The Ringworld Engineers

Step four: Mutiny.

He should have left that patch of superconductor cloth in Lyar Building itself. He should have reminded the Hindmost to disco

But for the moment, he would steal a few hours’ sleep … to match his other thefts.

Voices, dimly heard. Louis stirred, and turned in free fall, and looked about him.

Beyond the aft wall, Harkabeeparolyn and Kawaresksenjajok were in animated conversation with the ceiling. To Louis it was gibberish. He didn’t have his translator. But the City Builders were pointing into a rectangular hologram floating outside the hull, blocking part of the spaceport ledge.

Through that “window” Louis could see the sunlit courtyard of a gray stone castle. Rough-hewn stone in big masses; lots of right angles. The only windows were vertical arrow slits. Some kind of ivy was crawling up one of the walls. Luxuriant pale-yellow ivy with scarlet veins.

Louis pushed himself out of the field.

The puppeteer was at his bench on the flight deck. Today his mane was a cloudy phosphorescent glow. He turned one head at Louis’s approach. “Louis, I trust you are rested?”

“Yah, and I needed it, too. Any progress?”

“I was able to repair the reading machine. Needle’s computer doesn’t know enough of the City Builder tongue to read tapes about physics. I hope to pick up a vocabulary by talking to the natives.”

“How much longer? I’ve got some questions about the Ringworld’s general design.” Could the Ringworld floor, the whole six hundred million million square miles of it, be used to manipulate the Ringworld’s position electromagnetically? If he could know for sure!

“Ten to twenty hours, I think. We all need to rest occasionally.”

Too long, Louis thought, with the repair crew coming down their throats. Too bad. “Where’s the picture coming from? The lander?”

“Yes.”

“Can we get a message to Chmeee?”

“No.”

“Why not? He must be carrying his translator.”

“I made the mistake of turning the translator function off by way of coercion. He isn’t carrying it.”

“What happened?” Louis asked. “What’s he doing in a medieval castle?”

The Hindmost said, “It has been twenty hours since Chmeee reached the Map of Kzin. I’ve told you how he made his reco

“I don’t know either, really. Go on.”

“The aircraft followed him some way, then turned back. Chmeee continued to search. He found a stretch of wilderness with a small, walled stone castle on the highest peak. He landed in the courtyard. He was attacked, of course, but the defenders had nothing but swords and bows and the like. When they were well assembled around the lander, he sprayed them with stun ca

“Hold it.”

A kzin sprinted out of one of the rounded arches and across the gray flagstones, moving toward the hologram window at a four-legged dead run. It had to be Chmeee; he was wearing impact armor. An arrow protruded from his eye, a long wooden arrow with papery leaves for feathering.

Other kzinti ran behind him,, waving swords and maces. Arrows fell from the slit windows and glanced from his impact armor. As Chmeee reached the lander’s airlock, a thread of light lashed from a window. The laser beam chewed flame from the flagstones, then focused on the lander. Chmeee had disappeared. The beam held … then snuffed out as the slit window exploded in red and white flame.

“Careless,” the Hindmost murmured. “Giving such a weapon to enemies!” His other mouth nibbled at the controls. He switched to an inside camera. Louis watched Chmeee lock the airlock, then stagger toward the autodoc, struggling to take off his impact armor, dropping it as he moved. The kzin’s leg was gashed beneath the armor. He heaved the lid of the autodoc up and more or less fell inside.

“Tanj! He hasn’t turned the monitors on! Hindmost, we’ve got to help him.”

“How, Louis? If you tried to reach him via stepping discs, you would be heated to fusion temperatures. Between your velocity and the lander’s—”

“Yah.” The Great Ocean was thirty-five degrees around the curve of the Ringworld. The kinetic energy difference would be enough to blast a city. There was no way to help.

Chmeee lay bleeding.

Suddenly he cried out. He half turned over. His thick fingers stabbed at the autodoc’s keyboard. He heaved himself on his back, reached up and pulled the cover closed.

“Good enough,” Louis said. The arrow had entered the socket at a sharp outward angle. It might have missed destroying brain tissue … or it might not. “He was careless, all right. Okay, go on.”

“Chmeee used stun ca

“He didn’t take any females outside, did he?”

“No. I think I see.”

“He was tanj lucky to get his armor on fast enough. He got that slash on his leg before he finished.”

“It does seem that Chmeee is no threat to me.”

He’d be in the ‘doc twenty to forty hours, Louis estimated. Now it was Louis Wa’s decision alone. “There’s something we ought to discuss with him, but I guess there’s no help for it. Hindmost, please record the following conversation. Send it to the lander on a looped tape. I want it in Chmeee’s ears when he wakes up.”

The puppeteer reached behind him; he seemed to chew at the control panel. “Done. What is it we are to discuss?”

“Chmeee and I haven’t been able to make ourselves believe that you’ll take us back to known space. Or even that you can.”

The puppeteer peered at him from two directions. His flat heads spread wide, giving him binocular effect, the better to study his dubious ally and possible enemy. He asked, “Why should I not, Louis?”

“First, we know too much. Second, you don’t have any reason to go back to any world in known space. With or without the magic transmuter, the place you want to be is the Fleet of Worlds.”

Muscles in the puppeteer’s hindquarters flexed restlessly. (That was the leg a puppeteer fought with: turn your back on the enemy, zero in with wide-spaced eyes, kick!) He said, “Would that be so bad?”

“It might be better than staying here,” Louis conceded. “What did you have in mind?”

“We can make your lives very comfortable. You know that we have the kzinti longevity drug. We can supply boosterspice, too. There is room in Needle for hominid and kzinti females, and in fact we have a City Builder female aboard. You would travel in stasis, so crowding is not a problem. You and your entourage may settle on one of the four farming worlds of the Fleet. You would virtually own it.”

“What if we got bored with the pastoral life?”

“Nonsense. You would have access to the libraries of the home world. Access to knowledge humanity has wondered about since first we revealed ourselves! The Fleet is moving through space at nearly lightspeed, eventually to reach the Clouds of Magellan. With us you will escape the galactic core explosion. Likely we will need you to explore … interesting territories ahead of our path.”

“You mean dangerous.”

“What else would I mean?”

Louis was more tempted than he would have expected. How would Chmeee take such an offer? Vengeance postponed? A chance to damage the puppeteer home world in some indefinite future? Or simple cowardice?