Weaponsmaster fell. Nyawk-Captain, moving toward him, caught his crewmate and lowered his body gently to the ground. Nyawk-Captain pawed at his belt for the field medical kit and began breaking ampoules of pain-reliever.
“Do not bother,” Weaponsmaster grunted. “My head is cracked and my life is at an end.”
“Did you fail? I found your armor. How did-?”
“One of the humans confronted me. He actually challenged me. It would have been dishonorable-to meet a naked combatant in armor. So I shed mine.
He fought well.”
Nyawk-Captain heard this explanation but hardly believed it. The sons of Hanuman were known to fight by deceit and trickery, not by challenge in an honorable contest. And they did not kill adult kzinti in naked combat. This was most odd!
“Did you kill him?” Nyawk-Captain asked, feeling sure of the answer.
“I do not know… Not for certain. But too much blood covers my paws, I think, for him to live.”
“Was he alone?”
“I saw one only.”
“That is never proof that there aren’t others.”
“I know. I failed you… should have..
“Which way was it-were they-going?”
The word ended with a huge, jaw-cracking yawn. A gout of blood came up in Weaponsmaster’s throat, flowed over his tongue, and dripped between his teeth. The body went limp and, by reflex, the pink ears opened wide.
Nyawk-Captain smoothed them closed and lowered the great head to the ground.
Then the kzin considered his options. He bad time, barely, to locate the humans, recover the contents of the Thrintun box, and still make his rendezvous at Margrave. But he would accomplish all this, he decided, even if it violated his margin for error on the mission. This was no longer just a matter of the box and its treasures. It was now an affair of honor.
“How far are we from the ship, do you figure?” Jook asked.
Cuiller looked up at his companion in surprise. “You’re the navigator.”
“Astrogation only. I’m a wreck in two dimensions.”
“But I thought you were keeping track…”
The Wunderlander shook his head and looked down at his hands, massaging the bubble cast around his knee.
“Well, we were turning left all the time,” Cuiller reasoned, “so we have to be somewhere south of Callisto.”
“But how far?”
“Can’t be more than two or three kilometers. We haven’t traveled more than five or six altogether. And that wasn’t in any kind of straight line.”
“Are we lost?”
“Umm.” Cuiller sucked his lips. “Which direction do you think the sun is?”
“Straight up.”
“Then we’re lost,” the commander admitted. “But later on, when the sun moves west, we could work our way east and attempt to locate Sally and Daff.”
“In this jungle, we could pass within forty meters of them and never know it.”
“I guess it’s time to try the radio.” Cuiller raised the wrist unit, powered it up, and clicked the send key a couple of times.
“Captain?” from the speaker.
“Is that you, Sally?”
“Yeah. Where are you?”
“Somewhere south of the ship,” he said. “I think.”
“Me too. How are we going to link up?”
Cuiller thought for a moment. “One from each party should climb a tall tree, get above the forest canopy.”
“It’s just me now. Daff is dead… What happens after I climb up there?”
“Burn some leaves or something with a rifle pulse. I’ll do the same.”
“All right. I’ll be watching for you. Out.”
Cuiller climbed while Jook stayed below. Daff was dead? As commanding officer, Cuiller would have pressed Krater for the details-except their messages had to be brief, to keep the kzinti from taking a radio fix. Anyway, Cuiller could well guess what had happened. One of the kzinti had caught up with them, and the Jinxian would not have run from that fight. Instead, with his lifetime of training, Daff had probably welcomed and invited it. And he had sent Krater on ahead, with the Slaver stasis-box, to safety.
Daff Gambiel had been a good man. Sober, quiet, strong, patient-and loyal. He never seemed to have much to say, but Cuiller knew the Jinxian was always working out problems in his head, so he would have the answers ready when needed. Callisto’s crew was diminished by his loss, more than they knew… Cuiller could only hope Gambiel was finally at peace with his line.
When he at last broke through the top layer, Cuiller felt like a swimmer in a great, green ocean. The treetops swelled like rolling waves above the lower branches and netted vines. The lazy winds pushed them back and forth, like the conflicting chop around a point of land. He clung to his bole with one hand and held down the fine sprouts of greenery with the other. To look east and west, he had to climb around the tree.
He gave Krater ten minutes to settle into her treetop, then faced east, unslung his weapon, and took aim at the nearest clump of leaves. Cuiller fired a long burst, circling it around to get a good fire going. Soon a puff of white smoke rose out of the canopy and blew raggedly away on the breeze.
He divided his time between watching that and looking out for any fires Krater might have set.
Nothing. “Captain,” from the radio again, softly. “I think I see smoke-or haze-about half a klick away. Try again.”
He burned a fresh patch upwind of the first.
“Got you. Be there in a bit.” Then the radio went dead.
Cuiller climbed back down to Jook’s level.
In half an hour, they heard her winder motor, coming through the trees. At the end of a long swing, Krater burst through a fan of leaves and settled on the branch next to Jook. She was strangely encumbered.
“Daff didn’t make it?” the commander asked gently. She shook her head. “We were followed by a kzin, who climbed up into the canopy. Daff fought a delaying action-and bought me time to get away.”
“Dead?” Jook asked.
“If he were alive, I wouldn’t have left,” she said defiantly.
“Sorry. I meant the kzin.”
“Daff hurt him badly, knocked him out of the trees. But he was still moving.”
After a pause, Cuiller asked, “Where is the stasis-box?”
“This is it.” Krater lifted the dog out of its curled-up position, snuggled in the crook of her arm, and held it out with her fingers under its chest and around its forelegs. “Daff opened the box and found this-we call him Fellah-plus a flute-thing and some dried rations.”
“I asked where the box was.”
“Back along our path. It was empty, and we couldn’t carry everything.”
“Why did you open it in the first place?”
“Daff opened it. The kzinti were tracking on the stasis field.”
“Oh… right.” Cuiller put a hand to his chin.
Hugh Jook had taken the animal from Krater and was examining it while Cuiller absorbed her report. The commander watched his navigator move the animal’s legs, feel around its eyes, look into its ears.
“Remarkably mammalian structure,” Jook murmured.
“I noticed that,” Krater said.
The Wunderlander felt the animal’s hindquarters and lifted its tail.
“Do not… touch,” the creature said in a halting approximation of Interworld. The sounds were thick as they wrapped around its long, pink tongue.
Jook dropped the dog. It landed on its feet amid the vines and glared over its shoulder at the startled navigator.
The three humans looked down at the animal, dumbstruck.
“You… you can talk?” Krater asked.
“Yes. You-you can talk,” it replied-and waited expectantly.
Cuiller tried to decide if he was hearing a ventriloquist’s trick or just some kind of mimicry, a parrot’s mindless repetition. But then, he thought back, the dog’s first fragmented sentence hadn’t just repeated their own words. It had been wholly unprompted, arising out of nothing the humans were saying. And the words had fit the physical circum.. stances. So Cuiller had to accept that the “dog” was reacting to its environment, verbally, in Interworld.
“Of course, we can talk,” Sally Krater went on patiently. “I was asking about you.” And she pointed at the creature.
“You?” it asked. “Ah… ‘You’ means this-?” The animal swiveled its broad head around, including its own body in the gesture. “Fellah?”