Home itself was… strange. The icecaps were a lot bigger than the computer's maps showed, and the coastlines were all screwed up. Why would there be an ice age? The primary wasn't contracting, the way that, for instance, Sol was. In the putative tropics, the coastlines were thick with jungle showing no sign of habitation, but this cut off sharply—about where the old coastlines used to be, in fact. The interior was all but sterile—but well supplied with highways. There were circular lakes, ranging in size from big to absurd, sprinkled over the continents, and all of them had several big roads leading right up to their rims, connecting them to others. Some intersecting lake patterns had dozens of those leading away from them. What it looked like was, there had been a bunch of cities all over, and they'd exploded.
Maybe they'd tried to stop the plague with fusion blasts? But then why was there an ice age? All that soot would reduce the planet's albedo and melt the icecaps. Anyone who went to school on Pleasance knew all about light absorption.
Rot it. Peace deep-radared the crust, looking for refined metal she could land near.
Then, incredulous, she did it again.
There was no piece of refined metal larger than her fist within a quarter-mile of the surface. Whatever the research ships had landed with was gone, which was at least plausible if you assumed they'd taken off and died on the way back; but the residues of industry were absent too. There wasn't so much as a bearing from a groundcar down there, not even where city sites were under the ice. Outside the newly-exposed coastal areas there weren't even ore concentrations. Records said Home was supposed to be poor in ferrous ores, but they couldn't have built everything out of aluminum and brick, could they? And there was no refined aluminum, which meant either somebody had used it all for something, or there had been some amazingly corrosive rainfall here—like hydrofluoric acid, or a strong lye solution. Aluminum didn't break down by itself.
There were no satellites in orbit.
Nothing manmade on the moon, Indigo. (It wasn't. Who named these things?) No useful concentrations, either, which would have sidestepped the risks involved in landing on the planet.
Peace grumbled and set the surviving instruments to performing a spectroscopic assay. If nothing else, there would be mine tailings. The last visitors had been two or three centuries back; metal reclamation technology had been stimulated considerably by the three intervening Kzinti Wars. She told the computer to map incidence levels of the elements needed for Cockroach's repairs, then had a nap—after it nagged her into taking another meal she didn't want, of course.
When she got up, her first impression was that she'd instructed the computer wrong. She hadn't. According to the scan, the nine most essential elements—the Group VIII set—were distributed in three ways:
First, there was a light dusting of them, all over the planet—except in the lakes, where there were only traces.
Second, there were massive deposits in all river deltas—pre-glacial ones—and deep ocean trenches. Massive as in, kilotons.
Third, there were five concentrations, of all nine elements, in the immediate vicinity of the former location of Claytown, where the spaceport had been. This was on a former river delta, so Peace decided to set down there—after wondering briefly why anybody would put a spaceport next to an ocean, which could potentially wreck it in minutes. (She dismissed the question, on the grounds that people who would blow up cities would do anything at all.) The five spots there also held concentrations of niobium and chromium—where five large supplies of hullmetal had been chemically separated, then scattered.
She decided to be especially careful. The plague clearly did something to your brain.
In forty days of inactivity, morale aboard the Fury had plummeted. The crew slept a lot off duty. Some began grooming compulsively. Dueling had fallen off, and Power Officer had reported hearing one of his crewkzin apologize to another of equal rank. Gnyr-Captain didn't even have the comfort of nagging Manexpert, for he knew intuition was a hairless thing, curling up under pressure.
Gnyr-Captain was exercising in his cabin, leaping across it with the gravity turned low. He didn't need that much exercise, but it ate time—and he'd caught himself wondering if his tail would look good tattooed… Someone buzzed, and he poised, turned the gravity back up, and grabbed a variable-sword in one combined movement. Could have been smoother, he noted. Getting soft. “Enter,” he said.
Manexpert opened the door. “If I entered you might get ill, sir,” he said. It was a good bet; he wasn't clean. He was matted, too, and missing chin hairs where he'd been tugging on them. One of his ears was half-curled, and had a persistent twitch; and he—
“What are you doing?” Gnyr-Captain exclaimed.
“Sir? Oh, the tail. I thought fiddling with the end of it would help me think more like a human, sir.”
“Humans don't have tails,” said Gnyr-Captain distractedly, disturbed at the sight.
“I know, sir, but if they did they'd fiddle with the tuft.”
“Why?”
“They fiddle with everything, sir. —I have five possible destinations, Gnyr-Captain.”
This was simultaneously annoying and a relief; he'd expected thirty-two or forty. “Name them.”
“From most to least dangerous: first, he could return to his own system.”
“Suicide.”
“Just being thorough, sir. Next, the asteroid belt of Gunpoint.”
“How is that dangerous?”
“As the system nearest Sol it's ruled from Earth. There are rebels in the asteroids who want to overthrow the governors, and they'd want the ship, but they might save money by killing him and taking it.”
That sounded remarkably sensible. “Humans would do that? They're usually so scrupulous in matters of trade.”
“Not with each other, sir. In fact, the humans most concerned with dealing honorably with other species often treat their fellow humans like sthondats.”
“Why?”
“I've never even heard a theory, sir. It's one of those human things.”
“Ftah. Proceed.”
“Third is Fuzz. Fourth is Warhead. I judge them nearly equal in danger. I don't know whether human telepaths go insane on Fuzz; on the other hand, though Warhead is closer to Kzin, it presents logistical difficulties for invasion—”
“I know about Warhead,” Gnyr-Captain said sharply. He had had ancestors there—might still have, in stasis. “Fifth?”
“Home,” Manexpert said in human speech.
“Never heard of it.”
“A colony destroyed by an unidentified disease, which was still active during later visits. We may assume the prey has a pressure suit, and colony relics would include repair materials—”
“He's there,” Gnyr-Captain said with certainty.
“It is least likely, sir—I see, playing a double game?”
Gnyr-Captain's ears cupped.
“Human phrase, sir. Their strategies often—”
“Manexpert,” Gnyr-Captain interrupted, surprising himself with his mildness, “go groom, and get some rest, and rinse yourself with that polymer solvent or whatever it is you like so much. But first tell Navigator where to find Huwwng—that world.”