Man-Kzin Wars V Larry Niven (e novels to read .txt) 📖

pebbles; his hands were trembling as he shoved one into the trap of the instrument and flicked the activator. "Platinum!" he yelled. The kzinti unfurled their ears to maximum, like pink radar dishes. "54% platinum, by Finagle's ghost!"

Jonah Matthieson had been a rockjack, an asteroid prospector, in the brief intervals of peace in Sol System; the methods in that were a great deal more mechanized, but he knew what was valuable. He scrabbled in the streambed, then tore back to his mules for the pan. Pebbles and heavy sand washed out as he swirled the water and flicked off the lighter material. Readings glowed as he jammed more samples into the scanner: 57%, 72%, an incredible 88%. His stomach ached with the tension as he worked his way upstream; Bigs and Spot were following, howl-spitting at each other in the Hero's Tongue. At last he thought to call Hans. The Sol-Belter was still fumbling with the belt radio when the old man came up, leading his mules and looking nearly as phlegmatic.

"Ja," he said calmly. "Platinum all right. Nice heavy concentration." He took the pipe out of his mouth to spit aside. "Worthless."

Spot gave an ululating howl, jaws open at the sky. Bigs collapsed again, this time into the stream with only his eyebrows and black nostrils showing; his tail waved pink in the water, and little fish-analogues came to nibble at it. Jonah felt an overwhelming urge to break the spectroscope over the Wunderlander's head, and then a sick almost-headache at the back of his neck.

"It's a perfectly good industrial metal!" he protested, slogging to the bank of the stream and sitting down on a wet rock. A kermitoid croaked and thrashed away through the spiny underbrush. "It's used for everything from chemical synthesis to doping crystal fusion cores. Back in the Sol Belt, it was the first thing we looked for."

"Ja, so useful the kzinti hauled seven or eight asteroids from the Swarm to near-Wunderland orbit as reserves, back during the Fifth Fleet buildup," Hans nodded. "Still a lot of it left. We need something valuable but not so valuable they thought to get a supply set up," he went on. "Gold, hafnium, something like that. Well," he went on, "rest-period's over. Got to get a move on if we want to get anything done."

Spots and Bigs whined. So did Jonah.

* * *

"Give me two," Spots said, throwing two cards into the pile.

Jonah dealt, watching the kzin across the campfire narrowly. His scent was calm—he had long since learned to recognize the gingery smell of kzinti excitement—but that could simply be control enough to keep it down below the stun-your-nostrils level humans could recognize. Bigs seemed to be watching him intently, ears out and fur fluffed up around his face. Spots's tail was held rigidly and quivering just slightly at the tip . . .

"Fold," he decided. Nobody else wanted more cards.

Spots flapped his ears, and his eyebrows twitched. "See you and raise you three."

Three krona, to the humans; the brothers were playing each other for kzinretti, of which they both had more than they wanted, due to the surplus after most of the kzintosh—male kzin—in the system died. Evidently numbers in the harem were a status matter for kzinti.

"See you," Bigs said in Wunderlander: "And smell you, you vatch-in-the-grass," he muttered under his breath in the Hero's Tongue, in the Mocking Tense.

"And two," Hans added. He puffed ostentatiously on his pipe, and the two kzin closed their nostrils in an exaggerated gesture. Their huge golden eyes caught the firelight occasionally, silver disks in the darkness.

Well, it is pretty foul, Jonah conceded. On the other hand, Hans was sitting downwind.

"Call." Bigs's tail was quivering visibly.

Spots sighed and let his ears droop. "Three queens," he said, flipping his hand upright.

Bigs lunged and snapped close to his nose. "I thought you were bluffing!" he said, throwing down his pair of tens.

"You should have listened to the Conservors and learned to control the juices of your liver," Spots said sanctimoniously, purring slightly and letting the tip of his tongue show through his teeth. The pelt rose around his neck, and his whiskers worked back and forth; he licked a wrist and smoothed them back. "That is fifteen kzinretti you owe me—my selection, remember."

"Sorry, fellers," Hans laughed. "That's fifteen krona you three owe me." He turned up his hand; three aces.

Spots shrieked, sending the mules snorting and pulling on their curb chains out at the edge of sight. Bigs waved his ears and thumped his tail back and forth, flapping his lips against his fangs in derision.

"Now whose liver is overheated?" he said, then stretched and yawned. "You have first watch."

Spots stalked off into the night, ears folded away and tail a rigid pink length behind him.

* * *

"I think even Hans is getting tired," Jonah said over his shoulder.

Then he raised the cutting bar and slashed again at the thick, matted vegetation ahead of him. It was almost all native, with the cinnamon scent of Wunderlander growth; the local varieties seemed to run mostly to thorns and silica-rich stems, though. The cutting bar was a thin-film of diamond sandwiched between vacuum-deposited layers of single-crystal iron, and it should have gone through vegetation with scarcely more effort than air. Two of the teeth had broken off on rocks, and the matted stems pulled irritatingly at his wrist.

Spots scarcely bothered to flap his ears; Bigs was morosely silent again. Last night he had even turned down the evening poker game, a very bad sign.

"Your turn," the human wheezed.

Bigs squeezed past him and began chopping methodically. From the way his lips moved and the slight murrling sounds from his chest; he was fantasizing each bush as an enemy to be killed. Hans was to their right and a thousand meters upslope, up in the open. Hotter up there, no shade, but at least there was some wind, a little air. The olive gloom around Jonah seemed as airless as the bottom of the sea;