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

"Not possible," Gambiel ruled.

"All right, stand to," Cuiller ordered. "Ah, Hugh," into the radio. "We're coming back now. Take care of yourself and . . . don't disturb the Bandersnatch, whatever it does."

"Not on your life, Captain."

"Let's go," Cuiller told his party. "And at the first sight of one of them—get up into the trees."

They nodded and turned back on their trail. Without a word passing, they all broke into a jog.

As they went by the patch of young undergrowth with the fallen trunk in the middle, Cuiller began to understand it better. The "groundskeepers" were Bandersnatchi, which fed by cruising between the trees and scooping in whatever vegetable and animal matter fell from the canopy. They were intelligent enough to understand the ecology that supported their existence. They would be wary of a dead tree and leave space for a new to grow and continue the life of the forest. From that perspective, a Bandersnatch might attack the ship as a threat to the ecology—or even, marginally, in retaliation for any damage Callisto had done when it tried to land in the branches and fell through.

But Bandersnatchi were not known for immediate aggression. Rather, they had often exhibited heroic patience, dying in large numbers at the hands of less perceptive sentients before they would make their hurts known. On some planets they had even agreed to be hunted for human sport, accepting a calculated loss for the stimulation of the chase.

On the other hand, Bandersnatchi were a living relic of Slaver times, with germ plasm too massive to mutate and needs too simple to allow their race to die out totally. As possibly the galaxy's oldest living intelligent species, they could well have purposes and prejudices wholly unknown to humans. Defense of territory might be one of their hidden prerogatives.

But still, an aggressive and vengeful Bandersnatch just did not fit the profile.

Yet the evidence which confronted them when they arrived at the landing site could not be talked away. Callisto lay fully against the ground, with two broken trees squashed under her bow. The ceramic outer coating was scuffed and abraded in long swathes and ragged patches. The paired metal horns at her tail, which had been fitted for external weapons and the ion drive, were now broken off and scattered in pieces over the forest floor. Every hatch cover and through-hull fitting had been knocked out.

Cuiller walked up to the main hatchway and stuck his head through. The smell was overpowering: a mixture of acids and ketones, spoiled plastics, burned metals, and what he could only describe as elephant vomit. Holding his breath against it, his eyes watering, he looked down the length of the interior, seeing with the light that came though the masked windows and the newly worn places. He looked for as long as he could, before the fumes drove him back. The hull was nearly cleaned out. A network of optical-quality glass fibers, apparently indigestible, had been discarded in one corner like a salt-encrusted fishnet. A few curling panels of fiberglass cloth, with the resins leached out, were all that remained from the sleeping cocoons. The hyperdrive engine, thruster pods, weapons pods, struts and bracing had completely disappeared—unless the sludge of reeking green bile that ran the length of the bottom curve were their only remains.

The General Products hull, of course, was not even scratched.

Cuiller beat his fist against it, just once, for no good reason.

"Where's Hugh?" Krater asked.

They looked around. Cuiller actually hoped they wouldn't—

"Up here!" the navigator called from a distance and dropped slowly out of the canopy, suspended in his climbing rig. His toes touched the ground and, favoring his stiff leg, he retrieved the grapple.

"Where did the Bandersnatch go?" Cuiller asked.

"South." Jook pushed a thumb over his shoulder. "Right after lunch."

"What did you manage to save from—all this?" The commander waved his hand around at the hull.

"Myself. A rifle. This harness."

"Any food? Water?" Gambiel asked.

"No time."

"Why didn't you lift?" Cuiller asked. "As we agreed you would."

"Again, no time. The thing was up on the hull before I even saw it. It had punched out the hatch and was chowing down on the infrastructure before I could get to the controls. Too late then."

"You should have been watching for it. We called to warn you."

"I was trying to repair the weapons module. And anyway, we both agreed Bandersnatchi wouldn't harm the ship. What did you expect me to do?"

"All right. Conceded, we were both wrong."

"Can we salvage anything?" Gambiel asked.

"See for yourself," Cuiller gestured at the ship. "Take shallow breaths."

"We're marooned, aren't we?" Krater asked as the Jinxian moved toward the hull.

"Yes. It's almost as if the Bandersnatch wanted to make sure we couldn't leave," Cuiller said. "And we never did get off a position report. So no one will be coming for us, either."

"I don't . . ." Krater looked suddenly pale. "I mean, I didn't—" She turned away and stood looking up into the trees.

"Not your fault, Sally," the commander offered, but it sounded weak even in his own ears.

Cuiller went over to the abandoned cowling of the ion drive and started to sit down. He stopped and checked the surface for corrosive liquids. Finding none, he slumped on the bent metal.

"You've been up there, Sally," he said quietly, waving at the treetops. "What do you deduce from your observations?"

"Oh! I took some samples." She turned around and slipped the field kit out of her pocket. She opened it and keyed in a series of queries. The device beeped at her.

Jook drifted closer to listen. Soon he was sitting on the other side of the cowl, but with his back to Cuiller, looking away into the forest. His posture suggested depression and a sense of rejection by his companions. He'd snap out of it, Cuiller decided.

"There's water up there," Krater reported, "and the kit says nothing in it will harm us. The leaves—all that I got to test, so far—aren't poisonous, but they're no more nutritious than any