Man-Kzin Wars XIII-ARC Read Online Free PDF Page B

seemed useless. The search continued but no trace of the natives or their advanced technology was found. They had gone . . . somewhere.
    Captain concluded heavily that there was little worth bothering with. There were the insects, probably existing in some symbiotic relationship with the vegetation, and some small animals, according to Strategist, but nothing to make a worthwhile hunt. They seemed to feed on dead and decaying vegetable matter, and there were not many of them. They had a peculiar metabolism that led them to excrete what was, for their size, very large amounts of carbon dioxide. Without that, Captain thought, the oxygen levels on the planet would be even higher than they were. Telepath reported they were not sentient. Alien Technologies Officer dissected a couple with the aid of an electron microscope, and reported that he felt —he could not give precise reasons—that their cell structures had been artificially altered to give them this peculiar metabolism. This was also disquieting in a vague, undefinable sort of way—another indication of a science beyond Kzin’s own. Why would the natives—if it was indeed their handiwork—want animals whose only use seemed to be to produce carbon dioxide? It hinted at unpleasant potentials for bio-weapons, but no facts into which one could sink a claw. There was still no trace of either of the life-forms which they had seen previously. No footprints, no factories, no houses, no nursery areas, no cemeteries or crematoria for their dead. Only the one, strangely ineffective god or war-machine.
    There were considerably more animals living in the sea and rivers. These were also not sentient, and their dead bodies washing ashore (they floated with the aid of bladders, also filled with carbon dioxide which they apparently extracted from sea-water), seemed to provide much of what proteins the ecosystem contained. The people, it seemed, would be the only profitable product of the planet. Kzinti tended to have a fairly high turnover of slaves, and there was always a demand for them on kzin worlds.
    But the people were nowhere to be found.
    Kzinti on a hunt are nothing it not thorough. Had any sentient animals been lurking in hiding, they would have been found. Had they burrowed underground, kzinti tracking devices would have detected disturbed soil or rock. There were a few caves, but they were empty. There was one curious detail about the caves in limestone areas: the stalactites and other calcium-carbonate formations seemed to have been removed. Contemplating this, the alien’s boast that they could travel in time came back to Captain. Was there . . . could there be . . . some connection? He dismissed the thought.
    They searched the ground with high-resolution cameras from space, and visually from the highest parts of the strange buildings. They set off small bombs such as a human geologist might have recognized to detect any hidden subterranean chambers. Using technology developed to deal with the Chunquen, they explored the contours of the seabed. They flew to the tops of hills to survey the country around, and they explored canyons and valleys.
    Finally, Alien Technology Officer reported to Captain, “They’ve gone.”
    Captain thought hard. He did not want to end up in the arena, and the more spectacular, prolonged and expensive his failure here, the greater the chances of that became. At present, things had not gone too far: he had landed on a planet which turned out to be uninhabited. He had not wasted too many resources yet, or cost the Patriarchy any assets. No one could blame him for making a mere reconnaissance-in-force of the planet, particularly if the bridge-recordings of the alien conversations were quietly destroyed.
    The locals must have disintegrated themselves. The disintegrators would be valuable weapons, but where were they? The idea they had really travelled in time returned, and again he dismissed it. There were too many paradoxes involved. Or he