Larry Niven - The Houses of the Kzinti

The Houses of the Kzinti

Jerry Pournelle

S.M. Stirling

Dean Ing

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are

fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

Jerry Pournelle & S.M. Stirling.

form.

A Baen Books Original Omnibus

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 0-7434-3577-X

Cover art by Larry Elmore

First printing, December 2002

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pournelle, Jerry, 1933-

The houses of the Kzinti / by Jerry Pournelle, S.M. Stirling & Dean Ing.

p. cm.

"A Baen Books original omnibus"—T.p. verso.

Contents: Cathouse / by Dean Ing — The children's hour / by Jerry Pournelle

& S.M. Stirling.

ISBN 0-7434-3577-X

1. Human-alien encounters—Fiction. 2. Life on other planets—Fiction. 3. Science

fiction, American. I. Ing, Dean. II. Stirling, S.M. III. Ing, Dean. Cathouse. IV.

Pournelle, Jerry, 1933– Children's hour. V. Title.

PS3566.O815 H67 2002

813'.54—dc21

2002028324

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Produced by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH

Printed in the United States of America

Baen Books by Jerry Pournelle & S.M. Stirling

The Prince

The "War World" series

Blood Feuds

Blood Vengeance

Baen Books by Jerry Pournelle

Janissaries

Birth of Fire

Baen Books by S.M. Stirling

The Draka series:

The Domination

Drakon

Drakas! (anthology)

with James Doohan:

The Flight Engineer series:

The Rising

The Privateer

The Independent Command

with David Drake:

The Forge

The Chosen

The Reformer

The City Who Fought (with Anne McCaffrey)

The Ship Avenged

Snowbrother

Cathouse

by Dean Ing

Sampling war's minor ironies: Locklear knew so little about the Weasel or wartime alarms, he thought

the klaxon was hooting for planetfall. That is why, when the Weasel winked into normal space near that

lurking kzin warship, little Locklear would soon be her only survivor. The second irony was that, while

the Interworld Commission's last bulletin had announced sporadic new outbursts of kzin hostility,

Locklear was the only civilian on the Weasel who had never thought of himself as a warrior and did not

intend to become one.

Moments after the Weasel's intercom announced completion of their jump, Locklear was steadying

himself next to his berth, waiting for the ship's gravity-polarizer to kick in and swallowing hard because,

like ancient French wines, he traveled poorly. He watched with envy as Herrera, the hairless,

whipcord-muscled Belter in the other bunk, swung out with one foot planted on the deck and the other

against the wall. "Like a cat," Locklear said admiringly.

"That's no compliment anymore, flatlander," Herrera said. "It looks like the goddam tabbies want a

fourth war. You'd think they'd learn," he added with a grim headshake.

Locklear sighed. As a student of animal psychology in general, he'd known a few kzinti well enough

to admire the way they learned. He also knew Herrera was on his way to enlist if, as seemed likely, the

kzinti were spoiling for another war. And in that case, Locklear's career was about to be turned upside

down. Instead of a scholarly life puzzling out the meanings of Grog forepaw gestures and kzin

ear-twitches, he would probably be conscripted into some warren full of psych warfare pundits, for the

duration. These days, an ethologist had to be part historian, too—Locklear remembered more than he

liked about the three previous man-kzin wars.

And Herrera was ready to fight the kzinti already, and Locklear had called him a cat. Locklear

opened his mouth to apologize but the klaxon drowned him out. Herrera slammed the door open, vaulted

into the passageway reaching for handholds.

"What's the matter," Locklear shouted. "Where are you—?"

Herrera's answer, half-lost between the door-slam and the klaxon, sounded like "atta nation" to

Locklear, who did not even know the drill for a deadheading passenger during battle stations. Locklear

was still waiting for a familiar tug of gravity when that door sighed, the hermetic seal swelling as always

during a battle alert, and he had time to wonder why Herrera was in such a hurry before the Weasel took

her fatal hit amidships.

An energy beam does not always sound like a thunderclap from inside the stricken vessel. This one

sent a faint crackling down the length of the Weasel's hull, like the rustle of pre-space parchment crushed

in a man's hand. Sequestered alone in a two-man cabin near the ship's aft galley, Locklear saw his bunk

leap toward him, the inertia of his own body wrenching his grip from his handhold near the door. He did

not have time to consider the implications of a blow powerful enough to send a twelve-hundred-ton

Privateer-class patrol ship tumbling like a pinwheel, nor the fact that the blow itself was the reaction from

most of the Weasel's air, exhausting to space in explosive decompression. And because his cabin had no

external viewport, he could not see the scatter of human bodies into the void. The last thing he saw was

the underside of his bunk, and the metal brace that caught him above the left cheekbone. Then he knew

only a mild curiosity: wondering why he heard something like the steady sound of a thin whistle

underwater, and why that yellow flash in his head was followed by an infrared darkness crammed with

pain.

* * *

It was the pain that brought him awake; that, and the sound of loud static. No, more like the zaps of

an arc welder in the hands of a novice—or like a catfight. And then he turned a blurred mental page and

knew it, the way a Rorschach blot suddenly becomes a face half-forgotten but always feared. So it did

not surprise him, when he opened his eyes, to see two huge kzinti standing over him.

To a man like Herrera they would merely have been massive. To Locklear, a man of less than

average height, they were enormous; nearly half again his height. The broadest kzin, with the notched

right ear and the black horizontal furmark like a frown over his eyes, opened his mouth in what, to

humans, might be a smile. But kzinti smiles showed dagger teeth and always meant immediate threat. This

one was saying something that sounded like, "Clash-rowll whuff, rurr fitz."

Locklear needed a few seconds to translate it, and by that time the second kzin was saying it in

Interworld: "Grraf-Commander says, 'Speak when you are spoken to.' For myself I would prefer that

you remained silent. I have eaten no monkey-meat for too long."

While Locklear composed a reply, the big one—the Grraf-Commander, evidently—spoke again to

his fellow. Something about whether the monkey knew his posture was deliberately obscene. Locklear,

lying on his back on a padded table as big as a Belter's honeymoon bed, realized his arms and legs were

flung wide. "I am not very fluent in the Hero's tongue," he said in passable Kzin, struggling to a sitting

position as he spoke.

As he did, some of that pain localized at his right collarbone. Locklear moved very slowly thereafter.

Then, recognizing the dot-and-comma-rich labels that graced much of the equipment in that room, he

decided not to ask where he was. He could be nowhere but an emergency surgical room for kzin

warriors. That meant he was on a kzin ship.

A faint slitting of the smaller kzin's eyes might have meant determination, a grasping for patience,

or—if Locklear recalled the texts, and if they were right, a small "if" followed by a very large one—a

pause for relatively cold calculation. The smaller kzin said, in his own tongue, "If the monkey speaks the

Hero's tongue, it is probably as a spy."

"My presence here was not my idea," Locklear pointed out, surprised to find his memory of the

language returning so quickly. "I boarded the Weasel on command to leave a dangerous region, not to

enter one. Ask the ship's quartermaster, or check her records."

The commander spat and sizzled again: "The crew are all carrion. As you will soon be, unless you tell

us why, of all the monkeys on that ship, you were the only one so specially protected."

Locklear moaned. This huge kzin's partial name and his scars implied the kind of warrior whose valor

and honor forbade lies to a captive. All dead but himself? Locklear shrugged before he thought, and the

shrug sent a stab of agony across his upper chest. "Sonofabitch," he gasped in agony. The navigator kzin

translated. The larger one grinned, the kind of grin that might fasten on his throat.

Locklear said in Kzin, very fast, "Not you! I was cursing the pain."

"A telepath could verify your meanings very quickly," said the smaller kzin.

"An excellent idea," said Locklear. "He will verify that I am no spy, and not a combatant, but only an

ethologist from Earth. A kzin acquaintance once told me it was important to know your forms of address.

I do not wish to give offense."

"Call me Tzak-Navigator," said the smaller kzin abruptly, and grasped Locklear by the shoulder,

talons sinking into the human flesh. Locklear moaned again, gritting his teeth. "You would attack? Good,"

the navigator went on, mistaking the grimace, maintaining his grip, the formidable kzin body trembling

with intent.

"I cannot speak well with such pain," Locklear managed to grunt. "Not as well-protected as you

think."

"We found you well-protected and sealed alone in that ship," said the commander, motioning for the

navigator to slacken his hold. "I warn you, we must rendezvous the Raptor with another Ripping-Fang

class cruiser to pick up a full crew before we hit the Eridani worlds. I have no time to waste on such a

scrawny monkey as you, which we have caught nearer our home worlds than to your own."

Locklear grasped his right elbow as support for that aching collarbone. "I was surveying life-forms on

purely academic study—in peacetime, so far as I knew," he said. "The old patrol craft I leased didn't

have a weapon on it."

"You lie," the navigator hissed. "We saw them."

"The Weasel was not my ship, Tzak-Navigator. Its commander brought me back under protest; said

the Interworld Commission wanted noncombatants out of harm's way—and here I am in its cloaca."

"Then it was already well-known on that ship that we are at war. I feel better about killing it," said the

commander. "Now, as to the ludicrous cargo it was carrying: what is your title and importance?"

"I am scholar Carroll Locklear. I was probably the least important man on the Weasel—except to

myself. Since I have nothing to hide, bring a telepath."

"Now it gives orders," snarled the navigator.

"Please," Locklear said quickly.

"Better," the commander said.

"It knows," the navigator muttered. "That is why it issues such a challenge."

"Perhaps," the commander rumbled. To Locklear he said, "A skeleton crew of four rarely includes a

telepath. That statement will either satisfy your challenge, or I can satisfy it in more—conventional ways."

That grin again, feral, willing.

"I meant no challenge, Grraf-Commander. I only want to satisfy you of who I am, and who I'm not."

"We know what you are," said the navigator. "You are our prisoner, an important one, fleeing the

Patriarchy rim in hopes that the monkeyship could get you to safety." He reached again for Locklear's

shoulder.

"That is pure torture," Locklear said, wincing, and saw the navigator stiffen as the furry orange arm

dropped. If only he had recalled the kzinti disdain for torture earlier! "I am told you are an honorable

race. May I be treated properly as a captive?"

"By all means," the commander said, almost in a purr. "We eat captives."

Locklear, slyly: "Even important ones?"

"If it pleases me," the commander replied. "More likely you could turn your coat in the service of the

Patriarchy. I say you could; I would not suggest such an obscenity. But that is probably the one chance

your sort has for personal survival."

"My sort?"

The commander looked Locklear up and down, at the slender body, lightly muscled with only the

deep chest to suggest stamina. "One of the most vulnerable specimens of monkeydom I have ever seen,"

he said.

That was the moment when Locklear decided he was at war. "Vulnerable, and important, and

captive. Eat me," he said, wondering if that final phrase was as insulting in Kzin as it was in Interworld.

Evidently not . . .

"Gunner! Apprentice Engineer," the commander called suddenly, and Locklear heard two responses

through the ship's intercom. "Lock this monkey in a wiper's quarters." He turned to his navigator.

"Perhaps Fleet Commander Skrull-Rrit will want this one alive. We shall know in an eight-squared of

duty watches." With that, the huge kzin commander strode out.

* * *

After his second sleep, Locklear found himself roughly hustled forward in the low-polarity ship's

gravity of the Raptor by the nameless Apprentice Engineer. This smallest of the crew had been a kitten

not long before and, at two-meter height, was still filling out. The transverse mustard-tinted band across

his abdominal fur identified Apprentice Engineer down the full length of the hull passageway.

Locklear, his right arm in a sling of bandages, tried to remember all the mental notes he had made

since being tossed into that cell. He kept his eyes downcast to avoid a challenging look—and because he

did not want his cold fury to show. These orange-furred monstrosities had killed a ship and crew with

every semblance of pride in the act. They treated a civilian captive at best like playground bullies treat an

urchin, and at worst like food. It was all very well to study animal behavior as a detached ethologist. It

was something else when the toughest warriors in the galaxy attached you to their food chain.

He slouched because that was as far from a military posture as a man could get—and Locklear's

personal war could hardly be declared if he valued his own pelt. He would try to learn where hand

weapons were kept, but would try to seem stupid. He would . . . he found the last vow impossible to

keep with the Grraf-Commander's first question.

Wheeling in his command chair on the Raptor's bridge, the commander faced the captive. "If you

piloted your own monkeyship, then you have some menial skills." It was not a question; more like an

accusation. "Can you learn to read meters if it will lengthen your pathetic life?"

Ah, there was a question! Locklear was on the point of lying, but it took a worried kzin to sing a

worried song. If they needed him to read meters, he might learn much in a short time. Besides, they'd

know bloody well if he lied on this matter. "I can try," he said. "What's the problem?"

"Tell him," spat Grraf-Commander, spinning about again to the holo screen.

Tzak-Navigator made a gesture of agreement, standing beside Locklear and gazing toward the vast

humped shoulders of the fourth kzin. This nameless one was of truly gigantic size. He turned, growling,

and Locklear noted the nose scar that seemed very appropriate for a flash-tempered gunner.

Tzak-Navigator met his gaze and paused, with the characteristic tremor of a kzin who prided himself on

physical control. "Ship's Gunner, you are relieved. Adequately done."

With the final phrase, Ship's Gunner relaxed his ear umbrellas and stalked off with a barely creditable

salute. Tzak-Navigator pointed to the vacated seat, and Locklear took it. "He has got us lost," muttered

the navigator.

"But you were the navigator," Locklear said.

"Watch your tongue!"

"I'm just trying to understand crew duties. I asked what the problem was, and Grraf-Commander

said to tell me."

The tremor became more obvious, but Tzak-Navigator knew when he was boxed. "With a four-kzin

crew, our titles and our duties tend to vary. When I accept duties of executive officer and

communications officer as well, another member may prove his mettle at some simple tasks of

astrogation."

"I would think Apprentice Engineer might be good at reading meters," Locklear said carefully.

"He has enough of them to read in the engine room. Besides, Ship's Gunner has superior time in

grade; to pass him over would have been a deadly insult."

"Um. And I don't count?"

"Exactly. As a captive, you are a nonperson—even if you have skills that a gunner might lack."

"You said it was adequately done," Locklear pointed out.

"For a gunner," spat the navigator, and Locklear smiled. A kzin, too proud to lie, could still speak

with mental reservations to an underling. The navigator went on: "We drew first blood with our chance

sortie to the galactic West, but Ship's Gunner must verify gravitational blips as we pass in hyperdrive."

Locklear listened, and asked, and learned. What he learned initially was fast mental translation of

octal numbers to decimal. What he learned eventually was that, counting on the gunner to verify likely

blips of known star masses, Grraf-Commander had finally realized that they were monumentally lost,

light-years from their intended rendezvous on the rim of known space. And that rendezvous is on the

way to the Eridani worlds, Locklear thought. He said, as if to himself but in Kzin, "Out Eridani way, I

hear they're always on guard for you guys. You really expect to get out of this alive?"

"No," said the navigator easily. "Your life may be extended a little, but you will die with heroes.

Soon."

"Sounds like a suicide run," Locklear said.

"We are volunteers," the navigator said with lofty arrogance, making no attempt to argue the point,

and then continued his instructions.

Presently, studying the screen, Locklear said, "That gunner has us forty parsecs from anyplace. Jump

into normal space long enough for an astrogation fix and you've got it."

"Do not abuse my patience, monkey. Our last Fleet Command message on hyperwave forbade us to

make unnecessary jumps."

After a moment, Locklear grinned. "And your commander doesn't want to have to tell Fleet

Command you're lost."

"What was that thing you did with your face?"

"Uh,—just stretching the muscles," Locklear lied, and pointed at one of the meters. "There; um, that

was a field strength of, oh hell, three eights and four, right?"

Tzak-Navigator did not have to tremble because his four-fingered hand was in motion as a blur,

punching buttons. "Yes. I have a star mass and," the small screen stuttered its chicken-droppings in

Kzinti, "here are the known candidates."

Locklear nodded. In this little-known region, some star masses, especially the larger ones, would

have been recorded. With several fixes in hyperdrive, he could make a strong guess at their direction with

respect to the galactic core. But by the time he had his second group of candidate stars, Locklear also

had a scheme.

* * *

Locklear asked for his wristcomp, to help him translate octal numbers—his chief motive was less

direct—and got it after Apprentice Engineer satisfied himself that it was no energy weapon. The engineer,

a suspicious churl quick with his hands and clearly on the make for status, displayed disappointment at his

own findings by throwing the instrument in Locklear's face. Locklear decided that the kzin lowest on the

scrotum pole was most anxious to advance by any means available. And that, he decided, just might be

common in all sentient behavior.

Two hours later by his wristcomp, when Locklear tried to speak to the commander without prior

permission, the navigator backhanded him for his trouble and then explained the proper channels. "I will

decide whether your message is worth Grraf-Commander's notice," he snarled.

Trying to stop his nosebleed, Locklear told him.

"A transparent ruse," the navigator accused, "to save your own hairless pelt."

"It would have that effect," Locklear agreed. "Maybe. But it would also let you locate your position."

The navigator looked him up and down. "Which will aid us in our mission against your own kind. You

truly disgust me."

In answer, Locklear only shrugged. Tzak-Navigator wheeled and crossed to the commander's

vicinity, stiff and proper, and spoke rapidly for a few moments. Presently, Grraf-Commander motioned

for Locklear to approach.

Locklear decided that a military posture might help this time, and tried to hold his body straight

despite his pains. The commander eyed him silently, then said, "You offer me a motive to justify jumping

into normal space?"

"Yes, Grraf-Commander: to deposit an important captive in a lifeboat around some stellar body."

"And why in the name of the Patriarchy would I want to?"

"Because it is almost within the reach of plausibility that the occupants of this ship might not survive

this mission," Locklear said with irony that went unnoticed. "But en route to your final glory, you can

inform Fleet Command where you have placed a vitally important captive, to be retrieved later."

"You admit your status at last."

"I have a certain status," Locklear admitted. It's damned low, and that's certain enough. "And

while you were doing that in normal space, a navigator might just happen to determine exactly where you

are."

"You do not deceive me in your motive. If I did not locate that spot," Tzak-Navigator said, "no

Patriarchy ship could find you—and you would soon run out of food and air."

"And you would miss the Eridani mission," Locklear reminded him, "because we aren't getting any

blips and you may be getting farther from your rendezvous with every breath."

"At the least, you are a traitor to monkeydom," the navigator said. "No kzin worthy of the name

would assist an enemy mission."

Locklear favored him with a level gaze. "You've decided to waste all nine lives for glory. Count on

me for help."

"Monkeys are clever where their pelts are concerned," rumbled the commander. "I do not intend to

miss rendezvous, and this monkey must be placed in a safe cage. Have the crew provision a lifeboat but

disable its drive, Tzak-Navigator. When we locate a stellar mass, I want all in readiness for the jump."

The navigator saluted and moved off the bridge. Locklear received permission to return to his

console, moving slowly, trying to watch the commander's furry digits in preparation for a jump that might

be required at any time. Locklear punched several notes into the wristcomp's memory; you could never

tell when a scholar's notes might come in handy.

Locklear was chewing on kzin rations, reconstituted meat which met human teeth like a leather brick

and tasted of last week's oysters, when the long-range meter began to register. It was not much of a blip

but it got stronger fast, the vernier meter registering by the time Locklear called out. He watched the

commander, alone while the rest of the crew were arranging that lifeboat, and used his wristcomp a few

more times before Grraf-Commander's announcement.

* * *

Tzak-Navigator, eyeing his console moments after the jump and still light-minutes from that small

stellar mass, was at first too intent on his astrogation to notice that there was no nearby solar blaze. But

Locklear noticed, and felt a surge of panic.

"You will not perish in solar radiation, at least," said Grraf-Commander in evident pleasure. "You

have found yourself a black dwarf, monkey!"

Locklear punched a query. He found no candidate stars to match this phenomenon. "Permission to

speak, Tzak-Navigator?"

The navigator punched in a final instruction and, while his screen flickered, turned to the local

viewscreen. "Wait until you have something worth saying," he ordered, and paused, staring at what that

screen told him. Then, as if arguing with his screen, he complained, "But known space is not old enough

for a completely burnt-out star."

"Nevertheless," the commander replied, waving toward the screens, "if not a black dwarf, a very,

very brown one. Thank that lucky star, Tzak-Navigator; it might have been a neutron star."

"And a planet," the navigator exclaimed. "Impossible! Before its final collapse, this star would have

converted any nearby planet into a gas shell. But there it lies!" He pointed to a luminous dot on the

screen.

"That might make it easy to find again," Locklear said with something akin to faint hope. He knew,

watching the navigator's split concentration between screens, that the kzin would soon know the Raptor's

position. No chance beyond this brown dwarf now, an unheard-of anomaly, to escape this suicide ship.

The navigator ignored him. "Permission for proximal orbit," he requested.

"Denied," the commander said. "You know better than that. Close orbit around a dwarf could rip us

asunder with angular acceleration. That dwarf may be only the size of a single dreadnought, but its mass

is enormous enough to bend distant starlight."

While Locklear considered what little he knew of collapsed star matter, a cupful of which would

exceed the mass of the greatest warship in known space, the navigator consulted his astrogation screen

again. "I have our position," he said at last. "We were on the way to the galactic rim, thanks to that

untrained—well, at least he is a fine gunner. Grraf-Commander, I meant to ask permission for orbit

around the planet. We can discard this offal in the lifeboat there."

"Granted," said the commander. Locklear took more notes as the two kzinti piloted their ship nearer.

If lifeboats were piloted with the same systems as cruisers, and if he could study the ways in which that

lifeboat drive could be energized, he might yet take a hand in his fate.

The maneuvers took so much time that Locklear feared the kzin would drop the whole idea, but, "Let

it be recorded that I keep my bargains, even with monkeys," the commander grouched as the planet

began to grow in the viewport.

"Tiny suns, orbiting the planet? Stranger and stranger," the navigator mused. "Grraf-Commander, this

is—not natural."

"Exactly so. It is artificial," said the commander. Brightening, he added, "Perhaps a special project,

though I do not know how we could move a full-sized planet into orbit around a dwarf. Tzak-Navigator,

see if this tallies with anything the Patriarchy may have on file." No sound passed between them when the

navigator looked up from his screen, but their shared glance did not improve the commander's mood.

"No? Well, backup records in triplicate," he snapped. "Survey sensors to full gain."

Locklear took more notes, his heart pounding anew with every added strangeness of this singular

discovery. The planet orbited several light-minutes from the dead star, with numerous satellites in

synchronous orbits, blazing like tiny suns—or rather, like spotlights in imitation of tiny suns, for the

radiation from those satellites blazed only downward, toward the planet's surface. Those satellites,

according to the navigator, seemed to be moving a bit in complex patterns, not all of them in the same

ways—and one of them dimmed even as they watched.

The commander brought the ship nearer, and now Tzak-Navigator gasped with a fresh astonishment.

"Grraf-Commander, this planet is dotted with force-cylinder generators. Not complete shells, but open to

space at orbital height. And the beam-spread of each satellite's light flux coincides with the edge of each

force cylinder. No, not all of them; several of those circular areas are not bathed in any light at all. Fallow

areas?"

"Or unfinished areas," the commander grunted. "Perhaps we have discovered a project in the

making."

Locklear saw blazes of blue, white, red, and yellow impinging in vast circular patterns on the planet's

surface. Almost as if someone had placed small models of Sirius, Sol, Fomalhaut, and other suns

out here, he thought. He said nothing. If he orbited this bizarre mystery long enough, he might probe its

secrets. If he orbited it too long, he would damned well die of starvation.

Then, "Homeworld," blurted the astonished navigator, as the ship continued its close pass around this

planet that was at least half the mass of Earth.

Locklear saw it too, a circular region that seemed to be hundreds of kilometers in diameter, rich in

colors that reminded him of a kzin's fur. The green expanse of a big lake, too, as well as dark masses that

might have been mountain crags. And then he noticed that one of the nearby circular patterns seemed

achingly familiar in its colors, and before he thought, he said it in Interworld:

"Earth!"

The commander leaped to a mind-numbing conclusion the moment before Locklear did. "This can

only be a galactic prison—or a zoo," he said in a choked voice. "The planet was evidently moved here,

after the brown dwarf was discovered. There seems to be no atmosphere outside the force walls, and the

planetary surface between those circular regions is almost as cold as interstellar deeps, according to the

sensors. If it is a prison, each compound is well-isolated from the others. Nothing could live in the

interstices."

Locklear knew that the commander had overlooked something that could live there very

comfortably, but held his tongue awhile. Then, "Permission to speak," he said.

"Granted," said the commander. "What do you know of this—this thing?"

"Only this: whether it is a zoo or a prison, one of those compounds seems very Earthlike. If you left

me there, I might find air and food to last me indefinitely."

Larry Niven - The Houses of the Kzinti

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