Man-Kzin Wars XIII-ARC by Larry Niven

same tranquilizer she had used on him before.
    “Someone is always watching on the monitor,” she said, smiling her gentle, closed-lipped smile. “They know I’ll have their heads if anything happens to you. Understand?”
    Pretending to understand only part, and that mostly from the physical demonstration, not the words, the kzin nodded.
    He found himself deeply impressed. In situations where a reprimand was exacted, kzinti supervisors usually settled for taking an ear. Dr. Anixter must be more ferocious than he had thought if she insisted on an entire head.
    * * *
    Jenni had just returned from one of her long walks with the kzin when Otto Bismarck knocked at the door of her office. Even as she admitted him, she assessed the information he had wordlessly given her.
    He came to my office rather than summoning me to his, so he wants something from me. However, he did not call ahead for an appointment, nor did he wait long after my return. The one shows that he expected me to admit him. The other . . . Impatience, perhaps? Or is it something more subtle? A signal that he does not think anything I have to do would be more important than seeing him?
    Motioning her visitor to a chair, she took a long pull on the drink bulb Theophilus always had waiting for her on her return. Today’s choice was hot cocoa, no doubt an acknowledgment that her walk had been through some of the longer internal tunnels cut into the asteroid in which this base was made, areas that while not cold were not precisely warm either.
    “Hello, Otto,” she said. “What may I do for you?”
    She wondered if Miffy was conscious of the subtle distinction in her use of “may” rather than “can.” She swallowed a laugh. She was always like this after a session with the kzin, hyperconscious of the many meanings of words and actions, of messages that went beyond mere dictionary definitions.
    The kzin tended to be highly literal in his use of words. Was this a reflection of how kzinti thought or was it his effort to hide that he knew a great deal more Interworld than she had “taught” him?
    Otto’s reply was not what Jenni had expected.
    “What do you know about the other project we’re working on here at the base?”
    Jenni blinked, covering her surprise with another pull on her drink bulb. “You mean the mechanical one? The one that has to do with some scavenged kzinti technology?”
    “That one.”
    She decided against admitting she knew the technology in question was a ship. After all, she wasn’t certain. She’d deduced it from the types of injuries that had come into her office—the base did have numerous autodocs, but some injuries were best looked at by a human medico. There had been a few verbal slips as well. She didn’t want to get anyone in trouble.
    “I don’t know much more. I’ve been assuming it’s something scavenged from a kzinti craft either before the self-destruct went off or after an incomplete destruction.”
    Miffy let slip—or was it a slip?—a look of satisfaction.
    “It’s better than that,” he said, “or should be.”
    He paused, doubtless considering—or appearing to consider—how much he should tell her. Then he continued.
    “We actually have an entire intact ship. It’s not a very large one, but with some repair it should be functional.”
    Jenni made surprised and astonished noises. So encouraged, Miffy unbent further.
    “From studies of past wrecks, we had gathered a fair idea of where the kzinti tended to mount their self-destruction packets. There are usually several—near the drives, near the bridge, and suchlike. A plan was evolved in which an effort was to be made to disable these packets. I won’t bore you with the details of our near successes and flat-out failures, but in the end we succeeded.”
    Jenni knew that by “we,” Miffy meant the wide-spread arms of Intelligence, not him personally. As far as she knew, he had never left the base.
    “The ship was brought here. When I say it