take his weapon," said Nessus.
Louis moved. He approached cautiously, ready to duck if the variable-sword should move his way. The kzin was waving it gently, like a baton. Louis took the handle from the kzin's unresisting fist. He touched the proper stud, and the red ball retracted until it touched the handle.
"Keep it," said Nessus. He clamped his jaws on Speaker's arm and led the kzin to a crash couch. The kzin made no resistance. He was no longer making sounds; he stared into infinity, and his great furry face showed only a vast calm.
"What happened? What did you do?"
Speaker-To-Animals, totally relaxed, stared at infinity and purred.
"Watch," said Nessus. He moved carefully back from the kzin's crash couch. He held his fiat heads high and rigid, not so much pointed as aimed, and at no time did his eyes leave the kzin.
The kzin's eyes focused suddenly. They flicked from Louis, to Teela, to Nessus. Speaker-To-Animals made plaintive snarling sounds, sat upright, and switched to Interworld.
"That was very, very nice. I wish -"
He stopped, started over. "Whatever you did," he told the puppeteer, "do not do it again."
"I judged you to be a sophisticate," said Nessus. "My judgment was accurate. Only a sophisticate would fear a tasp."
Teela said, "Ah."
Louis said, "Tasp?"
The puppeteer addressed himself to Speaker-To-Animals. "You understand that I will use the tasp every time you force me to. I will use it if you make me uneasy. If you attempt violence too often, or if you startle me too often, you will soon become dependent on the tasp. Since the tasp is a surgically implanted part of me, you would have to kill me to possess it. And you would still be ignobly bound by the tasp itself."
"Very astute," said Speaker. "Brilliantly unorthodox tactics. I will trouble you no more."
"Tanj! Will somebody tell me what a tasp is?"
Louis's igriorance seemed to surprise everybody. It was Teela who answered. "It jolts the pleasure center of the brain."
"From a distance?" Louis hadn't known that that was even theoretically possible.
"Sure. It does for you just what a touch of current does for a wirehead; but you don't need to drop a wire into your brain. Usually a tasp is just small enough to aim with one hand."
"Have you ever been hit by a tasp? None of my business, of course."
Teela grinned derision for his delicacy. "Yes. I know what it feels like. A moment of — well, theres no describing it. But you don't use a tasp on yourself. You use it on someone who isn't expecting it. That's where the fun comes in. Police are always picking up taspers in the parks."
"Your tasps," said Nessus, "induce less than a second of current. Mine induces approximately ten seconds."
The effect on Speaker-To-Animals must have been formidable. But Louis saw other implications. "Oh, wow. That's beautiful. That's lovely! Who but a puppeteer would go around with a weapon that does good to the eneray?"
"Who but a prideful sophisticate would fear too much pleasure? The puppeter is quite right," said Speaker-To-Animals. "I would not risk the tasp again. Too many jolts from the puppeteer's tasp would leave me his willing slave. I, a kzin, slaved to an herbivore!"
"Let us board the Long Shot," Nessus said grandly. "We have wasted enough time on trivialities."
Louis was first aboard the Long Shot.
He was not surprised to find his feet trying to dance on Nereid's rock surface. Louis knew how to move in low gravity. But his hindbrain stupidly expected gravity to change as he entered the Long Shoes airlock. Braced for the change, he stumbled and almost fell when it didn't come.
"I know they had induced gravity then," he grumbled as he moved into the cabin. "… Oh."
The cabin was primitive. There were hard right angles everywhere, suitable for bumping knees and elbows. Everything was bulkier than necessary. Dials were badly placed …