The Ringworld Engineers

“We have Sinclair molecule chain.”

“Less than twenty miles of that. I want it shorter than the superconductor wire.” Louis was glad he’d made the inspection. He had overlooked the chance that the superconductor wire wouldn’t be strong enough to hold the cloth-wrapped repulser plate, once the plate reached altitude. But Sinclair chain was fantastic stuff. It ought to hold.

Chapter 12

Sunflowers

Louis flew high and fast to spinward. The veldt showed too much brown: grass cropped first by green elephants and then by giants was having trouble growing back. Ahead, the white line of sunflowers glared across the sea.

The king giant watched through the transparent airlock doors. “It may be I should have brought armor,” he said.

Chmeee snorted. “To fight sunflowers? Metal grows hot.”

“Where,” Louis asked, “did you get the armor?”

“We made a road for the Machine People. They made us free of the grasslands the road was to go through, and afterward they made armor for the kings of the tribes. We kept moving. We didn’t like their air.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“It tastes wrong and smells wrong, Louis. It smells like what they drink sometimes. They pour the same stuff in their machines, but without mixing it with anything.”

Chmeee asked, “I wondered about the shape of your armor. It is not quite your own shape. I wondered why.”

“The shape is meant to awe and frighten. Did you not find it so?”

“No,” said Chmeee. “Is it the shape of those who built the Ringworld?”

“Who knows?”

“I do,” Louis said. The giant’s eyes flicked nervously upward.

The grass, grown tall again, abruptly gave way to forest. The sunflowers had grown bright. Louis dropped the lander to a hundred feet and slowed drastically.

The forest ended in a long white beach. Louis slowed further and eased the lander down, down, until he was almost skimming the water. The sunflowers lost interest.

He flew on toward the diminished glare. The sea was calm, rippled by a breeze from astern. The sky was blue and cloudless. Islands went by, small and medium-sized, with beaches and convoluted shores and peaks charred black. Two had been commandeered by sunflowers.

Fifty miles offshore, the sunflowers were taking an interest again. Louis brought the lander to a halt. “They can’t hope to use us for fertilizer,” he said. “We’re too far away and flying too low.”

“Brainless plants.” Chmeee coughed contempt.

The king giant said, “They are clever. They start brush fires. When only ashen ground is left, the fire plants spread their seed.”

But they were over water! … Skip it. “King of the Grass Giants, this is your hour. Drop the rock overboard. Don’t snag the wire.” Louis opened the airlock and lowered the ramp. The king giant went forth into the ominous glare. The boulder fell twenty feet into the water, trailing black and silver wires.

Spotlights seemed to wink at them from the far shore as clusters of the plants tried to burn the lander, then lost interest. They sought motion, but they wouldn’t fire on ru

The black rectangle rose. Wire trailed, black and silver. The thread of Sinclair chain should have been invisibly thin, but it glowed silver, and a bright nimbus glowed around the dwindling repulser plate. The plate was a black dot now, harder to see than the bright halo around it. At that altitude it was a target for hordes of sunflower blossoms.

A superconductor will pass an electric current with no resistance whatever. It is this property that makes it so valuable to industry. But superconductors have another property. A superconductor is always the same temperature throughout.

Air and dust particles, and Sinclair wire, glowed by sunflower light. But the superconductor cloth and wire remained black. Good. Louis blinked away the dazzle and looked down at the water. “King of the Grass People,” he said, “come inside before you’re hurt.”

Where the two wires entered the water, the water boiled. A streamer of steam blew into the white glare to spinward. Louis set the lander drifting to starboard. Already a fair patch of water was steaming.

The Ringworld engineers had built only two deep oceans, the Great Oceans, counterbalanced opposite each other. The rest of the Ringworld’s seas were twenty-five feet deep throughout. Like humans, they apparently used only the top of a sea. That was to Louis’s advantage. It was making it easier to boil a sea.

The steam cloud reached for shore.

Gods don’t gloat. That was a pity. “We will watch until you are satisfied,” he told the king giant.

“Uurrr,” said Chmeee.

“I begin to see,” the king giant said, “but …”

“Speak.”

“The fire plants burn away clouds.”

Louis swallowed uneasiness. “We will watch. Chmeee, you may offer our guest lettuce. It may be that you will want to eat with a door between you.”

They were fifty miles to starboard of the anchored wire, on the port side of a tall, bare island. The island blocked half the glare of those sunflowers still interested in cremating the lander … but most of the sunflowers were distracted anyway. Some of the glare focused on the hovering black rectangle; some, on the steam cloud.

For the water was steaming for a couple of square miles around the wire and submerged boulder. The steam ran in a spreading cloud across the sea, fifty miles to shore, and there it caught fire. Five miles inland it ran, burning like a firestorm, and then it was gone.

Louis focused the telescope on the patch of steam. He could see water boiling. Plants would be starting to die. A five-mile strip of plants was getting no sunlight; plants around them were wasting their light on a steam cloud instead of making sugar with it. But a five-mile strip was nothing, nothing. The patch was half the size of a world.

He saw something else that made him swing the view straight upward.

The silver wire was falling, drifting to spinward in the wind. The sunflowers had burned through Sinclair molecule chain. Louis softly spoke a one-syllable word meaning impotence. But the thread of superconductor was still black.

It would hold. Sure it would.

It would be no hotter than boiling water, and everywhere the same temperature. More light from the plants wouldn’t change that; it would only boil the water faster. And this was a big sea. And water vapor doesn’t just vanish. Heat it and it rises.

“God eats well,” the king giant said. He was munching on a head of Boston butter lettuce: his twentieth or maybe thirtieth. He stood beside Chmeee, watching, and like Chmeee he did not speculate on what was happening outside.

Sea water boiled merrily. The sunflowers were sure as tanj determined to knock down that bit of potential fertilizer, that possible sunflower-eating bird. They couldn’t judge altitude or distance. Evolution wouldn’t let them keep that up until they starved. Time off for each blossom to focus on the green photosynthetic node, while others took turns.

Quietly Chmeee said, “Louis. The island.”

Something large and black stood waist-deep in the water offshore. It was not human and not otter, but a little of both. It waited patiently, watching the lander with large brown eyes.

Louis spoke calmly, but with effort. “Is this sea peopled?”

“We did not know it,” said the king giant.

Louis slid the lander toward the beach. The humanoid waited without fear. He was covered with short, oily black fur, and nicely streamlined: thick neck, drastically sloping shoulders, a broad nose flattened against his chinless face.

Louis activated the microphones. “Do you use the speech of the Grass Giants?”