He hung on, hung on …
And the disk bumped against his faceplate.
He clung with his eyes closed. He was in no shape to confront anyone, any creature. In a few seconds he’d be safe and alone aboard Hot Needle of Inquiry.
A great clawed hand took him by the shoulder and rolled him over.
Chapter 23
The Running Lesson
The Kzin pulled him to his feet. Louis was gasping, shivering. Acolyte couldn’t talk to him while his helmet was closed, and Louis was glad of that.
He was aboard Hidden Patriarch, near the stern.
Just another goddamn stunning surprise. He had left the mile-long sailing ship on the Shenthy River. What was it doing here?
Acolyte was trying to ask him something. The Kzin was holding—tanj dammit! Louis wrenched his helmet open.
Acolyte said, “I was prowling around the stern when this popped up on the stepping disk. Your visiting-gift, Louis? Preserved fish?”
Louis took the sashimi plate. The sliced fish was puffy and crisp to the touch.
“It’s been in vacuum,” he said. “Did a loaf of bread come by?”
“I let it pass. Louis, you stink of terror.”
What am I doing here?
In a moment he could be safe aboard Hot Needle of Inquiry, floating between sleeping plates while he got through his shivering, got his mind back, and tried to digest what he had and hadn’t learned.
Acolyte had seen him. If the Kzin could be persuaded to shut up, then—Yeah, right. The protector must have been observing Acolyte’s body language for half an Earth year. The Kzin couldn’t hide anything from him.
Louis said instead, “The dead could smell my terror.” He dropped his helmet and air pack and began opening zippers. “I thought I had the stepping disk controls figured out. Wrong! Oh, and the Martians set us a death trap. That almost got me, too.”
An adolescent’s half-bald head popped into view above a hatch. City Builder. The boy’s eyes widened in surprise, and he dropped from view.
The Kzin asked, “Martians?”
Louis began stripping off his suit. “Skip it. I’ve got to burn some energy. Can you run?”
The Kzin bristled. “I outran my father after we fought.”
“I’ll race you to the bow.”
Acolyte yowled and bounded away.
Louis’s pressure suit was pooled around his ankles. At the Kzin’s howl, his every muscle locked and he fell over.
That was a wonderful battle cry! Hissing ancient curses, Louis pulled the suit off, rolled to his feet and ran.
Acolyte was still in sight, moving considerably faster than he was. Then the ship structure jogged and he was gone.
Louis had lived aboard this ship for nearly two years. He wasn’t likely to get lost. He ran hard, competing only with himself. He had a full mile to cover.
“Loueee!”
The voice was faint and strange, coming from high overhead … from a Pierson’s puppeteer perched in the aft crow’s nest.
Louis bellowed, “Hellooo!”
“Wait!” the voice called.
“Can’t!” He felt good.
A squarish shadow descended. Louis ran on. It came alongside, pacing him: a Repair Center cargo plate with rails welded around it. Louis called, “Stay clear. I’m in a race.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s not—an intelligence test.”
“How do you feel?”
“Wonderful. Disoriented. Alive! Hindmost—don’t use—the Olympus stepping disk.”
“Why?”
“Martians—they’re alive—set a trap.” Louis drew a deep breath and blew it out. Salt air on his taste buds: wonderful! His breath was holding, his legs were holding. He pumped harder. “They’ll set another.”
“Two can play that game. What if I dropped a disk in the sea and began flicking water to Mons Olympus?”
“You ask me? Don’t exterminate—anything. You might need it—later. It’s the reason—you didn’t kill off—the kzinti!”
“More or less,” the puppeteer acknowledged. A one-eyed head dipped toward a puff of orange glimpsed far ahead along the top mid-deck. Acolyte.
“Louis, your advent is opportune. We have much to catch up on.”
“Where’s Bram?”
“Cooking our dinner.”
His heads were arced around to look into his own eyes.
Was the Hindmost joking? Maybe that was puppeteer laughter and maybe it wasn’t.
“Bram has a sensitive nose,” the Hindmost added.
Louis asked, “How goes the dance?”
“The dance! It proceeds without me. I’m tanj sick of using your recycler, Louis! I haven’t even had time to redesign it.”
“Thank you for that.” Keep it casual. But if Bram didn’t trust the Hindmost enough to let him take normal exercise or use a toilet and shower designed for puppeteers …
Then the Hindmost might be ready to take back his life.
The top mid-deck ended. Louis clambered through ladders and corridors. Kzinti ladders were heavily tilted and the rungs were too far apart, but Louis went up and down like an ape on steroids. He kept expecting to pass Acolyte. Worse, he expected Acolyte to leap out at him from some alcove. He stayed to the heights.
In his mind he tried to map his way around the garden. It would take too long. At the end of a corridor he ran up a flight of hardwood steps to the top of a wall, along the wall to avoid a thicket of big yellow puffballs with impressive thorns, and dropped ten feet into dirt.
It had been a kzinti hunting park. For two years Louis and the City Builders had tended these plants. They had been growing wild when he arrived. Once they must have fed herds for kzinti sailors. The herds were gone, and he didn’t expect to find animals now, unless Acolyte was about to leap out from some citrus thicket.
But he never saw the Kzin.
There were eight tremendous main masts and uncountable sails, and the winches that moved them could only be worked by a Kzin. Or a protector? This mast was the foremast, with the fore crow’s nest at the top. Louis was blowing hard. His legs felt like overcooked noodles.
Someone was waiting in the bow.
Louis cursed in his mind. He didn’t have breath to spare. A moment later he recognized the protector shape.
Louis slowed. Bram waited like a statue. Louis couldn’t tell if he was breathing at all.
“I think you win,” Louis gasped.
“Were we racing?”
Bram wouldn’t have known of an intruder until the City Builder boy found him in the kitchen, or until he heard feet pounding across the deck overhead. He must have run. Louis said, “Whatever. I needed exercise.”
Before him was a mountain range … an un-Earthly mountain range. Conical mountains, spaced wide apart and varying in size, ran left and right. Without a horizon, he had no real grasp of their size. Most were tall enough to have ice-white peaks, but below the ice they were all green patchwork.
Then his eye/mind perceived what loomed above them.
They were tiny.
Wait now, the rim was a thousand miles high. Of the twenty or thirty mountains he could pick out, five or six were mere foothills leaning against the rim wall, but two or three might match Everest.
The Hindmost drifted toward the bow. Behind him, a puff of orange pulled itself into view.
The Kzin plodded up. He was done, winded. Louis said, “Thank you, Acolyte. I really, really needed that. I was carrying enough adrenaline to run a war.”
The Kzin panted, “Father. Let me win. Didn’t want to. Kill me.”
“Ah.”
“How. Did you pass me?”
“Must have. Maybe in the garden.”
“How?”
“Bram, you must know about cursorial hunters?”