Ringworld's Children

Louis could only watch.

Tunesmiths meteor-plug package drifted toward the sun. Needle had been launched at a tenth of lightspeed; the launch system was capable of that. But over such a distance the packages fall seemed sluggish.

In a zoom window the puncture showed as a black dot on landscape that looked lunar: clear and sharp and barren of waters silver or the dark gray-green of life. Louis guessed the puncture was sixty to seventy miles across. A ring of fog surrounded it, bigger than the Earth and still growing.

The Ringworld was not yet aware of its death. Air and water would flow into the hole and out into vacuum, but first it all had to move… from up to three hundred million miles around each arc before the shock could reach the Ringworlds far side, the Great Ocean, here. Not much would be lost in a hundred and sixty minutes, while Tunesmiths package crossed the Ringworlds diameter. Even the Other Ocean wouldnt have begun to boil yet.

Hanuman wandered over. He said — loudly, spitting his consonants; it was fun to watch his lips — "I have been in this state for less than a falan. I still ca

"You get used to it," Louis said. He could barely hear himself. "Hanuman, what is that? What can it do? Were losing our atmosphere!"

"I know little."

"Share it with me," Louis demanded.

"Two bright minds with similar goals will solve problems in similar ways. The Vampire protector Bram saw a need to plug meteor holes. His first meteor plugs were small, but his mass driver under Mons Olympus is hundreds of falans old and hugely overbuilt. The Fist-of-God meteoroid impact must have frightened Bram witless.

"Tunesmith builds bigger yet. That package is his biggest effort." Hanuman was constantly in motion, bouncing around Louis as he spoke, arms swinging. "We shall see it in action. Tunesmith wants us to observe on site. If there is partial failure, then we must see what must be redesigned."

"This double-X-large meteor patch, how does it work?"

"I would be guessing."

"Its never been tested?"

"Tested when? You were stored in the doc for less than a falan. Tunesmith made and trained four Hanging People protectors, built a nanotech factory to make bigger meteor plugs, monitored the Fringe War, designed several probe ships, built a stepping-disk factory, redesigned your Hot Needle of—"

"Hes been busy?"

"Hes been crazy as a stingbug hive city! And if the plug doesnt work, its all for nothing."

"Do you have children?"

"Yes, and they have children. Since Tunesmith made me, Ive not had the chance to count them, nor even to sniff them. Of course they are all forfeit to Tunesmiths schemes and the Fringe War."

"Arent we all. Should Tunesmith have taken such a risk?"

"How should I judge?" Hanumans frantic dance, the hands pounding his chest, would have been an uncontrollable rage in any human. "Tunesmith implies that the greatest risk was not to act. Louis, how can you remain so still?"

"Fifty years… two hundred falans of yoga. Ill teach you."

"I must act," Hanuman said, "but not because to be still is wrong. It may be that way with Tunesmith. How can I know? I am enraged with no target."

The suns gravity was bending the packages course minutely.

Tunesmith and Acolyte walked over. Tunesmith asked, "Louis, do you have your hearing back? Have you rested?"

"I slept. Where did you land Long Shot?"

"Why would I tell you that?" Tunesmith waved it off. "You and Acolyte and Hanuman must observe my plug in action. Has Hanuman told you anything?"

"Its a double-X-large-size meteor plug."

"Good. I have a stepping disk in place—"

"You saw this coming," Louis said.

"I did."

"Could you have stopped it?"

"How?"

"Dont steal Long Shot?"

"I need to understand the Quantum II hyperdrive. Louis, you must see that the Fringe War would never have stayed in the comets. These Ball World species covet the technology that made the Ringworld. It isnt the Ringworld they want to preserve. They want the knowledge, and to keep it from each other."

Louis nodded. It wasnt a new thought. "Scrith armor. Cheap fusion plants."

"Trivia," Tunesmith said. "The Ringworld engineers needed motors to spin this structure up. They must have confined a hydrogen mass equivalent to a dozen gas giant Ball Worlds, then fed it all through force fields arrayed to act as hydrogen fusion motors. Your Ball World bandits dont have decent magnetic control, and what they have wont scale up. They might learn something by studying our motors on the rim wall. They would study the Ringworld. They need not preserve it. Am I talking sense?"

"Maybe."

"Louis, I want you in place to observe the meteor patch as it deploys."

"Tunesmith, it bothers me to be expendable."

"I dont use the word, Louis. I dont use the concept. All life dies, all life resists dying. I would not put you in u

"Interesting word."

"I have a stepping disk in place from which you may observe. A sight not to be missed. Hanuman will go. Will you? Acolyte, will you go? Or will you rest here in comfort to learn if all we know has been destroyed?"

Acolyte looked to Louis.

Louis threw up his hands. "Stet. You want us in pressure suits?"

"With all my heart," Tunesmith said. "Use full gear."

CHAPTER 9

View from a Height

They geared up in Needle and flicked from there. The Hindmost wasnt with them. Theyd left the puppeteer in a depressed and uncommunicative state.

At lightspeed via stepping disks, theyd arrive ahead of Tunesmiths plug package.

Acolyte wore Chmeees spare pressure suit, retrieved from Needles stores. He looked like a bunch of grapes. Hanuman, in a skintight suit with a fishbowl helmet, went first. Louis stepped onto the plate.

The bottom dropped out.

Louis hadnt expected free fall. He hadnt expected to be thousands of miles up, either. He snatched at something: Hanumans hand. Hanuman pulled him to the stepping disk.

The Ringworld, two or three thousand miles below, skimmed past at ferocious speed. It looked infinite in all directions. The rim walls were too distant to show as more than sharp lines.

Acolyte yowled.

Louis didnt dare reach for the thrashing, terrified Kzin. Acolytes fathers spare pressure suit was all balloons, but there were waldo claws on all four limbs. It would have been like reaching into a threshing machine.

"Its all right. You have attitude jets," Louis shouted. "Use them when you feel like it."

The yowling stopped.

Louiss magnetic soles held him down. Hanuman had turned the stepping disk off. Otherwise theyd be back aboard Needle.

"Plenty of time, Acolyte," Louis said. "Were orbiting the sun." Louis held his voice calm, soothing. Hes only twelve. "Essentially were standing still, and the Ringworld goes at the usual seven hundred and seventy miles per second, so well see the whole thing go under us in seven and a half days. Hanuman — ?"

"Eight," Hanuman said. "Eight stepping disks are now in orbit. Tunesmith intended more. This was the nearest. Ive committed the stepping-disk system to memory. If we need to reach the surface, theres a service stack not too far, but meanwhile we can see it all. Can you pick out the puncture?"

"I dont see it yet."

"Look antispin."

"Its behind us? Stet, I have it. It looks like a target." Airless moonscape rimmed with cloud, scored with lines pointing inward toward a black dot.