Man-Kzin Wars XIV Read Free

weeks, most of them spent in accelerating and decelerating, rather than a one-way voyage of decades, a market might exist there for some of the more exotic Wunderland timber products, and Anderson had been building up a stock of the beautiful red and orange woods. There might even be a market among the kzin, many of whom were fanatical chess-players and prized ornate sets. The judge knew of Andersen’s enthusiasm for his craft. Still, he should not have lingered out until this hour. Indeed, it was unlike him.
    “The kits are growing stronger,”Ruat said. “I shall have to make them new quarters. Male and female cannot grow up together.”
    The judge realized he had a point. Female kzinti, as far as he knew, were of very low intelligence. Why this was so, nobody knew, but there were theories that it was the result of some intervention long ago at the dawn of kzinti science. During the years of Occupation the human population of the Alpha Centauri System had had more pressing matters to think about.
    “I suppose,” Ruat went on, “I will have to be thinking of a nursery-name at least for my son.”
    “Think carefully,” said the judge. “It may be that he will grow into a major historical figure.”
    “How so?”
    “Who is to stop him?”
    The lesslocks attacked with howls and screams. They carried bushes, which they used as scaling ladders. The human watch had grown slack after months of quiet. Had they been silent, a good number might have scrambled over the wall unobserved.
    The judge had a double-barreled percussion-cap pistol. Men and women, wielding a variety of weapons, poured from the huts. The rush of the lesslocks overwhelmed the first humans. The judge realized with horror that they were outnumbered several times over. The armory contained most of their precious supply of percussion caps and most of what few modern combat weapons they possessed. Their hunting muskets had limited stopping power against the heavily-muscled anthropoids.
    He fired his pistol as Ruat roared the kzin battle-cry, “I lead my Heroes!” the blade of his wtsai flashing, and tore into the thickest press of the lesslocks. The lesslocks clumped round him, allowing the humans to get to the armory. The human shots were telling now. It had been wearisome and time-consuming to beat out percussion caps from sheets of copper, but it paid off now in rapidity of fire and reliability. Someone threw a grenade. It was a homemade contraption, but the blast was effective in scattering the creatures. For a moment, before they closed in again, the judge saw Ruat standing in a heap of bodies, his roars drowning out the lesslocks’ screams.
    There was the sizzling roar of a modern strakkaker, its blizzard of glass-and-Teflon needles turning lesslocks into instant anatomist’s diagrams. (The judge thought again with the detached part of his mind how human their structure was. Perhaps one day someone would find out why. Convergent evolution, he guessed. Maybe their remote ancestors had lived in trees.)
    The lesslocks were armed with stones and weighted sticks. Whatever they had expected, it had not been that the defense would be led by a kzin. Ruat hurled himself into the thickest press of them. If they had anything like a chief or leader, he would be there. Between the flashes of the muskets, the judge had an impression of body parts flying. Like a streak of orange lightning, Ruat’s male kit shot into the fray. He was already the size of a leopard. Whether he had been taught or whether his warrior instincts were enough, he was effective. He swiped and snapped at the throat of one of the lesslocks, swiped at a second, and was onto another before the first hit the ground. The second blundered past, howling in agony, entrails spilling. There was a third the kit had swiped, staggering blindly, a tier of white ribs showing.
    The lesslocks were retreating. Outnumbered though they were, the humans were now keeping up a disciplined fire, one file loading