Betrayer of Worlds by Larry Niven, Edward M. Lerner

recurrence of hunger, in the coming and going of sleepand dream and catatonia, time passed. He had nothing to do but wait. He had nothing to wait for but extinction.
    Death would be quick. The Pak would come, and his hearts would stop in fright.
    Once he had had the choice of waiting in stasis. In a moment of clarity, he had taken apart the field generator and hurled its components into the void. The Pak whom Ausfaller had once captured had not known about stasis fields. Achilles would not let an enemy acquire the technology from him.
    The tether pulled Achilles up short yet again, and he looked himself in the eyes. He had aspired to rule worlds, and now the limit of his domain was this short range of salvaged fiber-optic cable. He had been a great scientist, and now his only tool was the pressure suit that kept him alive. He had traveled among the stars, and now, other than dim readouts in his helmets, starlight would be the only illumination for the rest of his miserable existence.
    Why wait for the Pak? He could end everything now. True, his pressure suit would not open in a vacuum, or allow him to turn off life support, but it could not stop him from piercing the fabric on some jagged bit of debris. Or he could slip his tether and jet from the shelter of the hull. Radiation would kill him slowly, but the suit’s life support, unable to save him, had ample drugs to ease his passage.
    He drifted in and out of sleep, considering the possibilities. To be or not to be.
    Motion!
    Not floating debris. That he no longer noticed. And his helmet lights had been off for—well, he did not know how long—but long enough. His eyes were fully adapted to starlight. He could hardly have missed the approach of a fusion-drive ship.
    Voices!
    Voices, he understood. He was talking to himself again without knowing it.
    He listened to the voices for a while, wondering why he did not sound like himself and why he muttered so softly. As long as he was feeling curious, he wondered a bit more about the odd sense that he had seen something moving.
    The motion came from
outside
this hulk, in the form of stars eclipsed. A ship!
    He tongued the radio controls in his helmets. The muttering became the beautiful, musical speech of another Citizen.
    “. . . Vessel
Aegis.
Please respond. Repeat. This is Concordance vessel
Aegis
. Please respond. Repeat. This is—”
    “Here!” Achilles shouted, harmonics pulsing with need. “I am in here! Here!”
    “
Aegis.
Please respond. Repeat. This—”
    The hail, obviously recorded, cut out. “I am sending in a human with a stepping disc,” the voices said. “You are safe.”

PROMISED LAND

13

    Achilles cantered onto the bridge, glanced at the main display, and sneered. “I suppose you think we owe them apologies.”
    Nessus dismissed the image of the Pak derelict, then stood from the pilot’s couch. He tried to make allowances, but it was hard. Maybe if Achilles had shown any sympathy for the New Terrans he had sent to their deaths. . . .
    No matter how Nessus tried, he could not justify the unprovoked attack on the Pak. The aliens had turned away from the Fleet many years ago. In a few more years, even the alien rearguard would have passed. Why draw their attention now?
    Achilles had quickly put behind him the horrors of his ordeal. His coat, off-white with patches of tan, had been brushed until it glowed. His brown mane was replete with braids and curls, freshly woven with orange garnets. Rather than wear a standard shipboard utility belt, he had synthed an ornamental sash decorated with full Ministry of Science regalia.
    By asserting his status, Achilles must hope to commandeer
Aegis.
    “I suppose,” Nessus answered cautiously, “that provoking the Pak is a dangerous activity.”
    Achilles stood tall, his hooves set far apart.
Un
ready to run: the stance of dominance. “The Pak crew of that ship is dead, not provoked, and with knowledge from the Library we can eliminate the Gw’oth as a