"Stupid!" screamed Charrgh-Captain, "Stupid! Stupid!" His jaws went into the killing gape, his claws extended, though he was sick and shaking. His jaws dripped. The kzin was about to go berserk. "Charrgh-Captain, Dominant One!" cried Peter Robinson in the Heroes' Tongue, rolling belly-up before Charrgh-Captain and baring his throat in a posture of total submission, "with justice, we did not see it either. And nothing has happened. We are not in the Slavers' Power. It is not there. It has gone again completely."
Charrgh-Captain stopped. "It came. It can come again," he snarled. "Speak rapidly if you have anything to say."
"Half an eight of them came out of stasis," said Peter Robinson shakily. He rolled over slowly and got to his feet, still keeping a wary eye on Charrgh-Captain. It must have cost him a great deal to make that gesture, thought Richard. And he was taking a gamble that the inhibitor reflex would work. Now he will have to build his position again.
And he moved fast. Well, kzin are always faster than humans, but he moved faster than Charrgh-Captain and he seems much less groggy. There is more to this Wunderkzin than meets the eye.
"I counted their minds," Peter Robinson went on. "They were, of course, momentarily confused and groping. They had no time to seize me. Now their minds have stopped again. I do not understand that… they must have gone back into stasis."
"I understand it!" said Charrgh-Captain. He seemed fully recovered and his ears twitched now in the kzinti expression of glee. "They must have opened their suits. Perhaps after a million eons in stasis they were ready to enjoy a bit of breathing space. Breathing space! You see, I can make a joke in monkey language!"
"No, that doesn't quite add up," said Richard. "Not if they went into stasis before the installation was damaged. For them no time would have passed at all, only a kind of blip in their consciousness and a feeling of disorientation and grogginess. They would have been more wary about opening their suits. Besides, there were many more than four thrint in stasis there. Why should four fields have been turned off and not others? And from what we know of thrintun spacesuits, the stasis fields protecting them were turned on and off by the push of a button. It's unlikely that relatively small gravity fluctuations could affect that so selectively."
"I do not call my colleagues monkeys," said Peter Robinson. "They have treated my kind well. You have a diplomatic passport, and I cannot call you out, but I make the point that you have insulted them. And not for the first time."
"Well for you that you do not call me out, Freak and Renegade, and well for you that I am now a diplomat," Charrgh-Captain replied. "In any event it is below my dignity to fight even an honest telepath of the Patriarchy… However, I will say to the real humans that I spoke in the mirth of contemplating Slavers suddenly in hard vacuum and trying to eat their own lungs and entrails as their large single eyes exploded out of their heads… No insult was intended. And surely it was worth feeling their pain for a moment to enjoy what happened to them!"
"I do not mind being called a monkey," said Richard hastily. "We are all companions on a hazardous task. But what happened? What has happened to the Slavers? You are certain their minds are gone."
Certain," said Peter Robinson. "For a few seconds after the great shout there was panic, pain, terror, and then it died away. But it was not directed at us. We should have been dead if it had been. There was death there, and that could not be mistaken."
"No. It could not. It must have been rough on you."
"My mental shields go up with the speed of thought. I have worked on them every day since I became a telepath, and more since I knew I would have to travel in this ship."
Otherwise, Charrgh-Captain's loathing and contempt-and perhaps his inadmissible fear also-would be pouring into him every instant that both were conscious, thought Richard. I don't think Melody likes him much either. Yes, it must be rough.
He turned to the controls of the camera they had left in the control chamber.
"Gently," growled Charrgh-Captain. "Let it touch nothing."
The camera floated from one compartment to another. The stasis field covering the next sphere in the sequence had been deactivated. Its metal looked almost as shiny-new as if the field still operated, but its top had been opened. Four green-skinned thrintun floated out of it, plainly dead in the vacuum. They wore no helmets or pressure-suits, and it was gruesomely obvious that decompression had killed them before the many other deaths possible in space, before they had had time for coherent thought. "One field only was deactivated," said Richard. "I guess its switch was either damaged or already partly operated. It could have been a lot worse, but we must not run a gravity motor near the chamber again. Let us be thankful for a harmless lesson. Harmless for us, anyway."
"It has given us something for the Institute of Knowledge," said Melody. "Perhaps we are beginning to earn our money. Thrint brains to dissect will be treasures indeed."
"The Slaver-students of the Patriarchy are entitled to a share of them," said Charrgh-Captain. He turned and spoke to the console, first in the Heroes' Tongue and then in Interworld. "I make formal claim and I record that claim. By the Sigril of the Patriarch which I now display, I make that claim to the death and to the generations." He was in a fighting stance again, and his hand with extended claws gripped the hilt of his w'tsai. Thrint brains, if they could somehow be made to reveal…
"I think we should leave them and send another ship," said Richard. "Let's not push our luck." In fact, he thought, it would probably be safe enough to approach again cautiously with chemical rockets or EV, but it was the best he could think of to defuse the situation. A human-kzin quarrel over thrint brains was not a good idea. In the time it would take to send another ship, the freeze-drying process of space might destroy some of their structure at least, and it was best destroyed. And he would like to be out of this grisly place.
Charrgh-Captain leaped to the console in a bound. "There is activity!" He shrieked. "Look! There is energy discharge! And lights!"
The camera, still trained on the sphere, showed red points in its dark depths, appearing and disappearing in a regular pattern.
"What do we do?"
Peter Robinson was hunched, crouching, ears knotted. He was trying, Richard thought, to block out something none of the others could feel-or did not know they felt? The last words had come from Charrgh-Captain, and Richard realized that what he was trying to block out was Charrgh-Captain's fear. Charrgh-Captain himself stood dignified and motionless now, his ears, tail and testicles all in the relaxed position. What an act! thought Richard. Only Peter Robinson gives it away. Speculating on the body language of the two great felines kept his own cold apprehension for a moment at bay. The Slavers are dead, he told himself.
Then Charrgh-Captain pointed to another screen.
The deep-radar showed that beneath its stony covering, the great sphere was changing preparatory to its stasis field being switched off.
"Flight is pointless," said Charrgh-Captain. "Whatever is happening, we must see it through. Have the main weapons poised."
"Be prepared to fire without my command," Richard told Melody. He noticed Charrgh-Captain's tendency to give orders. Comes naturally to a Kzin in a dangerous situation, I suppose, he thought. But I had better assert my authority right now.
– discontinuity-
"I detect no Slaver minds," said Peter Robinson. The relief in his humanized voice, and in the atmosphere of the cabin, was almost palpable. "None whatsoever. There is no danger of live Slavers, I think."
The Slavers are dead!
There was no change to the surface of the sphere. "The accreted material now becomes a thin shell over whatever is within."
"We can see it with deep-radar anyway. Also, there is a possible advantage to the shell remaining in place. If there is anything dangerous in there, the shell will help stop it getting out."