Ringworld

"Ten degrees to spinward of port. I do not know the distance, but we can estimate this from the speed tolerances of her flycycle."

They flew ten degrees to port of spinward, a slanting line across Speaker's hand-drawn map. For two hours there had been no lights; and Louis had begun to wonder if they were lost.

Thirty-five hundred miles from the rolling hurricane that was the Eye storm, the line across Speaker's map ended at a seaport. Beyond the seaport was a bay the size of the Atlantic Ocean. Teela couldn't have flown further than that. The seaport would be their last chance …

Suddenly, beyond the crest of a deceptively gradual slope of hill, there were lights.

"Pull up," Louis whispered fiercely, not knowing why he whispered. But Speaker had already stopped them in midair.

They hovered, studying the lights and the terrain.

The terrain: city. City everywhere. Below, shadowy in the blue Archlight, were houses like beehives with rounded windows, separated by curved sidewalks too narrow to be called streets. Ahead: more of the same, and then taller buildings further on, until all was skyscrapers and floaters.

"They built differently," Louis whispered. "The architecture — it's not like Zignamuclickchek. Different styles …"

"Skyscrapers," said Speaker. "With so much room on the Ringworld, why build so tall?"

"To prove they can do it. No, that's asinine," said Louis. "There'd be no point, if they could build something like the Ringrworld itself."

"Perhaps the tall buildings came later, during the decline of civilization."

The lights: blazing white tiers of windows, a dozen isolated towers blazing from crown to base They were clustered in what Louis already thought of as the Civic Center because all six of the floating buildings were there.

One thing more: a small suburban patch to spinward of the Civic Center glowed dim orange-white.

On the second floor of one of the beehive houses, the three sat in a triangle around Speaker's map.

Speaker had insisted that they bring the flycycles inside with them. "Security." Their light came from the headlamps of Speaker's own 'cycle, reflected and softened by a curved wall. A table, oddly sculpted to form plates and coaster depressions, had toppled and smashed to dust when Louis brushed against it. Dust was an inch thick on the floor. The paint on the curved wall had crumbled and settled in a soft ridge of sky-blue dust along the baseboard.

Louis felt the age of the city settling on him.

"When the map room tapes were made, this was one of the largest of Ringworld cities," Speaker said. His crescent claw moved across the map. "The original city was a pla

"Pity you didn't draw a map of it,"' said Louis. For all that showed on Speakees map was a shaded semicircle.

Speaker picked up the map and folded it. "Such an abandoned metropolis must hold many secrets. We must be wary here. If civilization can rise at all in this land — on this structure — then it must be where clues point the way to vanished technology."

"What of vanished metals?" Nessus objected. "A fallen civilization could not rise again on the Ringworld. There are no metals to mine, no fossil fuels. Tools would be restricted to wood and bone."

"We saw lights."

"The pattern seemed random — a result of many self-contained power sources failing one by one. But you may be right," said Nessus. "If toolbuilding has resumed in this place, we must contact the toolbuilders. But on our own terms."

"We may already have been located by our intercom emissions."

"No, Speaker. Our intercom emissions are closed beams."

Louis, half listening, thought: She could be hurt. She could be lying somewhere, unable to move, waiting for us.

And he couldn't make himself believe it.

It seemed that Teela had run afoul of some old Ringworld machine: perhaps a sophisticated automatic weapon, if the Ringworlders had such things. Conceivably it had zapped only her intercom and locator-sender, leaving the motive systems intacr. But it seemed improbable.

Then why couldn't he work up a sense of urgency? Louis Wu, cool as a computer while his woman faced unknown peril.

His woman … yes, but something more, and somothing different.

How stupid of Nessus, to assume that a bred-for-luck human would think like the humans he was used to! Would a lucky puppeteer think like, say, the sane puppeteer Chiron?

Maybe fear was in a puppeteer's genes.

But in a human beings fear had to be learned.

Nessus was saying, "We must assume a momentary failure of Teela's sporadic luck. Under that assumption, Teela is not injured."

"What?" Louis was jolted. The puppeteer seemed to have paralleled his own thinking.

"A failure of her flycycle would probably leave her dead. If she were not killed instantly, then she must have been rescued as soon as her luck resumed its power."

"That's ridiculous. You can't expect a psychic power to follow rules like that!"

"The logic is impeccable, Louis. My point is that Teela does not need rescue immediately. If alive, she can wait. We can wait for morning to spy out the land."

"Then what? How do we find her?"

"She is in safe hands, if her luck held. We search for those hands. If there are no hands, we will know that tomorrow, and we can hope she will signal us. There are various ways she can do that."

Speaker broke in. "But they all use light."

"And if they do?"

"They do. I have considered this. It is possible that her headlamps still function. If so, she will have left them on. You claim she is intelligent, Louis."

"She is."

"And she has no regard for security. She would not care what found her, so long as we found her. If her headlamps are dead, she might use her flashlight-laser to signal anything that moves — or to start a signal fire."

"What you're saying is that we can't find her in daylight. And you're right," Louis admitted.

Nessus said, "First we must explore the city by daylight. If we find citizens, well and good. Otherwise we may search for Teela tomorrow night."

"You'd leave her lying somewhere for thirty hours? You cold-blooded — Tanjit, that patch of light we saw couldbe her! Not street lamps, but burning buildings!"

Speaker stood up. "True. We must investigate."

"I am Hindmost to this fleet. I say that Teela's value does not match the risk of a night flight over an alien city."

Speaker-To-Animals had mounted his flycycle. "We are in territory which may be hostile. Thereby I command. We will go to seek Teela Brown, a member of our company."

The kzin lifted off, eased his flycycle through a great oval window. Beyond the window were fragments of a porch, then the suburbs of an u

The other flycycles were on the ground floor. Louis descended the stairwell hurriedly but with care, as part of the stairs had collapsed, and the escalator machinery had long since turned to rust.

Nessus looked down at him over the rim of the stairwell. "I stay here, Louis. I consider this mutiny."

Louis did not answer. His flycycle rose, edged through the oval doorway, and angled up into the night.

The night was cool. Archlight painted the city in navy blue shadows. Louis found the gleam of Speaker's 'cycle and followed it toward the glowing section of suburb, to spinward of the brilliantly lighted Civic Center.

It was all city, hundreds of square miles of city. There weren't even parks. With all the room on the Ringworld, why build so close? Even on Earth, men valued their elbow room.