Man-Kzin Wars III Larry Niven (classic books for 10 year olds .TXT) 📖

attack on the Solar System had been launched. “Ready for attack,” he said. “Five seconds and—”

Matching velocities, he realized. It would be tricky, without damaging Markham’s ship. That would be very bad. His hands moved across the control screens and flicked in the lightfield sensors. The communicator squawked at him, meaningless noises interrupting the essential task of safely killing velocity relative to the asteroid. He switched it off.

* * *

“HURRY,” Dnivtopun grated. The human and fssstup slaves redoubled their efforts on the components strung out across the floor of the Ruling Mind’s control chamber.

Markham looked up from the battle-control screens. “Zey are approaching the estimated control radius, Master,” he said coolly. “I am prepared to activate plans A or B, according to ze results.”

The thrint felt for the surface of the Chief Slave’s mind; it was . . . machine-like, he decided. Complete concentration, without even much sense of self. Familiar, he decided. Artist-slaves felt like that when fulfilling their functions. Almost absentmindedly, he reached out and took control of a single small vessel that had strayed close enough; the mind controlling it was locked tight on its purpose, easy to redirect.

“Secure that small spacecraft,” he said, then fixed his eye on the helmet. “Will it work?” he asked, extending his tendrils towards the bell-shape of the amplifier helmet in an unconscious gesture of hungry longing. It was a cobbled-together mess of equipment ripped out of the human vessels and spare parts from the Ruling Mind. Square angular black boxes were joined with the half-melted looking units salvaged from the thrintun control components.

“We do not know, Master,” Markham said. “The opportunity will not last long; this formation is tactically inefficient. If they were pressing home their attacks, or if they dared use weapons with signatures visible to kzinti monitors, ve vould have been overwhelmed already.” A sigh. “If only ze Ruling Mind were fully operational!”

Dnivtopun clenched all six fingers in fury, and felt his control of the command-slaves of the space vessels falter; they were at the limits of his ability, it was like grasping soap bubbles in the dark. Nothing complicated, simply: OBEY. Markham had thought of the coded self-destruct boxes fixed to their power cores, to keep the crews from mutiny. Markham was turning out to be a most valuable Chief Slave. Dnivtopun reached for another dopestick, then forced his hand away. Their weapons cannot harm this ship, he told himself. Probably.

“Ready, Master,” one of the fssstup squeaked, making a last adjustment with a three-handed micromanipulator.

“Thanks to the Powergiver!” Dnivtopun mumbled, reaching for it. The primitive metal-alloy shape felt awkward on his head, the leads inside prickled. “Activate!” Ah, he thought, closing his eyes. There was a half-audible whine, and then the surface of his mind seemed to expand.

“First augment.”

Another expansion, and suddenly it was no longer a strain to control the vessels around the asteroid that encompassed his ship. Their commanders sank deeper into his grip, and he clamped down on the crews. He could feel their consciousness writhing in his grip, then quieting to docility as ice-shards of Power slipped easily into the centers of volition, memory, pleasure-pain. LOYALTY, he thought. SELFLESS ENTHUSIASM. DEDICATION TO THE THRINT.

“This is better than the original model!” he exulted. But then, the original was designed by tnuctipun. “Second augment.”

Now his own being seemed to thin and expand, and the center of perception shifted outside the ship. The wild slave-minds were like lights glowing in a mist of darkness, dozens . . . no, hundreds of them. He knew this species now, and he ripped through to the volition centers with careless violence. AWAIT INSTRUCTION. Now, to find their herdbull; quickest to control through him. Oyabun. The name slipped into his memory. Ah, yes.

“How interesting,” he mumbled. Beautifully organized and disciplined; it even struggled for a moment in his grasp. There. Paralyze the upper levels, the threshold-censor mechanism that was awareness. Ah! It had almost slipped away! “Amazing,” he said to himself. “The slave is accustomed to nonintrospection.” It was very rare to find a sentient that could operate without contemplating its own operation, without interior discourse. Deeper . . . the pleasurable feeling of a mind settling down under control. Now he could add this flotilla to his; they would free the Ruling Mind more quickly, and go on to seize the planet.

There was a frying sound, and suddenly the sphere of awareness was expanding once more, thinning out his sense of self.

“No more augmentation,” he said. But it continued; he could hear shouts, cries. His eye opened, and there was a stabbing pain in his head as visual perception overlaid on mental, a fssstup flying across the bridge with its belly-pelt on fire. His hands were moving slowly up towards his head, so slowly, and he could sense more and more, he was spinning out thinner than interstellar gas, and he was

SwarmbelterARMkzinwunderlandernothingnothing

“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE—” The thrint shrieked, with his voice and the Power. PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN—

Blackness.

* * *

Ulf Reichstein-Markham raised his head from the console before him, tried to inhale and choked on the clotted blood that blocked his throbbing and broken nose.

Where am I, he thought, looking around with crusted eyes. The drilling rig had suddenly disappeared, and then the alien had come floating up and—

“Hrrrg,” he said, staggering erect. “Hrrrgg.”

Blood leaked through scabs on his tongue and pain lanced through his mouth. Bite, he realized. I bit myself. Cold wetness in the seat and legs of his flightsuit; he realized that he must have lost bowel and bladder control. Somehow that was not shameful; it was a fact, just as the distant crystal clarity of the alien bridge was a fact, like things seen through the wrong end of Mutti’s antique optical telescope. He could taste the brass smell of it.

Nobody else was stirring. Some of the humans looked dead, very dead, slumped in their chairs with tongues lolling and blood leaking from their noses and ears. Some of the aliens, too.

“Master!” he cried blurrily, spurting out blood.

The squat greenish form was slumped in