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

last cut. There was a deep tung sound as the wood was cut—and the severed end rode up, not down towards him.

He let out a shaky breath, suddenly conscious of how thirsty he was. No time for that. He dropped the cutter-bar, carefully, and wedged his knee under the end of the timber that now lay across Bigs's thighs.

"This is going to hurt," Jonah said, and repeated it until he was sure Bigs was fully conscious. "Here goes."

"Eeeeraaeeeewwooww!"

The kzin scream was deafening in the strait space, like being in a closet with a berserk speaker system. After the jagged wood was free of his flesh Bigs was silent save for rapid shallow panting.

"All right," Jonah shouted, mouth to the hole. "Get ready to pull!" The slack on the rope came taut. "Carefully. If the rope gets caught on a timber, it could bring the whole thing down on us."

The ten meters of passage might as well have been a kilometer. Jonah had to follow behind Bigs's nearly inert form, pushing on his feet and easing the cable-thick tail over obstacles; when the rope caught, he had to crawl millimeter by millimeter along the hairy body until his hands could reach and free the obstruction. More skin scraped off his back and shoulders as he did so, a lubrication of sweat and human and kzinti blood that made the wiggling, gasping effort a little easier. After the first few minutes he lost track of progress; there was only effort in the dark, an endless labor. Until light that was dazzling to his dark-adapted eyes made him blink, and a draft of air cool and pure by comparison brought on another coughing fit. Hands human and inhuman pulled him and the comatose kzin out of the last body length of the wormhole.

Jonah had only an instant to lie and wheeze. The groaning and creaking from above became a series of gunshot cracks, and streams of loose dirt poured down. A board followed, ripped free as the scantlings twisted under the force of the earth above and weakened with the forward sections brought down in the first fall. He told his body to rise and run, but nothing happened but a boneless flopping sensation; there was nothing left, no reserve against extremity. Death was coming, smothering in the dark, coming at the instant of victory.

Spots had been squatting while Hans maneuvered the larger, heavier body of his sibling across his shoulders. One hand was up, steadying that; the other reached out and gathered Jonah to his orange-furred chest.

"Run," he grunted.

Hans ran beside him—a staggering trot was a better description—steadying the load on his back and taking some of the dragging weight. Jonah was clutched beneath him, turning his progress into a three-limbed hobble that turned into a scrambling rush as the innermost section of the shoring gave way behind them. Wood screamed as each successive section took the full weight for a moment and yielded; the collapse nipped at their heels, its billow of choking dust enclosing them like the hot breath of a carnivore in pursuit. They shot out of the mouth of the diggings like a melon-seed squeezed between fingers and collapsed half a dozen meters from it; Spots was barely conscious enough to turn sideways and avoid crushing Jonah beneath the half-ton weight of two grown kzintosh.

Jonah was still sitting with his head in his hands when Hans returned with the medical kit and water.

"Better look at Bigs first," he coughed, drinking a full dipper in one long ecstatic draught and blinking up at the sun. It had hardly moved; less than two hours since the cave in, difficult to believe.

"Hmmm-hmm," Hans agreed.

He and Spots went to work. "No broken bones," Spots pronounced. "There is a lump on the skull but the bone is sound beneath it. Reflexes are within parameters. Concussion, but I doubt any major damage."

"Speak for yourself," Bigs whispered. "More water." He drank rather than lapping, to wash down the handful of antibios and hormonal healing stimulants his brother handed him.

Hans had been examining the thigh wound. "Splinters in here," he said, slipping his hand into the debrilidator glove. "Want a pain-killer?"

"I am a Hero—" Bigs began. Then the miniature hooks in the computer-controlled glove began extracting foreign matter from the wound. “—so of course I do," he went on, in a thready whisper.

The work was quickly done, and Hans stepped over to Jonah; then he whistled, watching as the younger man doused himself with water. Fresh blood slicked great patches of skin and raw flesh.

"You done a good job on yourself, youngster," he said, rummaging for the synthskin sprayer. "Hold on."

Jonah did his best to ignore the itching sting of the tiny hooks cleaning dirt and dead skin out of the scrapes. The synthskin was cooling relief in comparison, sprayed on as each area was cleansed.

"What the tanjit were you doing digging that deep?" he asked Bigs. "You were way beyond the shored-up section. You know the routine; timber and shore every meter you go in."

Bigs's eyes were glazed. "Hull," he mumbled. "I found the hull."

"You found the what?" Jonah asked, looking up sharply; then he gasped. Hans had done likewise, and braced himself against a flayed area. Spots halted with his muzzle half way into a bucket.

"Hull," Bigs said more distinctly. "Like nothing I've seen before. Spaceship hull. Small."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The little trading post had a dusty, abandoned feel. There was the adobe store, two houses and a paddock, all planted where three faint mule-tracks crossed a creek. The houses had roofs of tile with tiles missing, carrying solar-power panels with some of the panels missing; the pump that filled the watering troughs before the veranda of the store was still functioning, and the metered charger available to anyone who wanted to top up their batteries. The satellite dish on the rooftree looked to be out of order for some time, though. A straggly pepper tree shaded the notional street, and a