Man-Kzin Wars V by Larry Niven (people reading books txt) 📕

human had been moving downslope; he climbed across the furrow carefully, not that there was any danger with sixty-nine rounds still in the cassette, and halted beyond leaping distance.

"Drop the knife," he said, his voice flat and ugly.

"I saw a fuzzball crawling under there," Spots went on, staring at him in deliberate rudeness. "I was going to pry up the rock and kill it."

"Murphy, can't you invent something more plausible than that?" Jonah jeered. There was a bounty on fuzzballs . . . although they were commoner here in the Jotuns than in more settled regions.

Another footfall sounded on the trail Jonah risked a quick glance upslope; it was Hans, trotting up with his rifle at high port. He stopped at the sight of the tableau below and then climbed down, standing midway between Spots and Jonah but out of the line of fire, with the muzzle of his weapon carefully down.

"You fellers mind telling me what's going on?" he said mildly.

They both began to speak at once. Jonah gestured Spots into silence with the rifle.

"The bleeping ratcat found my goods, and I caught him trying to lift the rock”—he nodded at the lever still jutting into the air, and then at the boulder upslope where the mule still stood—“and clean me out."

He tensed slightly; Hans might be in it with the alien. Not likely, since Hans had voted to send Jonah off for the supplies. If it was Hans, they would have waited until he was gone and they could do it safely. Or wait—Spots could be double-crossing Hans by promising to wait until Jonah was gone, and then looting the cache first himself!

"Of course," Jonah went on sardonically, "he claims it was all because he saw a fuzzball crawl under there."

Spots had risen from his crouch. Ostentatiously, he sheathed the wtsai and stood up to his full two-meters plus of height, staring down his muzzle at Jonah with ears half-unfurled. That was an insult as well; it was the Posture of Assured Dominance, rather than the fighting crouch used to confront an adversary.

"There is an easy way to find out, monkey," he said. "Put your arm in through the gap you used to hide the bags of gold. If there is no fuzzball, it is perfectly safe."

He backed up along the slope, still in clear sight but more than leaping distance away from the tumbled rocks. Jonah licked his lips, tasting the salt of sweat, and moved closer to his once-secret cache.

"Of course, you know that fuzzballs never let go once they bite, don't you?" Spots said, as Jonah bent toward the hole. "The jaws have to be broken and pried loose. Not that that matters a great deal. The neurotoxin venom is quite deadly. Convulsions, bleeding from all the orifices, hallucinations and agonizing death."

Jonah snorted and bent further. Then he stopped, looking at Spots. Kzin don't lie well, he thought. The slick film of sweat that covered his body suddenly seemed to cool. They don't get enough practice—they can smell each other lying. Spots could be relying on human inability to smell, nearly total by kzinti standards . . . but Jonah knew enough of their body language to know that he really was relaxed. Even amused. And if there was a Beam's Beast hiding down there—With a convulsive movement he turned and hauled one-handed on the lever. The big volcanic slab toppled backwards slowly in Wunderland's .61 G, and the fuzzball cowered for a second as the light stabbed its dark-adapted eyes.

"Pappy-eek!" it shrilled, the characteristic warning cry.

Jonah gave a shout of loathing and pumped two rounds into the vermin. The little biped flew backward, half its torso torn away, but still snapping at the air. Beam's Beast—the origin of the name was lost in the early settlement of the planet—was about half a meter long, covered in titan-blond fur. They had huge eyes, filling nearly half their faces, and clever monkey-like hands to match their demonic cunning. They could even be considered cute, if you didn't notice the overlapping fangs. In a frenzy of disgust the human leaped forward and stamped the heavy heel of his boot into the big-eyed face. Then be had to spend a minute using the muzzle of his magrifle to pry the jaws out of the tough synthetic.

That was a welcome distraction. When he looked up Hans had slung his rifle and was looking at him with a speculative stare; Spots was grinning in contempt-threat. Jonah clicked his rifle onto safety.

"Guess I'd better get back to the mules—" he began. Then the earth shook, and a cloud of dust rose from over the ridge where the mineshaft lay.

None of them wasted words as they ran.

* * *

Spots was the first to reach the entrance, but he hesitated. The exterior shoring on the hillside was still intact, but choking dust and grit billowed out. Most kzin are natural claustrophobes unless they are lactating females, and it had raised his opinion of his brother's courage, if not his intelligence, when he volunteered for the job at the pit-face. It also kept Bigs more out of contact with the humans . . .

Without a word, Jonah plunged past him into the interior.

The outer stretch was intact, but the air broiled with metallic-tasting debris; hacking and coughing, he stopped for an instant to tie the wet headcloth over his mouth and nose and snatch a glowrod from the wall. Murk surrounded him, glowing with reflected light, thickening as he advanced wiping his streaming eyes. Ten meters in the roof had collapsed, and a tangle of dirt, rock, broken timbers and planking lay across his way. He dropped to the floor and raised the glowrod. A triangle of empty space in the lower right-hand corner of the pile gaped at him like a toothless mouth. He crawled close and shouted:

"Bigs! Can you hear me?"

Nothing; nothing but the trickling sound of dirt falling, and the groan of raw timber stressed to its limits. The rest might