Ringworld (10 page)

"They wanted to keep their sea life," Teela guessed. "They needed one deep occan. The fin must be to keep the depths cool. A radiator."

An ocean not deep enough, but easily broad enough, to swallow the Earth.

"Enough of this," the kzin said suddenly. "Now we must see the inner surface."

"First then are measurements to take. Is the ring truly circular? A minor deviation would spill the air into space."

"We know that there is air, Nessus. The distribution of water on the inner surface will tell us how the ring deviates from circularity."

Nessus surrendered. "Very well. As soon as we reach the further rim."

There were meteor wormholes. Not many, but they were there. Louis thought with amusement that the Ringworlders had been remiss in cleaning out their solar system. But no, these must have come from outside, from between the stars. One conical crater floated by in the fusion light and Louis saw a glint of light at the bottom. something shiny, reflecting.

It must be a glimpse of the ring floor. The ring floor, a substance dense enough to stop 40 percent of neutrinos, and presumably very rigid. Above/inward from the ring floor, soil and seas and cities, and above these, air. Below/outward from the ring floor, a spongy material, like foam plastic perhaps, to take the brunt of a meteoroid impact. Most meteoroids would vaporise within the thick foamed material; but a few would get through, to leave conical holes with shiny bottoms ...

Far down the length of the Ringworld, almost beyond its infinitely gentle curve, Louis's eyes found a dimple. That must have been a big one, he thought. Big enough to show by starlight, that far away.

He did not call attention to the meteoroid dimple. His eyes and mind were not yet used to the proportions of the Ringworld.

Blazing, the G2 sun dawned beyond the straight black rim of the ring. It was uncomfortably bright until Speaker touched a polarizer; and then Louis could look at the disc, and he found an edge of shadow cutting its arc. Shadow square.

"We must be careful," Nessus warned. "If we were to match velocities with the ring and hover above the inner surface, we would surely be attacked."

Speaker's answer came in a slurred rumble. The kzin must be tiring after so many hours behind the horseshoe of controls. "By what weapon would we be attacked? We have shown that the Ringworld engineers do not have so much as a working radio station."

"We cannot guess at the nature of their communications. Telepathy, perhaps, or resonant vibrations in the ring floor, or electrical impulses in metal wires. Similarly, we know nothing of their weaponry. Hovering over their surface, we would be a serious threat. They would use what weapons they have."

Louis nodded his agreement. He was not naturally cautious, and the Ringworld held him by the curiosity bump; but the puppeteer was right.

Hovering over the surface, the Liar would be a potential meteor. A big one. Moving at merely orbital speed, such a mass was a hellish danger; for one touch of atmosphere would send it shrieking down at several hundred miles per second. Moving at faster than orbital speed, holding a curved path with the drives, the ship would be a lesser but a surer threat; for if the drive were to fail, "centrifugal force" would hurl the ship outward/down at populated lands. The Ringworlders would not take meteors lightly. Not when a single puncture in the ring floor would drain all the world's breathing-air and spew it at the stars.

Speaker turned from the control board. It put him eye to eye with the puppeteer's flat heads. "Your orders, then."

"First you must slow the ship to orbital speed."

"Then?"

"Accelerate toward the sun. We can inspect the ring's habitable surface to some extent as it diminishes below us. Our major target shall be the shadow squares."

"Such caution is unnecessary and humiliating. We have no slightest interest in the shadow squares."

Tanj! Louis thought. Tired and hungry as he was, would he now be called on to play peacemaker for the aliens? It had been too long since any of them had eaten or slept. If Louis was tired, the kzin must be exhausted, spoiling for a fight.

The puppeteer was saying, "We have a definite interest in the shadow squares. Their area intercepts more sunlight than does the Ringworld itself. They would make ideal thermoelectric generators for the Ringworld's power supply."

The kzin snarled something venomous in the Hero's Tongue. His reply in Interworld seemed ludicrously mild. "You are unreasonable. We surely have no interest in the source of the Ringworld's power. Let us land, find a native, and ask him about his power sources."

"I refuse to consider landing."

"Do you question my skill at the controls?"

"Do you question my decisions as leader?"

"Since you broach the subject --"

"I still carry the tasp, Speaker. My word governs the disposal of the Long Shot and the second quantum hyperdrive, and I am still Hindmost aboard this ship. You will bear in mind --"

"Stop," said Louis. They looked at him.

"Your arguments are premature," said Louis. "Why not turn our telescopes on the shadow squares? That way you'll both have more facts to shout at each other. It's more fun that way."

Nessus faced himself, eye to eye. The kzin sheathed his claws.

"On a more pragmatic level," said Louis, "We're all bushed. Tired. Hungry. Who wants to fight on an empty stomach? I'm going to catch an hour under a sleep set. I suggest you do the same."

Teela was shocked. "You don't want to watch? Well be seeing the inner side!"

"You watch. Tell me what happens." He left.

***

He woke groggy and ravenous. Hunger pulled him from between sleeping plates, then kept him in the cabin long enough to dial a handmeal. Eating one-handed, he strolled out into the lounge.

"What's happening?"

Teela answered, rather coldly, across the top of a reading screen. "You missed everything. Slaver ships, Mist Demons, space dragons, cannibal starseeds, all attacking at once. Speaker had to fend them off with his bare hands. You'd have loved it."

"Nessus?"

The puppeteer answered from the control room. "Speaker and I have agreed to move on to the shadow squares. Speaker is alseep. We will be in clear space soon."

"Anything new?"

"Yes, considerable. Let me show you."

The puppeteer did things to the scope screen controls. He must have studied kzinti symbology, somewhere.

The view in the scope screen was like Earth seen from a great height. Mountains, lakes. valleys, rivers, large bare spots that might be desert.

"Desert?"

"So it would seem, Louis. Speaker took temperature and humidity spectra. Evidence accumulates that the Ringworld has reverted to savagery, at least in part. Why else would there be deserts?

"We found another deep salt ocean on the opposite side of the ring, as big as the one on this side. Spectra confirmed the salt. Clearly the engineers found it necessary to balance such tremendous masses of water."

Louis bit into his handmeal.

"Your suggestion was a good one," Nessus remarked. "You may be our most skilled diplomat, despite Speaker's training and mine. It was after we turned the scope on the shadow squares that Speaker agreed to a closer look."

"Oh? Why?"

"We found a peculiarity. The shadow squares are moving at a speed comfortably greater than orbital velocity." Louis stopped chewing.

"That is not impossible," the puppeteer added. "The shadow squares may hold matching stable elliptical orbits. They need not maintam a constant distance from the primary."

Louis swallowed mightily to clear the way for speech. "That's crazy. The length of the day would vary!"

Teela said, "We thought it might be to separate summer from winter, by making the nights shorter and then longer. But that doesn't make sense either."

"No, it doesn't. The shadow squares make their circuit in less than a month. Who needs a three-week year?"

"You see the problem," said Nessus. "The abnormality was too small to detect from our own system. What causes it? Does gravity increase anomalously near the primary, requiring a higher orbital speed? In any case, the shadow objects merit a closer look."

***

Passing time was marked by the sharp black edge of a shadow square passing across the sun.

Presently the kzin left his room, exchanged civilities with the humans in the lounge, and replaced Nessus in the control room.

Shortly thereafter he emerged. There was no sound to indicate trouble; but Louis suddenly saw that the puppeteer was backing away from a murderous kzinti glare. Speaker was ready to kill.

"Okay," Louis said resignedly. "What's the trouble?"

"This leaf-eater," the kzin began, and strangled on his anger. He started over. "Our schizophrenic leader-from-behind has had us in a minimum-fuel orbit since I went to rest. At this rate it will take us four months to reach the belt of shadow squarts." And Speaker began to curse in the Hero's Tongue.

"You put us in that orbit yourself," the puppeteer said mildly.

The kzin's voice rose in volume. "It was my intention to leave the Ringworld slowly, so that we might have a long look at the inner surface. We might then accelerate directly toward the shadow squares, arriving within hours instead of months!"

"There is no need to bellow, Speaker. If we accelerate toward the shadow squares, our projected orbit will intersect the Ringworld. I wish to avoid that."

"He can aim for the sun," said Teela.

They all turned to look at her.

"If the Ringworlders are afraid that we'll hit them," Teela explained patiently, "then they're probably projecting our course. If our projected course hits the sun, then we're not dangerous. See?"

"That would work," said Speaker.

The puppeteer shuddered. "You are the pilot. Do as you like, but do not forget --"

"I do not intend to fly us through the sun. In due time I will match our course to the shadow squares." And the kzin stomped back into the control room. It is not easy for a kzin to stomp.

Presently the ship turned parallel to the ring. There was little sense of anything happening; the kzin, following orders, was using thrusters only. Speaker killed the ship's orbital velocity, so that the ship was falling toward the sun; and then he swung the nose inward and began to increase velocity.

The Ringworld was a broad blue band marked with ripples and clots of blazing white cloud. It was receding visibly now. Speaker was in a hurry.

Louis dialed two bulbs of mocha and handed one to Teela.

He could understand the kzin's anger. The Ringworld terrified him. He was convinced he would have to land ... and desperate to get it over with before he lost his nerve.

Presently Speaker returned to the lounge. "We will reach the shadow square orbit in fourteen hours. Nessus, we warriors of the Patriarchy are taught patience from childhood, but you leaf-eaters have the patience of a corpse."

"We're moving," said Louis, and half rose. For the ship's nose was swinging aside from the sun.

Nessus screamed and leapt the length of the lounge. He was in the air when the Liar lit up like the interior of a flashbulb. The ship lurched --

Discontinuity.

-- The ship lurched despite the cabin gravity. Louis snatched at the back of a chair and caught it; Teela fell with incredible accuracy into her own crash couch; the puppeteer was folded into a ball as he struck a wall. All in an intense violet glare. The darkness lasted only an instant, to be replaced by glowing light the color of a UV tube.

It was coming from outside, from all around the hull.

Speaker must have finished aiming the Liar and turned it over to the autopilot. And then, thought Louis, the autopilot must have reviewed Speaker's course, decided that the sun was a meteoroid large enough to be dangerous, and taken steps to avoid it.

The cabin gravity was back to normal. Louis picked himself off the floor. He was unhurt. So, apparently, was Teela. She was standing along the wall, peering steraward through the violet light.

"Half my instrument board is dead," Speaker announced.

"So are half your instruments," said Teela. "The wing's gone."

"Excuse me?"

"The wing's gone."

So it was. So was everything that had been attached to the wing: thrusters, fusion plants, communication equipment pods, landing gear. The hull had been polished clean. Nothing was left of the Liar save what had been protected by the General Products hull.

"We have been fired upon," said Speaker. "We are still being fired upon, probably by X-ray lasers. This ship is now in a state of war. Accordingly I take command."

Nessus was not arguing. He was still curled in a ball. Louis knelt beside him and probed with his hands.

"Finagle knows I'm no doctor for aliens. I can't see that he's been hurt."

"He is merely frightened. He attempts to hide in his own belly. You and Teela will strap him down and leave him."

Louis was not surprised to find himself obeying orders. He was badly shaken. A moment ago this had been a spacecraft. Now it was little more than a glass needle falling toward the sun.

They lifted the puppeteer into the crash couch, his own, and tied him down with the crash web.

"We face no peaceful culture," said the kzin. "An X-ray laser is invariably a weapon of war. Were it not for our invulnerable hull we would be dead."

Louis said, "The Slaver stasis field must have gone on too. No telling how long we were in stasis."

"A few seconds," Teela corrected him. "That violet light has to be the fog of metal from our wing, fluorescing."

"Excited by the laser. Right. It's dissipating, I think." True enough, the glow was already less intense.

"Unfortunate that our automatics are so single-mindedly defensive. Trust a puppeteer to know nothing of attack weapons!" said Speaker. "Even our fusion motors were on the wing. And still the enemy fire on us! But they will learn what it means to attack a kzin."

"You're going to chase them down?"

Speaker did not recognize sarcasm. "I am."

"With what?" Louis exploded. "You know what they left us? A hyperdrive and a lifesystem, that's what they left us! We haven't got so much as a pair of attitude jets. You've got delusions of grandeur if you think we can fight a war in this!"

"So the enemy believes! Little do they know --"

"What enemy?"

"-- that in challenging a kzin --"

"Automatics, you dolt! An enemy would have started shooting the moment we came in range!"

"I too have wondered at their unusual strategy."

"Automatics! X-ray lasers for blasting meteors. Programmed to shoot down anything that might hit the ring. The moment our projected freely falling orbit intercepted the ring, pow! Lasers."

"That ... is possible." The kzin began closing panels over dead portions of the control board. "But I hope you are wrong."

"Sure. It'd help if you had someone to blame, wouldn't it?"

"It would help if our course did not intercept the ring." The kzin had closed off half the board. He continued to close panels as he talked. "Our velocity is high. It will take us out of the system, beyond the local discontinuity, to where we can use the hyperdrive to return to the puppeteer fleet. But first we must miss the ring."

Louis hadn't thought that far ahead. "You had to be in a hurry, didn't you?" he said bitterly.

"At least we will miss the sun. The automatics will not have fired until our projected course circled the sun."

"The lasers are still on," Teela reported. "I can see stars through the glow, but the glow is still there. That means were still aimed at the ring surface, doesn't it?"

"It does if the lasers are automatic."

"If we hit the ring, will we be killed?"

"Ask Nessus. His race built the Liar. See if you can get him to unroll."

The kzin snorted in disgust. By now he had closed off most of the control board. Only a pitiful few lights still glowed to show that part of the Liar lived on.