Ringworld's Children

She was talking in a hysterical whisper. "I dont know what they are. Not Kzinti. Nightmares." She looked at Louis, immobile in his medical cage, and said, "Sorry."

"Whas happening?" Louis asked. She touched his lips with a forefinger. She braced herself behind Louiss medical cage. Only her projectile weapon showed, aimed at the doorway.

A voice spoke from somewhere, Tec Schmidts voice sounding much too calm. "All hands, were fighting from the radiation refuge. I can see invaders on the hull and in four, five, six, and ten. Our motors are burned out, but were under acceleration anyway. We dont know where its coming from. Were also facing friendly fire, ARM missiles incoming, sixty and counting, no alien attackers yet. Tec-Admiral Wrayne doesnt want us captured, I guess."

"Why didnt we see it coming?" she whispered. "Theyve got an invisible ship! Shh."

Schmidts voice — "The missiles are veering away!" — died in a roar of static.

A shadow blinked past the little door. Roxa

Three bulkier man-shapes zipped through the door, moving more slowly. They sealed it behind them. They were wearing skintight pressure suits. They deployed a balloon with inflatable tubes around it: a big nonstandard rescue pod. They didnt wait for it to inflate.

Spill mountain people come in a variety of species, but they all look more or less alike: burly bodies and short thick arms and legs, large lung capacity, thick fur for insulation, hairless faces. These three had been spill mountain people. Now they werent. They wore pressure suits and big globular helmets, but their faces gave them away: mouths hard and toothless, like flattened beaks; big Roman noses; hairless skin wrinkled into leather armor. A mummified look, and an unca

The fourth came around into view towing an unconscious Roxa

They pushed Wembleth into the rescue pod, then Roxa

"Im injured," he said. No reaction.

They studied the machinery around him, talking tersely in a language Louiss translator didnt have. Then they switched things off. When one reached behind Louiss back, pain came as if hed been hit by a truck.

He fought to keep from fainting, holding his attention on his breathing. Later he remembered a good deal. The feel of their hands, large, with blunt fingers and knobby knuckles. Brown eyes with epicanthic folds. The slender odd-man-out protector gave orders in monosyllables. The others detached Louis from the ICC, pushed him into the rescue pod, and sealed it. A framework still held his leg and hip immobile. Two studied the machinery that had held him while another cut a wide hole in the hull.

Air puffed the rescue pod into space.

CHAPTER 14

The Spill Mountain People

Gray Nurse was an ARM warcraft, built more like a spear than a ship, with a few smaller ships along its length. An intruder had attached itself like a remora near the fore end. It was lighter than Gray Nurse, built like the skeleton of a sunfish: a cabin, then an extensive grid of crosshatching girders like those found on a Belt mining ship meant to carry rocks and ore. Louis couldnt immediately see anything like a motor.

The protectors followed the rescue bubble into space. Others, all spill mountain protectors, emerged from further aft in Gray Nurse. Some towed the rescue bubble to the sunfish ship and moored it to the grid. Then they spurted away on rocket plumes, leaving their prisoners exposed to open space.

Maybe it was the drugs, maybe it was his bodys defenses: the pain had gone out like a tide. Louis looked around him at the universe.

A dusting of light motes, motionless a moment ago, were swept away in an eyeblink. Spy probes dismissed as by a sweep of Gods hand, but how?

Roxa

Louis said, "Talk to me, Wembleth."

"Where am I, Looeess?"

"Under the Ringworld."

Wembleth looked up at the black wall that blocked half the sky. "We are falling."

"Theres nothing to hit. You get used to this—"

The protectors were back. Two were pushing a fair-sized mass: the medical cage. They moored it to the cargo grid next to the rescue bubble. There was other cargo to be attached. Then they swarmed away to the cabin, leaving one still on the grid.

Gray Nurse was whipped away.

Louis felt no acceleration beyond a kind of flutter, but he felt his hair writhe about him. They must be doing hundreds of gravities. Gray Nurse was just gone. Hed seen nothing like a rocket motor, nor even a thruster.

Wembleth had his arms over his face.

The sunfish ship followed the thread of a spillpipe beneath the Ringworlds black underside. A slow hour later, by the watch face in the back of Louiss hand, the spillpipe led them around the rim and up into a glare of sunlight.

Louis looked down along the inside of the rim wall, a thousand miles down toward a few tiny cones along its base. Beyond was a wide shore — twenty to thirty thousand miles of shore, it must be, given how high they were — and then an infinity of blue water seen from high enough to show the texture of sea bottom, and a few sparse clusters of big flat islands.

The clustered islands were peculiar. They all looked alike, and there was something else too. Louis had never seen anything like it, and that alone meant that he was looking at the Other Ocean.

They were dropping toward the rim wall. Theyd been in flight for less than an hour.

"Wembleth?"

"Roxa

She blinked. "Luis? They took you too. Where are we? Who are these — ?"

"Spill mountain people," Louis said. "There are lots of species. Do you ARMs know about — ?"

"Down there below us, those are spill mountains," she said. "Theyre bigger than they look. Do you know what they are?"

"Theyre just the mountains," Louis said, secretly amused.

The spill mountains had grown larger. Each of the little cones had a few silver threads of river ru

"Pipes run under the Ringworld floor. They pump sea-bottom slush up over the rim. Otherwise all the fertile soil would wind up in the sea bottoms and nothing would grow."

They were dropping toward one of the peaks. Roxa

"Same thing as Vashneesht? Magicians. Very smart, very fierce, and theyre born in armor. We wondered if they were myths. There are some artifacts."

"Oh, theyre real. One of those looked different from the rest," Roxa

"The joker. Thats the one in charge," Louis said.

"How do you know that?"

Bram and A