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

unguided as a meteor, crashing among these trees. But then, Nyawk-Captain would expect some kind of cratering around the ship and more damage to the surrounding forest.

It might also have landed here long ago, and then the crew had suffered some accident. The ship would have deteriorated—all but the indestructible hull—under the force of time. But how would this version account for the trees crushed under the bows?

No, to tell the full story, he needed a personal reconnaissance of the derelict.

"Navigator, break out full body armor for both of us," he ordered. "Weaponsmaster, you stay at post. Destroy any danger that may approach. We will neutralize this threat—if any threat remains here—before going on to take our prize." The two crew members growled assent and went about their tasks.

Body armor came in a single articulated piece, like a hinged kzinti skin. It fitted solidly across the back, double-folded at the sides, and clasped with a tight seam up the belly. It was not designed as an environment suit, however, and covered only the backs and outer periphery of the arms, the fronts and sides of the legs. The attack surfaces. By rolling into a fetal crouch, a kzin wearing this armor could make himself practically invulnerable. The substructure was hardened steel, the surface an ablative material that would shed a ballistic slug or energy beam with equal facility. Of course, in that curled position, it could still be blown apart by explosives or melted with sufficient heat. But what kzin would crouch and wait that long, when he could fight?

Powered joints and solenoid-driven claws—connected to the kzin's own muscles with feedback pads—increased the wearer's strength and speed fivefold. The helmet's visor was fitted with devices that increased the senses of sight, hearing, and smell; offered an air mask to protect against poison gases, dusts and pollens; and connected the wearer with his companions through laser and electromagnetic telemetry and communications.

The body armor offered wonderful enhancements for a warrior—at the cost of two disadvantages. Donning it, inside the cramped spaces of a Scream of Vengeance-class interceptor, required the skills of an acrobat. Maneuvering it into and through the ship's tiny airlock required those same acrobatics combined with insufferable patience.

But, once he got his head into the open air, Nyawk-Captain hardly needed the helmet's filter enhancements to answer his earlier questions. His head swam with the scent of a dozen different long-chain polymers, dissolved into organic soup. He knocked the filters' sensitivity back three notches and took shallow breaths.

While Navigator finished his contortions and cycled the lock, Nyawk-Captain approached the abandoned hulk. His eyes quickly adjusted to the forest gloom and began noting details: the position of various metal pieces, the indentations they left in the ground, other impressions. As he moved toward the hull, another complex scent came up, fainter than the scream of broken plastics. Dirt, sweat, pheromones. . . .

Humans! The ship had come here under a human crew. But Nyawk-Captain could smell no blood. So whatever had become of them, the crew had clearly survived the crash. He bent toward one of the marks in the ground and sniffed it. The odors clung to it, a human footprint.

Employing the suit's visual enhancers, Nyawk-Captain traced others of these marks. All of them had a certain formal similarity, just as all kzinti paws were made to the same design. But there were variations in the size and depth of the impressions. He counted four separate sets of these prints, matching them with their right and left curves.

"What do you—?" Navigator began as he came up.

"Stay back!" Nyawk-Captain waved him away.

Placing his own pads carefully, he walked in circles, tracking each pair of prints. They moved back and forth over the crash site, now pausing and sinking fractionally into the hardened forest floor, now skimming and scuffing lightly over the dirt. Eventually, however, each track ended abruptly—a digging in with the toes, and then gone. Nyawk-Captain looked up, up, into the treetops. He knew little enough about human physiology, but he could guess that not even the sons of Hanuman could make such a leap. But where else, then, would they be?

"This is an empty hole, My Captain," Navigator observed.

"But not too long empty. I can still smell them."

"Yes, but what of it? This ship—the only hard contact in this system—cannot interfere with us. We have nothing to fear from naked humans, wherever they may have gone. We should immediately retrieve the Thrintun artifact and then leave here."

"Well reasoned, Navigator, if not properly expressed for your superior officer's ears. We still have the question of what could have caused such damage to this hull."

"An academic inquiry, at best."

"Perhaps. Still, we shall—"

The sound came softly at first, through the aural enhancers. Nyawk-Captain thought it might be the creep of the forest floor under thermal stresses. Standing among the lattice pattern of upright trunks, he could not at first place it. He swiveled his helmet to scan the background.

"Weapons—!" he tongued the comm switch, then let the call die in his throat. A gliding white shape, easily three or four times the bulk of his ship, had loomed behind and settled over Cat's Paw. Its flesh would be blocking Nyawk-Captain's radio pulse. And besides, Weaponsmaster should already be aware of his predicament.

"Best we find cover," he told Navigator.

"Where?"

"In here," Nyawk-Captain replied, and sprang toward the nearest kzin-sized hole in the Leaf-Eater hull.

They crouched against the inside curve of the spindle, gasping in the waves of resinous vapor that assailed their noses until they could fasten their masks. At the same time, the carborundum claws extruding from their armored feet tried for purchase on the slick surface in an effort to keep them from slipping into the fuming liquid that sloshed in the bilges. Through a scar in the alien hull's outer coating, Nyawk-Captain watched the white mass writhing over his ship. He briefly caught the flash of a hard, crystalline edge under the Whitefood's bulk. Something dripped off that edge.

Whatever Weaponsmaster decided to