Choosing Names: Man-Kzin Wars VIII by Larry Niven (novels to read for beginners txt) 📕

similar, No bodies, Zraar-Admiral, not of any kind. There were Jotok slaves aboard, but even their bodies are gone.

“We cannot tell if or how deeply Tracker’s claws slashed the enemy. It looks as if she was taken by surprise.”

“She was a scout. It was her task not to be taken by surprise.”

“Dominant One, perhaps the attackers used some alien warfare method. But from the absence of spreading we think the enemy laser was fired from close quarters. Perhaps close enough to have been in easy visual sight. I do not understand how such a thing happened.”

Zraar-Admiral twitched his tail and his ears contracted. He merrowered thoughtfully. “Urrr. Her Captain did not have a name.”

“He was of good record,” Weeow-Captain said. “A brave and competent officer though he died nameless.”

“Yes.” Feared Zraar-Admiral still had only a partial name himself. Had name-desire betrayed the scout-cruiser’s Captain into folly? Then Zraar-Admiral’s mind was again an unscalable crag. But an alien Space-faring race that fought! Light-years from any star! No aliens had so far been discovered—at least by what we knew of the Eternal Hunt—with more than interplanetary flight and with vestigial weapons systems. By the time lower races got into interplanetary space they had become soft and weak, had lost honor and warrior skills.

But the Dream of the Day! Those thoughts were not new, nor strange, nor secret: We need a worthy enemy!

The minds and the odors of the bridge-staff were pouring out messages. Enemies now had the booty of Kzin weaponry and drive-technology to add to whatever demon-arts they already owned. If they eluded radar and Telepaths, they might be targeting Gutting Claw at this moment. Or, beyond reach of my mind or Zraar-Admiral’s weapons, they might be assembling a Fleet.

A Tech spoke urgently.

“Sire, we’ve got something out of their bridge recorder. We’re stitching it through now. It’s only a few words.”

A new voice spoke.

“Keep all your weapons ready to fire but don’t use them unless I give the order . . .”

“That’s the Captain.”

Hissing interference, then the same ghost-voice.

“What kind of weapons do they have?”

Another ghost answered. A Telepath deep in the World of the Eleventh Sense, strained and bewildered. I caught no secret vibrations inserted for the benefit of a Brother Telepath, nothing of the code we had developed for our own war.

“. . . a light-pressure drive powered by incomplete hydrogen fusion. They use an electromagnetic ramscoop to get their own hydrogen from space . . .”

Zraar-Admiral stopped the record for a moment. All thought alike. That was no Kzin ship the ghosts spoke of. Such a drive was not even on the same path as Kzin technology. The ghosts spoke again.

There was a blur. Something in the Captain’s voice that I could not make out, then the Telepath.

“. . . not even a knife or a club. Wait, they’ve got cooking knives. But that’s all they use them for. They don’t fight.”

“They don’t fight?”

“No, Sir, they don’t expect us to fight either. The idea has occurred to three of them and each has dismissed it from his mind.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know, Sir. It’s a science they use, or a religion. I don’t understand . . . I don’t . . .”

A scrambled shriek, then a voice identified as Tracker’s Alien Technology’s Officer: “Sir, they couldn’t have any big weapons. There isn’t room . . .”

There was more interference, then a spitting scream in the Battle Imperative from the Captain: “WEAPONS OFFICER! Burn . . .”

There the recording ended, in mirror-surfaced fused metal.

Zraar-Admiral and his officers stood silent for a moment. Zraar-Admiral’s testicles were still in the relaxed position and his tail and whiskers did not stir now. An old red-sandstone statue. His tongue flicked out for a moment across the tips of his fangs. Then Weeow-Captain spoke.

“But those first words. ‘They don’t fight.’ No weapons. That was the Telepath.”

“Then the Telepath was deceived.”

“Urrr.”

I shrank further into the submissive position, not meeting those stares. Telepaths, whatever else might be wrong with us, did not make factual mistakes in collecting data, any more than a hunter mistook a prey when it was plainly before his eyes.

Sometimes Telepaths could get things out of context, or be overwhelmed by the alienness of prey minds. Yet the Telepath in Tracker had spoken with absolute certainty. “No weapons” did not admit of context errors. All Telepaths searched, unceasingly, for allies in our own war. In any case, reading alien minds was part of our training and the Telepath in a lead scout was specialized in alien animal contact. Thoughts flowed about me, some tinged with disquiet. If we were despised, we were also taken for granted as an infallible weapon. Can this enemy beat Telepaths? It was the worst part of our lot to have our minds open to the secret fears of Heroes, but now those were my thoughts also. Urrr.

Five long fingers. On the cunning and trickery of wild kz’eerkti many tales and legends turned, from the admonitory to the obscene. Some kz’eerkti breeds used stones as missiles and sticks as tools. Some could ambush Heroes in forest hunts.

Bad, that hand-print in Space, as the wreckage of a destroyed Kzinti ship fell in endless darkness before us. Traps, deceptions. In any event, for better or worse, a Space-travelling enemy we knew nothing of.

“Dominant One, there is more. Later, another cell in the recorder was activated. Possibly by aliens sacking the ship.”

Gibbering and gabbling. Kz’eerkti gibbered and gabbled, when they had played tricks on Heroes, or when they pelted Heroes with fruit or excrement from the branches of tall forest trees, ready to scamper away through the branches when the Heroes concerned began to slash the tree-trunks down or climb them.

“Record this for yourself, Telepath,” Feared Zraar-Admiral said. “It may be useful when we meet this prey. AT, translate it. You will allow Telepath to assist you.”

I know now what it said.

* * *

“Energy discharge now.”

“It looks inert.”

“Look at the meter: there’s movement there. We should get out. We’ve done what we came to do.”

“Yes, we should get out! I don’t mean just back to the Pencil. You know