Man-Kzin Wars XII Larry Niven (list of ebook readers .TXT) 📖

so: "I just realized there are no fabricators, to copy those model tools," she said. "A protector would build one on the spot after the stasis box was opened, rather than waste storage space that could be used for more models."

It accounted for the potato peeler.

—Except that nothing accounted for the potato peeler: "Why is there a potato peeler?" Richard exclaimed. "They ate the whole things, didn't they?"

Slaverexpert thought. Then he looked at the roots and thought some more. Finally he said, "All I can think of is flavor, which is illogical; they could surely have tailored for that as well. I shall have to analyze one for better information."

As Slaverexpert signaled to Charrgh-Captain, Gay murmured to Richard, "Do you think he'd have destroyed them without testing otherwise?"

"If they're tree-of-life, I'd help," he replied in equally low tones. "Protectors are asexual and all look ancient. I prefer to be young and dumb and . . . keep my hair."

"I like your hair too." She smiled.

Cunning Stalker's lab was a thorough one, and its safety features were appallingly practical: In an emergency, the entire lab would be ejected from the ship and into the path of the message laser, which would keep firing until the beam was unobstructed. "No need for the calcium notch," said Richard weakly. He had won the toss, and Gay was back in their compartment, watching by screen.

"Urr?" said Slaverexpert, as he put the sample case into the lab manipulator with one hand and began undoing his suit with the other.

"On the spectroscope next to the laser."

"Why a spectroscope?" The kzin's Interworld was excellent.

Surprised, Richard said, "I thought it was standard equipment. When something is blown up, the spectroscope scans the cloud, and if there's no band at the calcium frequency it was a miss or a decoy."

"Because a real target would include something with a skeleton," Slaverexpert said. "I see. Richard Guthlac, I find I enjoy working with you, so I hope you will take this suggestion: Do not say things like that very often around kzinti. There is something deeply disturbing in the didacticism that humans bring to the business of battle."

Richard could think of nothing to say—it probably had been thought up by someone sitting at a desk somewhere, who might never have so much as seen a live kzin.

Slaverexpert opened a cabinet next to the manipulator controls and put on a set of goggles from it. He looked through various compartments in the cabinet, growled very deep in his throat, and took off his goggles. "There is no human-version viewer," he said, putting them away, "so we will have to use window displays. I would prefer something that stayed in view when I turned my head, but leaving you out would violate the agreement."

Richard was about to ask why he couldn't use kzinti goggles, when the displays appeared on the window before them. The one in front of him was familiar in style, with different kinds of information displayed in different colors of high chroma, arranged in rows and columns with any useful diagrams at the top. The one in front of Slaverexpert had kzinti script in deep purple written right across light gray diagrams, whose shapes were constantly shifting, just slightly. The writing moved around slowly within the diagrams. The positions of the diagrams underwent abrupt changes every few seconds, too. Just looking at it was disturbing; trying to get information out of it would have given him a bad headache very quickly. "Telepath should see this," Richard murmured.

He'd forgotten kzinti hearing. "Why?" said Slaverexpert.

"Oh, a while back he was talking to us about the similarities in human and kzinti thinking. There's some fundamental differences in brain structure suggested here, and it might be of interest."

"Oh. Good, I thought I was going to have to wake him up. He doesn't sleep enough." Before Richard could absorb the concept of a healthy kzin showing concern for a telepath, Slaverexpert went on, "He's right, though. The fact that your readout looks like something I'd watch to get to sleep merely reflects a difference in hunting style." His ears curled up for a moment as the readouts changed several times. Then they uncurled, the readouts steadied, and he said, "Unfamiliar equipment. I've got it now."

Behind the window, waldoes opened the bin of roots and removed one. Richard had controls at his own station, and directed a sniffer to sample the air that had been in the container. "I did read somewhere that humans and kzinti are the only races to use fissionables to make bombs," he remarked.

"Odd. It seems such an obvious idea," said Slaverexpert. "No thallium, but I didn't expect it. Air interesting?"

"Nitrogen, oxygen, a little argon. Pretty standard habitable-planet issue," Richard said, and heard the kzin snort in amusement. "Traces of medium-sized hydrocarbons."

"Urr?" Slaverexpert brought some new instruments into play, then said, "The root is rich in terpenes. And there is no taurine."

"Taurine?"

"An amino acid human metabolism uses in dendrite connections. You do not synthesize it, so tree-of-life should be crammed with it to facilitate the change. . . . Though you may have lost the ability to synthesize it due to the supply available in Earth prey—no, Jack Brennan had no difficulty. . . . I am unable to detect any trace of steroid compounds. The roots from the Pak ship that came to Sol System were found to contain a hormone for rapid muscle and bone development. This does not appear to be tree-of-life," Slaverexpert concluded.

"Good!" Richard said. "So what is it?"

"Let me try something." A waldo took up the uncut half of the root, then tossed it at a wall. It bounced back. "It's rubber."

"What?"

"Rubber. Rather, a long-chain molecule assembled from terpene monomers, suitable for insulation, seals, and padding. Hardenable and readily cast into nonconductive parts."

"Rubber," said Richard, amused.

"A valuable industrial material. I speculate that many of the life-forms we have found here will be tailored to produce such. Shall we investigate?'

"Let's." Now that fear was going, avarice had come out of hiding to put in a few words.

Unreasonably many hours later,