A sudden jerk and sense of sustained deceleration signaled that the main chute was out and fulclass="underline" the predictable, faint swaying motion was the harbinger of a gentle ride to the ground.
Gentle, but hardly a relief: the flame in the capsule was now steady, working its way up the liner and causing further short-outs. The heat in his combat suit suddenly increased, became intense, soared toward unbearable-
— just as, with sudden thump, the capsule jarred to a rough halt. In the same second, there was a creaky wheeze, and then a blast of explosive bolts blew the top of the capsule off. The flames around him roared up, greedily feeding upon the abundant oxygen in the atmosphere.
He tumbled out of the coffinlike remains of the capsule, turned about and leaned back into the conflagration, the combat suit setting up a desperate warning squalclass="underline" complete failure was imminent-
Rummaging about under the control panel, he sprung open a small, armored cargo receptacle, and yanked out the four-liter secure container he found there.
Then he ran deep into the sparse scrub-lands in which he had landed…
A twig snapped a moment before a voice came from the bushes: “Hands up. Don’t move.”
“I won’t,” he answered. “I’ve been waiting here for you.”
Two men and two women emerged from the thick brush that lined the southern perimeter of the small clearing; to the north, sand pines shot up like feathery stalagmites into the cloud-darkened dusk. “You were waiting here for us?” asked the smaller and older of the men.
“Yep. Saw you about two hours ago, following my trail from the crash site.”
The man raised his weapon a little higher. “You seem pretty casual and self-assured for someone-some human-who just landed in a meteoritic assault capsule. You connected to today’s activities out in space?”
“Look: I’ve been gone from Wunderland for a long time. Just woke up from coldsleep today. So I’m not exactly up on the most recent news: what activities in space are you talking about?”
Long looks bounced from face to face among the four armed people. The apparent leader spoke again. “Seems Earth finally did something about the kzin occupation. Looking at that suit of yours, and the timing of your arrival, seems logical you were part of the package they sent. Arrived early this morning at nearly light speed; wreaked havoc throughout the system. We figured you must have come from Earth as part of that attack force.”
“Nope. To the best of my knowledge, I’ve never been further from Wunderland than the Serpent Swarm.”
The larger of the two men, and clearly the youngest of the group, brought his weapon up quickly, sighting along its barrel. “Which means you wouldn’t be alive unless the kzinti wanted you to be. Which would make this a trap.”
“Nope, not the case. When I say I’ve been asleep for a long time, I mean a long time. They corpsicled me three months after the ratcats showed up.”
“And so where were you all that time?”
“Can’t tell you the exact location, because I have no way of knowing. I was in cold storage, so to speak.”
“I ain’t laughing, stranger. Who put you in storage, and for what reason?”
“The who is the local UNSN command staff. The reason was to strike back at the ratcats, but only once we had an effective weapon.”
The leader of the group looked around the area, finding nothing large enough to contain the aforementioned effective weapon: just the man, his gear, his charred combat suit, a sidearm, and a small secure case. “I don’t see any miracle weapon. And why wait all this time if you’ve been in system for-what? — more’n forty years, as you claim it.”
“Yes. Forty years is how long it took to gather enough information about the kzin, pass it on to the facilities on Earth, and then back here. That meant two research labs working together with a four-point-three-seven-year message delay between them. So it took a little longer than a conventional counterattack. And the weapon they came up with is right here.” He laid a long index finger atop the secure box.
The leader frowned. The young man smiled, but it was not a friendly expression. “Well, thanks for explaining things. So either everything you say is utter bullshit, in which case you’re a kzin plant, trying to sneak into the ranks of our resistance. Or you’re not a plant, but we’ve got your miracle weapon, anyway. So the logical alternative is that we take no chances: killing you might be a damned shame, but we still get our hands on the mystery weapon, and haven’t taken any risks with our own security.” He leaned over his tangent sights. “So sorry, but war is hell and all that.”
“No,” said one of the women sharply.
The young man looked at her. “C’mon; can’t you see what’s going on here? He’s a collaborator, a traitor. And even if he’s not, we have to work as though he was. We have no way to find out if he’s telling the truth or-”
“No. We do.” She turned and studied his charred combat suit again. Returning her scrutiny, he saw she was unusually, even strikingly, beautiful. Not in a soft or delicate fashion; her face was severe, with high cheekbones, dark eyes, almost white-blonde hair, and a strangely square chin for a woman. He thought he might have seen a painting of a Valkyrie that looked like her. “You,” she said. “What’s your name?”
“Smith.”
“Oh. Really. And let me guess: your first name is Joe.”
“John, actually.”
“So: John Smith. And are you a captain, like your namesake?”
“Well, it so happens that I am.”
“And tell me, Captain John Smith, why did it take so long to research this wonder weapon of yours?”
“Hey, it isn’t mine. But the main development problem, as I understand it, was that while there was plenty of opportunity to observe kzin behavior here, and gather physical samples and specimens, there were no underground research facilities that were really equipped to do the hard number crunching, or diverse lab work, to make any headway with it. So the information had to be gathered on site, here and in the Swarm, relayed off-world, and then sent back to Earth for-”
But she wasn’t listening anymore: she had turned to her four comrades. “He’s for real.”
“What?” squawked the younger man. “How can you-?”
But she was looking at the older man, their leader, who had fallen strangely silent. “You know I’m right,” she insisted. “You told me how, when you started with the resistance, there was a central cell-not an ops group, but an intelligence branch-that kept gathering data on the kzinti. Always wanted specimens, even live prisoners, to sneak off-world.”
“It’s true,” he admitted. “And it fits. But what if the kzinti found out about that operation? What if they got their paws on whoever was behind it, extorted or tortured the info out of him, or her, and realized that this was the perfect ploy for getting someone inside our organization?”
She thought. “No, that doesn’t fit. Even if they were going to launch that kind of operation, they’d have scrubbed it today, given the events out in space. On the other hand, if information has been going back and forth between researchers here and on Earth, then the UNSN or ARM would have seen that this was going to be the perfect day to slip in an operative. The local researchers could have had him pre-positioned so that, when the ship from Earth arrived, they’d send a signal to trigger his drop. And in the midst of all the chaos, who’d notice?” She turned back to look at him. “Well, John Smith, welcome home. I’m sorry to say you’ll find it rather changed.”