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Louis said, "That half hour delay is going to drive us nuts sooner or later."
"Small ships might escape Tunesmiths instruments, but he wouldnt miss a weapons laser or antimatter flash," said Hanuman. "Would they fight while refusing to use such weapons? No. I surmise there is no fight at all, Luis."
Louis mulled that. If the ARMs hadnt been expecting a fight, where had the ARM ship gone? Why had they dropped their tank first?
"The tank might be empty," Hanuman suggested. "They wanted greater range. They wont be back."
Louis said, "All right, lets rethink. Spinward of us, theres a lot of fog to hide in. Ships could be hunting each other. Ah, flup, never mind." Both aliens were looking at him. "If theres nothing to fight, theyve gone off to look at the puncture! What else is there? The Ringworld is dying. They need to tell their mother ship whats happening here, and they might want to run away fast, so they dropped their tank."
Hanuman thought it over; nodded. "Don your pressure suits."
CHAPTER 11
The Wounded Land
Most of the Mouse Eaters were dozing underground after a morning meal.
This wasnt Wembleths custom. Wembleth was a traveler; he adapted his behavior to his hosts. Hed been living with these nocturnal hunters for several turns of the sky, sharing their meals and their women, teaching them how to make and use tools hed learned of elsewhere.
Most of the villagers were inside their burrow houses. Older children and elders were cleaning up after the feast, with Wembleths help, while shadow withdrew from the sun. For him it was a good choice; he needed some sunlight to stay healthy. In a minute theyd all go in -
And the day lit up.
Children began screaming.
Mouse Eaters couldnt deal with mere daylight; what would this glare do to them? His own eyes squinted to teary slits. Wembleth scooped up two small children, hugged their faces against his chest, and shouted at the rest. "Get inside!" He darted into the nearest house. The others would have to follow, or find their own houses.
Windows were mere slits in Mouse Eater houses. Wembleth dropped his load of children into the dark, wiggled past more frightened children and out again.
In the horrid light children and elders were ru
He couldnt guess how much time passed. The light faded. A hot fierce wind blasted across the plaza, scattering coals from the commonfire, and died. Presently a softer wind was blowing the other way. When he couldnt find anyone, couldnt see anyway, he crawled indoors. Indoors was perfect blackness; his night sight had faded, and the horrid light had faded too. Wembleth lay down and gasped for air.
Something would change. Something always did, when things went bad. You had to watch for the opportunity that would follow.
Presently Wembleth realized that he was suffocating.
The blast Spit Snail Darter, in stasis, into a rocky cliff above a vast forest. When time resumed, the ship had become part of an immense landslide of shattered shale.
Far, far to spinward, a sea of mist ran all across the horizon, hiding everything up to the base of the Arch. Worlds away, the mist domed upward. The near edge of the mist was a shock wave still moving sluggishly toward Snail Darter.
"It looks like the end of the world. Any world. Lots of worlds," Oliver said.
"See whos around," Roxa
Detective Oliver Forrestier busied himself with various sensors. Right Whale, the big ARM cruiser, had gone up against a nameless Kzinti juggernaut, just before the fireball and blackout. There had been other ships too… but now there was nothing. "No obvious contrails," Oliver said. "The cloud is spitting neutrinos… last traces of antimatter, I guess, and diminishing. No point sources. No big ships."
"The fireball is collapsing. Like its being sucked down," Claus said uneasily.
"Well," Roxa
Snail Darter lifted. Tec-Two Claus Raschid asked, "Just go straight on in, Roxa
"Stay low, take our time. Look around. Claus, theres a hole at the center of all this. A hole in the Ringworld is a way home."
"Roxa
Roxa
"This was a city," Oliver said. He played his instruments along the grid of streets and buildings. "Big one. Spread out, like Sydney."
"Claus, slow us down," Roxa
Oliver guessed. "Inside, taking cover from the shock wave. Look at your displays, Roxa
"Suffocated? The airs draining out." Claus wasnt stupid; he was only coming out of denial. "Weve killed the whole Ringworld. Hey—"
"Well be ten thousand years investigating the structure, learning its secrets," Roxa
"Landing. I can see a survivor."
Underground, Wembleth was suffocating.
He clawed his way into the light, but the air wasnt any better.
The light was no more than broad daylight, but there was a weirdness to spinward as if half the world had been taken away, leaving only fog and chaos. Wembleth made his way to the commons, his chest heaving.
An hour ago theyd been feasting. Now there was nobody. The fires had gone out. Mouse Eaters wouldnt come outside in an emergency, and Wembleth didnt have a better answer than they did.
Something shaped vaguely like a silver vinchs egg was dropping out of the sky.
Wembleth stood up, though he nearly fainted, and waved both arms. When in doubt, ask for help. It was his normal instinct, but his fading intellect backed him up:
Here were folk with the power to fly! Tales told of such power, but these were flying in the winds of a major disaster. Anyone who could do that must know something.
News of this disaster must be carried to other peoples.
Wembleth was on his hands and knees, his vision blacking out, when two men of unknown species descended to him. They wore hard armor, like the mythical Vashneesht. They offered him a bag to crawl into.
Wembleth did.
Air hissed into the bag. He could breath.
He didnt know how to tell the Vashneesht that others needed rescuing. It never occurred to him that Vashneesht — wizards — might be the cause of a world-destroying disaster.
Gravity near a Ball World follows an inverse square law. In contrast, the Ringworld is a plane surface. Gravity does not dwindle as you rise, nor do spin gravity nor magnetic force, until the Ringworld looks less like a plane than a ribbon, from hundreds of thousands of miles high.
The Ringworld engineers embedded a lacework of superconducting cable in the Ringworld floor. The grid allows magnetic manipulation of solar flares to cause a superthermal laser effect, the Ringworld meteor defense; but it also opens the entire Ringworld to magnetic levitation.