Ringworld

Anchored by his teeth to an exercise rung, Nessus peered over Louis's shoulder. "I need certain stars for reference. Center that green-white giant and throw it on the scope screen …"

The pilot's cabin was crowded. Louis hunched over the instrument panel, protecting buttons ftm the puppeteer's careless hooves.

"Spectroanalysis … yes. Now the blue-and-yellow double at two o'clock …

"I have my bearings. Swing to 348, 72."

"What exactly am I looking for, Nessus? A cluster of fusion flames? No, you'd be using thrusters."

"You must use the scope. When you see it, you will know."

On the scope screen was a sprinkling of anonymous stars. Louis ran the magnification up until … "Five dots in a regular pentagon. Right?"

"That is our destination."

"Good. Let me check the distance. — Tanj! That's wrong, Nessus. They're too far away."

No comment.

"Well, they couldn't be ships, even if the distance meter isn't working. The puppeteer fleet must be moving at just under lightspeed. We'd see the motion."

Five dim stars, in a regular pentagon. They were a fifth of a light year distant and quite invisible to the naked eye. At present scope magnificatim they would have to be full sized planets. In the scope screen one was faintly less blue, faintly dimmer than the others.

A Kemplerer rosette. How very odd.

Take three or more equal masses. Set them at the points of an equilateral polygon and give them equal angular velocities about their center of mass.

Then the figure has stable equilibrium. The orbits of the masses may be circular or elliptical. Another mass may occupy the center of mass of the figure, or the center of mass may be empty. It doesn't matter. The figure is stable, like a pair of Trojan points.

The difficulty is that there are several easy ways in which a mass can be captured by a Trojan point. (Consider the Trojan asteroids in Jupiter's orbit.) But there is no easy way for five masses to fall accidentally into a Kemplerer rosette.

"That's wild," Louis murmured. "Unique. Nobody's ever found a Kemplerer rosette …" He let it trail off.

Here between the stars, what could be lighting those objects?

"Oh, no you don't," said Louis Wu. "You'll never make me believe it. What kind of an idiot do you take me for?"

"What is it that you will not believe?"

"You know tanj well what I won't believe!"

"As you please. That is our destination, Louis. If you will take us within range, a ship will be sent to match our velocity."

The rendezvous ship was a #3 hull, a cylinder with rounded ends and a flattened belly, painted shocking pink, and windowless. There were no engine apertures. The engines must be reactionless: thrusters of the human type, or something more advanced.

On Nessus's orders Louis had let the other ship do the maneuvering. The Long Shot, on fusion drives alone, would have required months to match velocities with the puppeteer "fleet". The puppeteer ship had done it in less than an hour, blinking into existence alongside the Long Shot with her access tube already reaching like a glass snake toward the Long Shot's airlock.

Disembarking would be a problem. There wasn't room to release all the crew from stasis at once. More important, this would be Speaker's last chance to take control of the ship.

"Do you think he will obey my tasp, Louis?"

"No. I think he'll risk one more, shot at stealing the ship. Tell you what we'd better do …"

They disco

Louis watched the puppeteer move through the tube. Nessus was carrying Speaker's pressure suit. His eyes were tightly closed; which was a pity, because the view was magnificent.

"Free fall," said Teela when he opened her crash couch. "I don't feel so good. Better guide me, Louis. Wbat's happening? Are we there?"

Louis told her a few details while he guided her to the airlock. She listened, but Louis guessed she was concentrating on the pit of her stomach. She looked acutely uncomfortable. "There'll be gravity on the other ship," he told her.

Her eyes found the tiny rosette where Loius pointed. It was a naked-eye object now, a pentagon of five white stars. She turned with astounded questions in her eyes. The motion spun her semicircular canals; and Louis saw her expression change in the moment before she bolted into the airlock.

Kemplerer rosettes were one thing. Free-falt sickness was something else again. Louis watched her recede against the unfamiliar stars.

As the couch cover opened, Louis said, "Don't do anything startling. I'm armed."

The kzin's orange face did not change expression. "Have we arrived?"

"Yeah. I've disco

"Suppose I were to escape in hyperdrive? No, my mistake. We must be within a singularity."

"You're in for a shock. We're in five singularities."

"Five? Really? But you lied about the lasers, Louis. Be ashamed."

At any rate, the kzin left his couch peaceably enough. Loins followed with the variable-sword at the ready. In the airlock the kzin stopped, suddenly caught by the sight of an expanding pentagon of stars.

He could hardly have had a better view.

The Long Shot, edging close in hyperdrive, had stopped half a light-hour ahead of the puppeteer "fleet": something less than the average distance between Earth and Jupiter. But the "fleet" was moving at terrible speed, falling just behind its own light, so that the light which reached the Long Shot came from much further away. When the Long Shot stopped the rosette had been too small to see. It had been barely visible when Teela left the lock. Now it was impressively large, and growing at enormous speed.

Five pale blue dots in a pentagon, spreading across the sky, growing, spreading …

For a flashing instant there were five worlds around the Long Shot. Then they were gone, not fading but gone, their receding light reddened to invisibility. And Speaker-To-Animals held the variable-sword.

"Finagle's eyes!" Louis exploded. "Don't you have any curiosity at all?"

The kzin considered. "I have curiosity, but my pride is much stronger." He retracted the wire blade and handed the variable-sword back to Louis. "A threat is a challenge. Shall we go?"

The puppeteer ship was a robot. Beyond the airlock the lifesystem was all one big room. Four crash couches, as varied in design as their intended occupants, faced each other in a circle around a refreshment console.

There were no windows.

There was gravity, to Louis's relief. But it was not quite Earth's gravity; nor was the air quite Earth's air. The pressure was a touch too high. There were smells, not unpleasant but odd. Louis smelled ozone, hydrocarbons, puppeteer — dozens of puppeteers — and other smells he never expected to identify.

There were no corners. The curved wall merged into floor and ceiling; the couches and the refreshment console all looked half melted. In the puppeteer world there would be nothing hard or sharp, nothing that could draw blood or raise a bruise.

Nessus sprawled bonelessly in his couch. He looked ridiculously, ludicrously comfortable.

"He won't talk," Teela laughed.

"Of course not," said the puppeteer. "I would only have had to start over when you arrived. Doubtless you have been wondering about -"

"Flying worlds," the kzin interrupted.