represents a major innovation in design. Come, I will show you.” Nessus trotted toward the ship.
The kzin had raised a good point.
General Products, the puppeteer-owned trading company, had sold many diversified wares in known space; but its fortunes had been founded on the General Products hull. There had been four varieties, from a globe the size of a basketball to another globe more than a thousand feet in diameter: the #4 hull, the hull of the Long Shot. The #3 hull, a round-ended cylinder with a flattened belly, made a good multicrewed passenger ship. Such a ship had landed them on the puppeteer world a few hours ago. The #2 hull was a wasp-waisted cylinder, narrow and needle-tapered at both ends. Ordinarily it was just roomy enough for one pilot.
The General Products hull was transparent to visible light. To all other forms of electromagnetic energy, and to matter in any form, it was impervious. The company’s reputation backed that guarantee, and the guarantee had held for hundreds of years and for millions of ships. A General Products hull was the ultimate in safety.
The vehicle before them was based on a General Products #2 hull.
But…as far as Louis could see, only the life-support system and the hyperdrive shunt were within the hull. Everything else—a pair of flat thruster units aimed downward, two small fusion motors facing forward, larger fusion motors on the wing’s trailing edges, and a pair of tremendous pods on the wingtips—pods which must contain detection and communications equipment, since Louis could find no such equipment anywhere else—all this was on the great delta wing!
Half the ship was on the wing, exposed to any danger that could worry a puppeteer. Why not use a #3 hull and put everything inside?
The puppeteer had led them beneath the delta wing, to the tapered stem of the hull section. “Our purpose was to make as few breaks in the hull as possible,” said Nessus. “You see?”
Through the glasslike hull Louis saw a conduit as thick as his thigh leading through the hull into the wing section. Things looked complex at that point, until Louis tumbled to the fact that the conduit was designed to slide back into the hull in one section. Then he picked out the motor that did it all, and the metal door that would seal off the opening.
“An ordinary ship,” said the puppeteer, “requires many breaks in its hull: for sensors which do not use visible light, for reaction motors if such are used, for apertures leading to fuel tanks. Here we have only two breaks, the conduit and the airlock. One passes passengers and the other passes information. Both can be closed off.
“Our engineers have coated the hull’s inner surface with a transparent conductor. When the airlock is closed and the aperture for the wiring conduit is sealed, the interior is an unbroken conducting surface.”
“Stasis field,” Louis guessed.
“Exactly. If danger threatens, the entire life-support system goes into Slaver-type stasis for a period of several seconds. No time passes in stasis; hence nothing can harm the passengers. We are not so foolish as to trust to the hull alone. Lasers using visible light can penetrate a General Products hull, killing passengers and leaving the ship unharmed. Antimatter can disintegrate a General Products hull entirely.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“It is not widely advertised.”
Louis moved back under the delta wing to where Speaker-To-Animals was inspecting the motors. “Why so many motors?”
The kzin snorted. “Surely a human cannot have forgotten the Kzinti Lesson.”
“Oh.” Naturally any puppeteer who had studied kzinti or human history would know the Kzinti Lesson. A reaction drive is a weapon, powerful in direct ratio to its efficiency. Here were thrusters for peaceful use, and fusion drives for weapons capability.
“Now I know how you learned to handle fusion-drive craft.”
“Naturally I have been trained in war, Louis.”
“Just in case of another Man-Kzin war.”
“Must I demonstrate my skill as a warrior, Louis?”
“You shall,” the puppeteer interrupted. “Our engineers intended that this ship be flown by a kzin. Would you care to inspect the controls, Speaker?”
“Shortly. I will also need performance data, test flight records, and so forth. Is the hyperdrive shunt of standard type?”
“Yes. There have been no test flights.”
Typical, Louis thought as they walked toward the airlock. They just built the thing and left it here to wait for us. They had to. No puppeteer was willing to test-fly it.
Where was Teela?
He was about to call out when she reappeared on the pentagramic receiver plate. She had been playing with