Betrayer of Worlds by Larry Niven, Edward M. Lerner Page A

threat. We will take what I came for and be gone before other Pak can respond.”
    One unstated assumption piled on another in that speech, Nessus thought. Whatever technology Achilles sought might never have existed aboard this specific ship—or at all. The information might be aboard and yet undecipherable, expressed in an unfamiliar clan dialect or extinct language. The information might have been destroyed in the attack, or the repositories—what was the human term?—booby-trapped by the Pak crew before they died.
    Achilles was never one to admit to doubt or uncertainty. Or to hesitate to gamble with the lives of others.
    Still, could pillaging make these circumstances any worse? Probably not. And if Achilles’ mad adventure
did
turn the Pak attention toward the Fleet, Pak knowledge might even the odds.
    Nessus sang, “If Louis agrees to the attempt, and I am convinced it does not put my mission at risk, I will act.”
    “And what is that mission?”
    “That is a matter for the Hindmost to disclose.”
I
have powerful friends.
    “You never had any imagination,” Achilles sang, his undertunes rich with derision. “That is why you remain a scout and I am a minister.”
    Yet I command a ship while you wear a convict’s stun anklet, Nessus thought, and that device will remain on your foreleg for as long as you are on my ship. I need only to trill the proper chords and you will topple like a tree in a storm.
    And because Louis Wu is no fool,
we
saved
you
.
    “If Louis agrees,” Nessus repeated, “and I am convinced the effort can be undertaken safely, we will see.”
    And anything Louis recovers from the Library will be delivered to Baedeker, not Achilles.
    The outer hatch of a Pak air lock loomed in Louis’s heads-up display, the image relayed from a camera in the nose of a remote-controlled, thruster-impelled Puppeteer probe.
    The probe’s usual purpose was refueling. A stepping-disc/molecular-filter stack would transfer deuterium from any convenient ocean into
Aegis
’ tanks. Today, its nose cone removed, the stepping disc stripped of its filter, the probe would deliver Louis straight to the derelict’s air lock.
Aegis
, with its impenetrable GP hull, held station just ahead of the Pak derelict to block the sleet of relativistic interstellar muck.
    Aegis
would jump to hyperspace if anything unexpected happened. Louis could not expect Puppeteers to wait long for Louis to step back. If Achilles was at the helm, not at all.
    “Ready, Louis?” Nessus asked.
    Louis rechecked his spacesuit’s readouts. “Yes.” Ready as I’m going to be.
    Nessus and Achilles had argued about whether to attempt a boarding. At least Louis inferred an argument, the conversation sounding to him like hopped-up squirrels shut in a grand piano. Voice had said he was not allowed to translate.
    Nessus had left the decision up to Louis. Boarding might activate the ramscoop field or other, unknown, defenses. That the deuterium tanks on the derelict had run dry was pure speculation.
    Unless someone recovered whatever part of the Library that ship carried, ten men and women would have died in vain.
    Flashlight-laser in hand, its aperture narrowed to a lethally thin ray, Louis stepped from a cargo hold on
Aegis
to the probe—and into zero gravity. His boot magnets snapped to the probe fuselage.
    No ramscoop field—yet. He would have been in agony, the magnetic field inducing massive electrical currents, in full-body spasm. He detached the stepping disc and stowed it in the sling across his back.
    Even up close, the hull, aside from a few slightly discolored patches, seemed unmarred by
Argo
’s lasers. It wasn’t GP hull material, so what the tanj was the ship made of?
    The air-lock controls were intuitive enough. Laser in hand, Louis said, “I’m going aboard.”
    “Acknowledged,” Nessus said.
    The air lock cycled and Louis saw a few dim lights inside. His suit sensors reported atmosphere. No artificial gravity. Batteries or