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

shave the hair from his chest and didn’t want to think about how much it would hurt when the bandages ripped out those hairs later. If we survived until later.

I put an arm under Tom to support his weight and we turned spinward and headed for the Command Deck. Disgusted with myself, I said, “I can’t believe I did what I did. I feel so . . . unclean.”

“You did what you had to do, not what you wanted to. Don’t ever forget that.”

We walked in silence, as quickly as we could manage, down the empty corridors. Our hearts were pounding in our chests as we expected at any minute to run into our remaining kzinti guard. We were moving away from the rooms where Slave Master and Fritz were staying. One Ear was in another part of the ship. But still, every unexpected sound or shadow made us jerk in fear. In a few minutes we were going through the wrecked door of the Command Deck. Tom looked at it wistfully, “I guess we can’t use that to keep them out.”

“It didn’t work the first time,” I replied. “Now quick, I’m going to set you up here at the Captain’s position and have you monitor our friends.” I helped Tom lower himself into the tattered chair. The grimace on his face might have been from pain or might have been from knowledge of what had happened to the last occupant of this seat. I tapped a few commands to the computer and the displays brought up the autocam images, searching for the kzinti. Slave Master and Fritz couldn’t be seen. They must be in their rooms. One Ear was still down by the coldsleep chambers carrying the bag those two kzinti had given him. Its shape did not reveal the horror of its contents. Maybe One Ear was picking out tomorrow’s dinner or perhaps he was just following today’s security route.

I sat down at the Engineer’s station, every minute expecting my head to erupt with the head splitting pain of Fritz’s mind reading but it never came. Maybe that meant we still had the element of surprise. My hands danced over the controls activating the Bussard field generators. The computer kept trying to run diagnostics but I kept overriding it. Time was of the essence. Everything would have to work. If it didn’t we would be dead. There wasn’t time to make sure the equipment was ready. I’d have to trust my jury-rigged repairs.

“No one’s moved. I think they don’t know what’s happened.”

“Good. Just keep watching. We’re almost ready. But once things start happening, we’re going to have to move fast.”

I reached for the VR helmet and data gloves as the computer finished its final checks on the field generators. It thought everything was ready, but what else could it think? I’d forced it to step over every safety check. If there was a problem we might not know about it until our ship turned into a small nova. I slipped on the data gloves and helmet, plugged them in the VR console and then slapped down the display lenses as I activated the VR system.

Suddenly my perspective changed. I was a disembodied entity floating in space, seeing Obler’s Paradox hanging motionless against the stars. A few quick commands and data windows came up surrounding it. A few more quick selections and I saw the ship surrounded by the neon blue electromagnetic flux lines from the field generators. They were dim and held close against the ship, which is as it should be since they were only operating at flight idle. The electric yellow hydrogen flux density contours appeared, but I ignored them. Right now I wasn’t interested in propulsion.

I increased the power to the field generators. The neon blue flux lines brightened but didn’t move. So far, so good. I moved my hands and shaped the field. It got larger and brighter. Better. My repairs had worked. There were some asymmetries in the field but they’d be controllable. I shrank the scale of the display until the Paradox was just a thin pencil outlined in blue hanging in space with the kzinti warship a small orange dot hanging silently a short distance away.

My hands moved controlling the magnetic field from the Bussard generators. The blue outline around the Paradox grew. I shaped it and molded it, growing it as fast as I dared. At one point a safety override beeped, but I forced the computer to ignore it and keep up the power to the Bussard field generators.

The neon blue magnetic field lines grew larger and brighter. I forced their shape into an asymmetrical ellipsoid pointed at the kzinti warship. I grew the field larger and larger until it was almost to the warship and then with a quick sweep of my hands the field encompassed the kzinti warship. I ramped up the strength of the drive until it was as powerful as the generators could make it. I constrained the field so it didn’t spread across hundreds of kilometers of space, but stayed focused on the kzinti ship, concentrating the killing strength of the magnetic field there.

I didn’t know how long it would take that field to kill the kzinti in their ship. Humans would have died almost instantly, but who knew about the kzinti? I made the field strength fluctuate within lethal limits while keeping the flux lines focused on the kzinti ship. That changing magnetic field should be inducing electrical currents in every conductor on that ship. I hoped it would destroy their remaining electrical equipment and keep them from sending a warning. Who knows, I might even get lucky, it might induce killing electrical fields in the conductive blood of the kzinti.

I felt as if I were a god, reaching out to kill the kzinti with the force of my will and the motions of my hands. I made the magnetic field fluctuate faster and wilder, from almost nothing to the largest field the generators could