The Man-Kzin Wars 07

CHAPTER TWENTY

Like Bruno, Carol was still dazed by the sudden appearance of the titanic alien ship that had somehow halted them in space and now held position, motionless, ten thousand kilometers to starboard. She slowly turned to Bruno, who appeared to be recovering from the shock of the past few minutes. At least he was reviewing data instead of staring blankly at the strangely unshifted stars in the holoscreen.

"Where is the ratcat ship?”

Her lover shook his head slightly, tapped on a few keypads. A red circle appeared in the holoscreen. "Just under two hundred kilometers dead ahead, right where it was when things got… well, weird.”

Weird was the right word, Carol thought. How could Dolittle go from 0.7 C to dead stop in a second?

She peered at the portion of the holoscreen indicating the kzin singleship for a moment or two, looking for activity. "Looks like the ratcat isn't moving, either.”

"Maybe it's just as surprised by recent events as we are.”

Carol mulled that one over, then decided to change the subject. She put an autowatch subroutine on the kzin singleship that would set off alarms if the ratcat vessel moved or showed activity. Carol then highlighted the huge alien ship.

"Well, Bruno," she asked brightly, "what do you think?”

Bruno could not tear his eyes from the holoscreen windows. "Like you said, Captain-my-captain. It's the size of a moon.”

"A small moon.”

"Sure. But what's the point of a spacecraft a hundred kilometers across?”

Bruno had made a good point, Carol thought. Further, the alien vessel looked more like a city or hive of insects than a spacecraft. There were what appeared to be buildings and domes across its broad and complex expanse. It was baroque and ornate, like some windup Victorian Christmas tree ornament out of a history chip.

"Notice the weblike structures?" Bruno indicated a portion of the realtime magnified view of the moon-ship. "Look at them in IR.”

In infrared, the complex webs all over the moon-ship were hundreds of degrees warmer than the rest of the vessel. "Heat exchangers?" she asked. Bruno nodded. "I'm betting that they are particularly hot now, after… stopping us a bit ago. That must have taken a lot of energy." Carol noticed flocks of tiny lights moving around the spires of the gigantic alien ship. "What are those?" "No idea," Bruno replied, tweaking the image enhancers. Magnification did not help, only revealing blurred glowing shapes that darted and swooped like living things around upper portions of the moon-ship.

Bruno finally asked the question. "What do we do?" "Nothing," she replied. "Let them make the first move." Carol reached over and stroked his arm gently. "Face it, Tacky. Whatever they are, they're much more powerful than me and thee. They could swat us to paste anytime. I would rather wait, peacefully, to see what they want with us.”

Bruno nodded slowly. "I just feel stupid and helpless," he finally said, looking away. "I used to know almost everything." "But only when you were part machine. I like you better as a human." She moved his lips into a smile with her fingers and was rewarded by the real thing. "Carol?" Bruno gestured at the holoscreen with a nervous finger. "What is it?" she asked. "The kzin ship is getting visitors." Long-range scanning showed at least one hundred small objects flying toward the kzin singleship from the huge alien vessel. Extreme magnification showed vague dusky shapes with many arms flitting across the starry blackness. They rotated smoothly as they flew, arms stretched out radial fashion for stability.

"Those must be our new friends," Bruno commented. Carol said nothing, biting her lip. They would get some idea of the new aliens' intentions from their actions toward the kzin singleship. They must have been moving very quickly to be so close to the ratcat vessel.

A low warning tone sounded. Carol made a face as she studied the holoscreens. "Looks as if we are going to be entertaining a few visitors of our own," she said, pointing at a small cloud of dots on the short-range scanner window in the main holoscreen. The cloud was growing closer to Dolittle by the second, decelerating rapidly. "Still want me to do nothing?" Bruno asked. Carol nodded. "Watch the ratcat ship.”

As the flock of aliens approached the kzin singleship, it began to move, maneuvering away with its reactionless drive. Extreme magnification showed a pale purple beam of light stretching from one of the tiny hydra shapes to the kzin spacecraft. The whole vessel glowed purple for a moment, then the slight aura faded.

The singleship halted and hung motionless in space. Long-range scanners showed that all electronic emissions from the kzin vessel had ceased. The droves of tiny shapes merged with it.

"As I mentioned," Carol remarked conversationally, "I suspect it would be wise to do nothing." Bruno smiled without showing his teeth. "Hold that thought, Carol. Our visitors have arrived." He gestured to a holoscreen window displaying a view of the external hull. Many-armed shapes swarmed past the cameras.

"Follow them with the hull cameras, please.”

Bruno set up a series of small windows in the holoscreen displaying the external hull of Dolittle. The windows showed weaving tendrils, rapid activity. "Switch to infrared," Carol said after a while. Perhaps the aliens would show up better in the longer wavelengths. One by one, the windows went blank, showing the multicolored snowy display of holographic static. "What happened?" she rapped. "Hardware failure. They're doing something to the ship." Before Carol could say anything else, the external long-range scanners failed. Then weapons-status telemetry. She unstrapped and floated over to a supply locker. "What are you doing?" Bruno asked her, unstrapping himself and joining her. "Going to suit up and try and convince the uglies on the hull to stop what they are doing. Force of my commanding personality, that sort of thing, you know.”

Her lover frowned. "You know that I can't Link right now, and you are better behind the console. Let me go outside. I need you at the console, to get us out of here if necessary." His glance speared her heart. For a moment, Carol was busy repressing her odd mix of maternal and sexual feelings that Bruno brought out in her. If they survived, she would take the confusion up with her autodoc psychiatric module at length. "Go," the Captain persona inside her finally said. "But be careful, Tacky," her deeper self appended. "I need you, too.”

Bruno gave her a quick hug, and she efficiently helped him into his spacesuit. "Oh," Carol added conversationally, "you might want to take this, too." She pressed an electron-beam rifle into his hands. Bruno took it awkwardly, then slung it over his shoulder.

The main computer reset itself, then fell to fifty percent processing capacity. More warning tones began to sound.

"You had better hurry," Carol said softly, "while we can still cycle the airlock.”

Bruno started to dog his helmet shut and entered the airlock. He paused and turned back to Carol. She smiled at his look.

"I love you, too," she said simply.

Carol kept a smile on her face until she heard the hatch close firmly. Then she blinked a few times to clear the tears that pooled in her eyes in the microgravity, and strapped back into her crash couch. After a moment she swept her hands across the main console, to see what systems remained responsive.