His hand came down. Miffy crumpled. The kzin inspected the man quickly. He should come around in a few minutes, time enough to restrain him, then to make certain no one else was expected. There had been no other fresh scent, but that didn’t mean someone wasn’t coming. It was unlikely that Miffy was sending images to someone else. The kzin had learned during earlier visits that the hanger walls were thick enough to prevent broadcast communication and that the humans had not gotten around to laying cables.
The kzin stepped over the unconscious human and closed the panel into the engines. Then he moved into the cockpit and tapped in the sequence that would start the engine warm-up. Miffy was beginning to stir when the kzin returned. That didn’t stop the kzin from picking him up, dropping him into a chair, and securing him.
His own previous training, combined with careful observation during these long days of captivity, meant that he knew how to inspect Miffy for communications gear. There was surprisingly little. Apparently, the watcher did not like being watched, the one who made others talk did not care to say much himself. The kzin also shut down the small recording unit Miffy had been using.
The kzin was fastening himself into one of the spare pressure suits when Miffy came around. To the human’s credit, he did so quickly and without the usual disorientation.
“You! What…” he began, but the kzin cut him off.
“What are you doing here?”
Miffy pressed his lips firmly closed. The kzin pricked out the longest claw on his right hand and stroked it across Miffy’s face, raising a line of blood. A kzin would have felt this as unworthy of notice, but Miffy had all too much awareness of what he’d done to the kzin. A guilty conscience is a wonderful prod. Miffy began talking.
“You’ll never get out of here, so why shouldn’t I tell you? Something Dr. Anixter said this evening made me realize we’d been overlooking some aspects of the gravity polarizer-seeing them with human logic, rather than kzinti. I came down here to check and she just could be right…”
He trailed off. The kzin felt his rising growl shifting into a purr…Dr. Anixter, eh? An accident? A bit of nervous babbling? He didn’t think so. What then could she have intended?
Glancing over at the piloting readouts, he saw that the engine was halfway through its warm-up routine.
“Are you alone?” he said, activating the life-support system and the back-up navigation.
“I…” Miffy’s words came slowly, but his sweat reeked with fear.
The kzin looked at him. “I am committed to my course of action. If you wish an honorable death, that is all one.”
Miffy swallowed hard. Like many people who deal out pain and death to other people, he never really contemplated that the same could come to him. In his little world, he was the only real person, the rest were supporting cast.
“You’re speaking,” Miffy said slowly, “very good Interworld.”
“Yes.”
“I suppose you lied about other things as well? Such as how many people it takes to fly this vessel? Perhaps only one pilot is needed?”
“Yes.”
“Then why should I talk to you?”
“I told you. You don’t need to.” The kzin turned his head and smiled slowly, showing an expanding array of teeth. “I believe the auto-kitchen is still operational, but I cannot be certain it will remain so. Living or dead, you will be of use to me.”
Miffy started talking. Fast. He had come down to the hanger alone. Dr. Anixter’s comment had been provocative and he had wanted to make certain that he was the first to confirm the accuracy of her insight. Implied in this was that he also planned to claim her insight as his own.
“And now,” the kzin said, “you are ruined.”
“Ruined?” Miffy’s voice broke. “You mean you’re going to eat me?”
“No. I would just as soon bring home a prisoner,” the kzin replied. “What I mean is that I am about to escape-or at least attempt to escape. If I am recaptured, I will explain how your carelessness-talking in front of me in Interworld although Dr. Anixter had assured you she thought I spoke the language, letting me move about the base under my own power, permitting me to see you or members of your staff enter in codes-permitted me to craft this escape attempt.”
Miffy shrank into himself, his eyes widening in horror.
The kzin twitched his ears, laughing as he had not laughed since he came semi-conscious in the wrecked kzinti war craft. Dr. Anixter had provided him with the means to send out the code that would open the hanger doors, but now he used Miffy’s own unit. If the humans could trace the device’s signature, it would further seal Miffy’s doom, further ruin his reputation.
Miffy understood. He began to keen in wordless panic.
The kzin watched as the hanger doors slid smoothly open. The navigation program read the stars and told him he was closer to a contested border than he had dared imagine. He entered in the command to launch. The scout ship slid out into the void.
Now was the time for decision. Did he wheel the scout ship around and crash into the base or did he attempt to get himself and his very interesting prisoner home again? Before he had seen no value in his continued life, but now…Not only did he have what he himself had learned, he had a very special prisoner. His status would go up.
The equation had changed in favor of life…of that strange intangible, hope.
As the kzin set his course, he knew his escape was not certain, but at least he would die free, not a prisoner, no longer a captive. Miffy had fallen silent, foam flecking his lips, his eyes wild and bloodshot as he contemplated his future.
The kzin wondered. Had Dr. Anixter all but sent Miffy to the hanger? Had she manipulated the situation so that not only would the kzin have a hostage and a prize, but also a reason to escape rather than wreck both himself and the base? He wouldn’t be surprised if she had.
Two types of teeth…If he survived the journey home, he would need to try and explain about humans and their two types of teeth.
Jenni napped until she was awakened by the klaxons. Without leaving her bunk, she activated a subroutine that would put some interesting information into Miffy’s files, information that indicated how deeply he had feared the kzinti, how he had contemplated changing sides if by doing so he could buy a position as a collaborator working under kzinti masters.
Miffy would not be the first human to do this. He would not be the last.
She’d had to keep this final touch until late in the game, for Miffy must not be permitted to see these interesting additions to his files in advance. Now, however, either he was dead, taken by the kzinti, or, at the very least, a base commander who had just permitted his most valuable prisoner to attempt an escape.
Miffy’s protestations of innocence would not hold up, especially since Jenni would be there to gently explain how this quite fit the psychological pattern of a man who chose to name himself Otto Bismarck.
Belting her fluffy pink robe over her flowered pajamas, Jenni moved toward the door, reacting just as she would if this was an emergency she knew nothing about. As she hurried out, she swallowed a smile, knowing that now was not the time to show her teeth.
PICK OF THE LITTER
2367 CE: Proxima Centauri System, Outer Belt
With the bright red disk of Proxima Centauri growing quickly in his forward screens, hn-Pilot rose from the kzin smallship’s co-pilot seat. He stretched as much as was possible for an eight-foot felinoid in a cramped cockpit.