Kzinti did not use their gravity polarizers to maintain a constant, comfortable weight within spacecraft unless accelerations got too high even for them to tolerate. The boat left with a roar of power. Humans sagged in their seats. Tregennis whitened. The thin flesh seemed to pull back over the bones of his face, the beaky nose stood out like a crag and blood trickled from it. “Hey, easy, boy,” Ryan gasped. “Do you want to lose this man… already?”
Markham spoke to Hraou-Captain, who made a contemptuous noise but then yowled at the pilot. Weightlessness came as an abrupt benediction. For a minute silence prevailed, except for the heavy breathing of the Wunderlander and the Hawaiian, the rattling in and out of the old Plateaunian's.
Harnessed beside Tregennis, Ryan examined him as well as he could before muttering, “I guess he'll be all right in a while, if that snotbrain will take a little care.” Raising his eyes, he looked past the other, out the port. “What's that?”
Close by, a kilometer or two, a small spacecraft the size and lines indicated a ground-to-orbit shuttle was docked at a framework which had been assembled around a curiously spheroidal dark mass, a couple of hundred meters in diameter. The framework secured and supported machinery which was carrying out operations under the direction of suited kzinti who flitted about with drive units on their backs. Stars peered through the lattice. In the distance passed a glimpse of Rover, moon-bound, and the warship. The boat glided by. A new approach curve computed, the pilot applied thrust, this time about a single g's worth. Hraou-Captain registered impatience at the added waiting aboard. Markham did not venture to address him again. It must have taken courage to do so at all, when he wasn't supposed to defile the language with his mouth.
Instead the Wunderlander said to Ryan, on a note of awe, “That is doubtless one of their iron sources. Recently arrived, I would guess, and cooled down enough for work to commence on it. From what I have heard, a body that size will quickly be reduced.”
Ryan stared at him, forgetting hostility in surprise. “Iron? I thought there was hardly any in this system. What it has ought to be at the center of the planets. Don't the kzinti import their metals for construction?”
Markham shook his head. “No, that would be quite impractical. They have few hyperdrive ships as yet — I told you Vengeful Slasher alone is so outfitted here, at present. Once the transports had brought personnel and the basic equipment, they went back for duty closer to home. Currently a warship calls about twice a year to bring fresh workers and needful items. It relieves the one on guard, which carries back kzinti being rotated. A reason for choosing this sun was precisely that humans won't suspect anything important can ever be done at it.” He hesitated. “Except pure science. The kzinti did overlook that.”
“Well, where do they get their metals? Oh, the lightest ones, aluminum, uh, beryllium, magnesium,… manganese? — I suppose those exist in ordinary ores. But I don't imagine those ores are anything but scarce and low-grade. And iron—”
“The asteroid belt. The planet that came too close to the sun. Disruption exposed its core. The metal content is low compared to what it would be in a later-generation world, but when you have a whole planet, you get an abundance. They have had to bring in certain elements from outside, nickel, cobalt, copper, etcetera, but mostly to make alloys. Small quantities suffice.”
Tregennis had evidently not fainted. His eyelids fluttered open. “Hold,” he whispered. “Those asteroids… orbit within… less than half a million kilometers… of the sun surface.” He panted feebly before adding, “It may be a… very late type M… but nevertheless, the effective temperature—” His voice trailed off.
The awe returned to Markham's. “They have built a special tug.”
“What sort?” Ryan asked.
“In principle, like the kind we know. Having found a desirable body, it lays hold with a grapnel field. I think this vessel uses a gravity polarizer system rather than electromagnetics. The kzinti originated that technology, remember. The tug draws the object into the desired orbit and releases it to go to its destination. The tug is immensely powerful. It can handle not simply large rocks like what you saw, but whole asteroids of reasonable size. As they near Secunda tangential paths, of course — it works them into planetary orbit. That's why local space is too crowded for the kzinti to leave Rover in it unmanned. Besides ferrous masses on hand, two or three new ones are usually en route, and not all the tailings of worked out old ones get swept away.”
“But the heat near the sun,” Ryan objected. “The crew would roast alive. I don't see how they can trust robotics alone. If nothing else, let the circuits get too hot and—”
“The tug has a live crew,” Markham said. “It's built double-hulled and mirror-bright, with plenty of radiating surfaces. But mainly it's ship size, not boat size, because it loads up with water ice before each mission. There is plenty of that around the big planets, you know, chilled well below minus a hundred degrees. Heated, melted, evaporated, vented, it maintains an endurable interior until it has been spent.”
“I thought we… found traces of water and OH… in a ring around the sun,” Tregennis breathed. “Could it actually be—”
“I don't know how much ice the project has consumed to date,” Markham said, “but you must agree it is grandly conceived. That is a crew of heroes. They suffer, they dare death each time, but their will prevails.”
Ryan rubbed his chin. “I suppose otherwise the only spacecraft are shuttles. And the warcraft and her boats.”
“They are building more.” Markham sounded proud. “And weapons and support machinery. This will be an industrial as well as a naval base.”
“For the next war—” Tregennis seemed close to tears. Ryan patted his hand. Silence took over.
The boat entered atmosphere, which whined as she decelerated around the globe. A dawn storm, grit and ice, obscured the base, but the humans made out that it was in the great crater, presumably because the moonfall had brought down valuable ores and caused more to spurt up from beneath. Interconnected buildings made a web across several kilometers, with a black central spider. Doubtless much lay underground. An enterprise like this was large-scale or it was worthless. True, it had to start small, precariously — the first camp, the assembling of life support systems and food production facilities and a hospital for victims of disasters such as were inevitable when you drove hard ahead with your work on a strange world — but demonic energy had joined the exponential-increase powers of automated machines to bring forth this city of warriors.
No, Ryan thought, a city of workers in the service of future warriors. Thus far few professional fighters would be present except the crew of Vengeful Slasher. They weren't needed… yet. The warship was on hand against unlikely contingencies. Well, in this case kzin paranoia had paid off. The pilot made an instrument landing into a cradle. Ryan spied more such units, three of them holding shuttles. The field on which they stood, though paved, must often be treacherous because of drifted dust. Secunda had no unfrozen water to cleanse its air; and the air was a chill wisp. Most of the universe is barren. Hawaii seemed infinitely far away. A gang tube snaked from a ziggurat-like terminal building. Airlocks linked. An armed kzin entered and saluted. Hraou-Captain gestured at the humans and snarled an imperative before he went out.
Markham unharnessed. “I am to follow him,” he said. “You go with this guard. Quarters are prepared. Behave yourselves and… I will do my best for you.”
Ryan rose. Two-thirds Earth weight felt good. He collected his and Tregennis' bags in his right hand and gave the astronomer his left arm for support. Kzinti throughout a cavernous main room stared as the captives appeared. They didn't goggle like humans, they watched like cats. Several naked tails switched to and fro. An effort had been made to brighten the surroundings, a huge mural of some hero in hand-to-hand combat with a monster; the blood jetted glaring bright.