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

the points of her knees, up the side of the nearest main trunk. When the angle that the monofilament line made with the bark wall of the trunk began to shorten, she slowed the winder.

A woman's face, her own face, stared back at her in a pool of distorted greenery. As her head moved or a breeze rippled the leaves around her, she saw a flash of bright silver. This reflection of the floating world and her own face peered out from a collar of encroaching bark in the side of the tree. Like a knot of polished metal buried in the wood.

She touched the mirror and quickly drew her fingers back. It was cold—colder than any metal would normally be, in this mild climate. Its inherent temperature was not low enough to freeze sap in the wood embedding the knot. Still, it was a chill so deep that the shock felt, to her probing fingertips, like unexpected heat. She thunked the surface with her knuckles and listened for any echo of a cavity beneath the silver skin. No sound came back. So either the object was solid—more than solid, because she could sense no resonance at all—or its insides were lodged in another dimension. A dimension turned by several degrees away from her local reality.

She had found the stasis-box.

Now, how to alert the others? Krater wished they'd worked out, in advance, a series of whistles or bird-calls to address this situation. As communications officer she suddenly realized that should have been her responsibility. Hmm. . . . Well, how could she fix it up at this late date?

Sally Krater fingered the radio at her wrist. If not for the kzinti, she might try using that. But if their enemies were monitoring the electromagnetic spectrum, a radio call would be as damning as a shout. More directional, too. But perhaps . . . Krater clicked the unit off standby and tapped her finger lightly against the microphone in a rapid and ancient dance: dit, dah, dah, dah, pause, dit, dah, pause, dit, dah, dit . . .

"What is it?" from the speaker, before she could go on. She recognized Cuiller's voice, low and guarded.

She brought the microphone to her lips. "Krater. I've found it."

A pause, then: "Converge on Sally." And that was all.

Krater held her breath, waiting for an energy bolt to tear through the foliage below her. None came, but the chuff of launchers and whirr of winder motors was closing in from either side.

Gambiel was the first to appear from her right, with his weapon at the ready. He saw the mirror in the tree and slowly strapped the rifle back over his shoulder. He touched the surface and did not draw back at the chill. "That's it, alright," he said.

Jook and Cuiller appeared from the left. They, too, examined the alien artifact.

"If that thing's a billion years old," Jook asked, "how did it get up in a tree? It should have been buried under layers of geological strata, then turned over two or three times by plate tectonics."

"We've already figured out that this world doesn't have 'em, Hugh," Gambiel said. "Plate tectonics, that is."

"This rainforest ecology must be very old," Krater observed. "As old as the Bandersnatchi and the other Slaver biota. The Bandersnatchi will have been tending this planet for a long time.

"It's just possible," she went on, "that the stasis-box was picked up by a young, growing tree. Those saplings back there looked strong enough to do it—if whatever's inside the box isn't too heavy. Then the box was absorbed into the tree trunk as the branches sprouted and spread out. Eventually, when the tree died, the box fell to the forest floor. And the next tree to rise in that place took it up again. Maybe the stasis-box did spend a million years or so underground, pulled down by the root structure. But sooner or later it always comes up."

"Why?" from Cuiller.

"Because roots and other burrowing life turn the soil over. And in any scatter of small, loose stuff, the larger and heavier objects tend to rise. . . . Have we seen any sign of streams yet, let alone rivers or lakes? Those are the forces that make sedimentary rocks—what you call 'geological strata.' But we haven't seen them."

"Well, not around here," Jook said.

"And around here is where the box is, right?"

"I give up," the navigator said. "You found it in a tree, so it must be possible."

"We'd better get it out of the tree if we want to keep it," Cuiller said. "Daff, can you cut it out with your rifle?"

"Not if you mind the top of this tree coming down."

"Alternatives?"

"None I can see."

"Start cutting."

The Jinxian unslung his rifle and took aim two centimeters from the side of the mirror. The others, dancing on their monofilament tethers, swung back from the tree trunk.

* * *

Nyawk-Captain pulled the three claws of his left foot free from the firm wood as he touched the ground again. He shook them instinctively before remembering that it was sap, not blood, on his toes. Then he arched his foot in the special way that retracted the steel hooks into their sleeves. No sense in clogging them with dirt as he walked around.

He angled the navigational tool up into the trees again and pressed the improvised trigger. The tiny readout screen blossomed with a solid return. Somewhere above him was the Thrintun artifact, but his locator—modified from a missile's ranging warhead—was too powerful for this close work. Nyawk-Captain sighed and turned toward his third and final tree trunk for climbing.

Both times before, he had gone up as far as the first heavy branchings. Then he had released his hold on the trunk and stepped out into the green world of the elevated rainforest. The foliage beneath him had been uniformly limber, sagging fearfully under the weight of his body and armor. He had made his way a few cautious steps in this treacherous environment—so unlike the