Ringworld

It had to be shadow square wire. But there was so much of it!

"But how can we transport that?"

Louis could only say, "I can't imagine. Let's go down for a closer look."

They settled their broken police building to spinward of the place of the altar.

Nessus did not turn off the lifting motors. He barely touched down. What had been an observation platform above prison cells became the Improbable's landing ramp. The mass of the building would have crushed it.

"Wre going to have to find a way to handle the stuff," said Louis. "A glove made of the same kind of thread might do it. Or we could wind it on a spool made of Ringworld foundation material."

"We have neither. We must talk to the natives," said Speaker. "They may have old legends, old tools, old holy relics. More, they have had three days to learn how to deal with the wire."

"Then I must come with you." The puppeteer's reluctance was evident in his sudden fit of shivering. "Speaker, your command of the language is inadequate. We must leave Halrloprillalar to lift the building if there is need. Unless — Louis, could Teela's native lover be persuaded to bargain for us?"

It itched Louis to hear Seeker referred to in such terms. He said, "Even Teela won't call him a genius. I wouldn't trust him to do our bargaining."

"Nor would I. Louis, do we really need the shadow square wire?"

"I don't know. If I'm not spi

"Never mind, Louis. I will go."

"You don't have to trust my judgment -"

"I will go." The puppeteer was shivering again. The oddest thing about Nessus's voice was that it could be so clear, so precise, yet never show a trace of emotion. "I know that we need the wire. What coincidence caused the wire to fall so neatly across our path? All coincidence leads back to Teela Brown. If we did not need the wire, it would not be here."

Louis relaxed. Not because the statement made sense, for it did not. But it reinforced Louis's own tenuous conclusions. And so Louis hugged that comfort to his bosom and did not tell the puppeteer what nonsense he was talking.

They filed down the landing ramp and out from under the shadow of the Improbable. Louis carried a flashlight-laser. Speaker-To-Animals carried the Slaver weapon. His muscles moved like fluid as he walked; they showed prominently through his half-inch of new orange fur. Nessus went apparently unarmed. He preferred the tasp, and the hindmost position.

Seeker walked to the side, carrying his black iron sword at the ready. His big, heavily calloused feet were bare, and so was the rest of him but for the yellow skin he wore for a loincloth. His muscles rippled like the kzin's.

Teela walked unarmed.

These two would have been waiting aboard the Impprobable but for the bargaining that had taken place that morning. It was Nessus's fault. Louis had used the puppeteer as his interpreter when he offered to sell Teela Brown to the swordsman Seeker.

Seeker had nodded gravely, and had offered one capsule of the Rmgworld youth drug, worth about fifty years of life.

"I'll take it," Louis had said. It was a handsome offer, although Louis had no intention of putting the stuff in his mouth. Certainly the drug had never been tested on anyone who, like Louis Wu, had been taking boosterspice for some one hundred and seventy years.

As Nessus afterward explained in the Interworld tongue, "I didn't want to insult him, Louis, or to imply that you held Teela cheaply. I raised his price. He now owns Teela, and you have the capsule to analyze when and if we return to Earth. In addition, Seeker will act as our bodyguard against any possible enemy, until we have possession of the shadow square wire."

"He's going to protect us all with his four-foot kitchen knife?"

"It was only to flatter him, Louis."

Teela had insisted on coming with him, of course. He was her man, and he was going into danger. Now Louis wondered if the puppeteer had counted on that. Teela was Nessus's own carefully bred good luck charm …

The sky would always be overcast this close to the Eye storm. In the gray-white noon light they filed toward a vertical black cloud tens of stories high.

"Don't touch it," Louis called, remembering what the priest had told him on his last visit to this city. A girl had lost some fingers trying to pick up the shadow square wire.

Close up, it still loooked like black smoke. You could look through it into the mined city, to see the windowed beehive-bungalows of suburbia and a few flat glass towers that would have been department stores if this were a world of human space. They were there within the cloud, as if a fire were raging in there somewhere.

You could see the black thread, if your eye was within an inch of it; but then your eye would water and the thread would disappear. The thread was that close to being invisibly thin. It was much too much like Sinclair monofilament; and Sinclair monofilament was dangerous.

"Try the Slaver gun," said Louis. "See if you can cut it, Speaker."

A string of sparkling lights appeared within the cloud.

Probably it was blasphemy. You fight with light? But the natives must have pla

The poor leucos, thought Louis. He flicked his flashlight-laser beam to high and narrow.

Light-swords, laser weapons, had been used on all the worlds. Louis's training was a century old, and the war he had trained for hadn't happened after all. But the rules were too simple to forget.

The slower the swing, the deeper the cut.

But Louis swung his beam in wide quick swipes. Men stumbled back, their arms wrapped around their abdomens, their golden fur faces betraying nothing. With many enemies, swing fast. Cut half an inch deep, cut many of them. Slow them down!

Louis felt pity. The fanatics had only swords and clubs. They hadn't a chance …

But one smashed a sword across Speaker's weapon arm, hard enough to cut. Speaker dropped the Slaver weapon. Another man snatched it and threw it. He was dead in the instant, for Speaker swiped at him with his good hand and clawed the spine out of him. A third man caught the weapon, turned, and ran. He didn't try to use it. He just ran with it. Louis couldn't hit him with the laser; they were trying to kill him.

Always swing across the torso.

Louis had killed nobody as yet. Now, while the enemy seemed to hesitate, Louis took a moment to kill the two men nearest him. Don't let the enemy close.

How were the others doing?

Speaker-To-Animals was killing with his hands, his good hand a claw for ripping, his bandaged one a weighted club. Somehow he could dodge a sword point while reaching for the man behind it. He was surrounded, but the natives would not press him. He was alien orange death, eight feet tall, with pointed teeth.

Seeker stood at bay with his black iron sword. Three men were down before him, and others stood back, and the sword dripped. Seeker was a dangerous, skillful swordsman. The natives knew about swords. Teela stood behind him, safe for the moment in the ring of fighting, looking worried, like a good heroine.

Nessus was ru

Louis was unharmed, picking off enemies as they showed themselves, helping others when he could. The flashlight-laser moved easily in his hand, a wand of killing green light.

Never aim at a mirror. Reflecting armor could be a nasty shock to a laser artist. Here they'd apparently forgotten that trick.