“I was thinking of volunteers,” said Locklear, who knew very well that Scarface would honor his wish if he made it a demand.
“If we had time to train them,” Scarface replied. “But that ship could be searching for the pinnace at any moment. Only you and I can pilot the pinnace so, if we are lost in battle, those volunteers will be stranded forever among hostile monk—hostiles,” he amended. “Nor can they use modern weapons.”
“Stalwart probably could, he’s a natural mechanic. I know Kit can use a weapon—not that I want her along.”
“For a better reason than you know,” Scarface agreed, his ears winking across the fire at the somnolent Kit.
“He is trying to say I will soon bear his kittens, Rockear,” Kit said. “And please do not take Boots’ new mate away merely because he can work magics with his hands.” She saw the surprise in Locklear’s face. “How could you miss that? He fought those acolytes in the cave for Boots’ sake.”
“I, uh, guess I’ve been pretty busy,” Locklear admitted.
“We will be busier if that warship strikes before we do,” Scarface reminded him. “I suggest we go as soon as it is light.”
Locklear sat bolt upright. “Damn! If they hadn’t taken my wristcomp—I keep forgetting. The schedules of those little suns aren’t in synch; it’s probably daylight there now, and we can find out by idling the pinnace near the force walls. You can damned well see whether it’s light there.”
“I would rather go in darkness,” Scarface complained, “if we could master those night-vision sensors in the pinnace.”
“Maybe, in time. I flew the thing here to the village, didn’t I?”
“In daylight, after a fashion,” Scarface said in a friendly insult, and flicked his sidearm from its holster to check its magazine. “Would you like to fly it again, right now?”
Kit saw the little man fill his hand as he checked his own weapon, and marveled at a creature with the courage to show such puny teeth in such a feral grin. “I know you must go,” she said as they turned toward the door, and nuzzled the throat of her mate. “But what do we do if you fail?”
“You expect enemies with the biggest ship you ever saw,” Locklear said. “And you know how those stasis traps work. Just remember, those people have night sensors and they can burn you from a distance.”
Scarface patted her firm belly once. “Take great care,” he said, and strode into darkness.
* * *
The pinnace’s controls were simple, and Locklear’s only worry was the thin chorus of whistles: air, escaping from a canopy that was not quite perfectly sealed. He briefed Scarface yet again as their craft carried them over Newduvai, and piloted the pinnace so that its reentry thunder would roll gently, as far as possible from the Anthony Wayne.
It was late morning on Newduvai, and they could see the gleam of the Wayne’s hull from afar. Locklear slid the pinnace at a furtive pace, brushing spiny shrubs for the last few kilometers before landing in a small desert wadi. They pulled hinge pins from the canopy and hid them in the pinnace to make its theft tedious. Then, stuffing a roll of binder tape into his pocket, Locklear began to trot toward his clearing.
“I am a kitten again,” Scarface rejoiced, fairly floating along in the reduced gravity of Newduvai. Then he slowed, nose twitching. “Not far,” he warned.
Locklear nodded, moved cautiously ahead, and then sat behind a green thicket. Ahead lay the clearing with the warship and cabin, seeming little changed—but a heavy limb held the door shut as if to keep things in, not out. And Scarface noticed two mansized craters just outside the cabin’s foundation logs. After ten minutes without sound or movement from the clearing, Scarface was ready to employ what he called the monkey ruse; not quite a lie, but certainly a misdirection.
“Patience,” Locklear counseled. “I thought you tabbies were hunters.”
“Hunters, yes; not skulkers.”
“No wonder you lose wars,” Locklear muttered. But after another half-hour in which they ghosted in deep cover around the clearing, he too was ready to move.
The massive kzin sighed, slid his wtsai to the rear and handed over his sidearm, then dutifully held his big pawlike hands out. Locklear wrapped the thin, bright red binder tape around his friend’s wrists many times, then severed it with its special stylus. Scarface was certain he could bite it through until he tried. Then he was happy to let Locklear draw the stylus, with its chemical enabler, across the tape where the slit could not be seen. Then, hailing the clearing as he went, the little man drew his own wtsai and prodded his “prisoner” toward the cabin.
His neck crawling with premonition, Locklear stood five paces from the door and called again:
“Hello, the cabin!”
From inside, several female voices and then only one, which he knew very well: “Locklear go soon soon!”
“Ruth says that many times,” he replied, half amused, though he knew somehow that this time she feared for him. “New people keep gentles inside?”
Scarface, standing uneasily, had his ear umbrellas moving fore and aft. He mumbled something as, from inside, Ruth said, “Ruth teach new talk to gentles, get food. No teach, no food,” she explained with vast economy.
“I’ll see about that,” he called and then, in Kzin, “what was that, Scarface?”
Low but urgent: “Behind us, fool.”
Locklear turned. Not twenty paces away, Anse Parker was moving forward as silently as he could and now the hatchway of the Anthony Wayne yawned open. Parker’s rifle hung from its sling but his service parabellum was leveled, and he was smirking. “If this don’t beat all: my prisoner has a prisoner,” he drawled.
For a frozen instant, Locklear feared the deserter had spied the wtsai hanging above Scarface’s backside—but the kzin’s tail was erect, hiding the weapon. “Where are the others?” Locklear asked.
“Around. Pacifyin’ the natives in that tabby lifeboat,” Parker replied. “I’ll ask you the same question, asshole.”
The parabellum was not wavering. Locklear stepped away from his friend, who faced Parker so that the wrist tape was obvious. “Gomulka’s boys are in trouble. Promised me amnesty if I’d come for help, and I brought a hostage,” Locklear said.
Parker’s movements were not fast, but so casual that Locklear was taken by surprise. The parabellum’s short barrel whipped across his face, splitting his lip, bowling him over. Parker stood over him, sneering. “Buncha shit. If that happened, you’d hide out. You can tell a better one than that.”
Locklear privately realized that Parker was right. And then Parker himself, who had turned half away from Scarface, made a discovery of his own. He discovered that, without moving one step, a kzin could reach out a long way to stick the point of a wtsai against a man’s throat. Parker froze.
“If you shoot me, you are deader than chivalry,” Locklear said, propping himself up on an elbow. “Toss the pistol away.”
Parker, cursing, did so, looking at Scarface, finding his chance as the kzin glanced toward the weapon. Parker shied away with a sidelong leap, snatching for his slung rifle. And ignoring the leg of Locklear who tripped him nicely.
As his rifle tumbled into grass, Parker rolled to his feet and began sprinting for the warship two hundred meters away. Scarface outran him easily, then stationed himself in front of the warship’s hatch. Locklear could not hear Parker’s words, but his gestures toward the wtsai were clear: there ain’t no justice.
Scarface understood. With that kzin grin that so many humans failed to understand, he tossed the wtsai near Parker’s feet in pure contempt. Parker grabbed the knife and saw his enemy’s face, howled in fear, then raced into the forest, Scarface bounding lazily behind.
Locklear knocked the limb away from his cabin door and found Ruth inside with three others, all young females. He embraced the homely Ruth with great joy. The other young Neanderthalers disappeared from the clearing in seconds but Ruth walked off with Locklear. He had already seen the spider grenades that lay with sensors outspread just outside the cabin’s walls. Two gentles had already died trying to dig their way out, she said.
He tried to prepare Ruth for his ally’s appearance but, when Scarface reappeared with his wtsai, she needed time to adjust. “I don’t see any blood,” was Locklear’s comment.
“The blood of cowards is distasteful,” was the kzin’s wry response. “I believe you have my sidearm, friend Locklear.”
They should have counted, said Locklear, on Stockton learning to fly the kzin lifeboat. But lacking heavy weapons, it might not complicate their capture strategy too much. As it happened, the capture was more absurd than complicated.
Stockton brought the lifeboat bumbling down in late afternoon almost in the same depressions the craft’s jackpads had made previously, within fifty paces of the Anthony Wayne. He and the lissome Grace wore holstered pistols, stretching out their muscle kinks as they walked toward the bigger craft, unaware that they were being watched. “Anse; we’re back,” Stockton shouted. “Any word from Gomulka?”