The Ringworld Engineers

Louis rubbed absently at four itching spots across his eyebrows. “One point twelve times ten to the ninth cubic miles. I have to admit it, that number leaves me numb. What were they keeping in there? Patches big enough to plug Fist-of-God Mountain? Machinery big enough to carry those patches, and plant them, and weld them tight? That winching equipment we saw on the rim wall, for the attitude jets? Spare attitude jets? Tanj, I’d love to find spare attitude jets. But they’d still have room to spare.”

“War fleets.”

“Yah. We already know about their big weapon, but—war fleets, of course, and ships to carry refugees, too. Maybe the whole Map is one big refugee ship. It must have been big enough to evacuate the Ringworld before the population started filling every niche in the ecology.”

“A spacecraft? Perhaps a spacecraft big enough to tow the Ringworld back into place? I have trouble thinking on this scale, Louis.”

“Me too. I don’t think it’d be big enough.”

“Then what did you have in mind when you destroyed our hyperdrive motor?” Suddenly the kzin was snarling.

Louis chose not to flinch. “I thought the Ringworld might be set up to act on the sun magnetically. I was almost right. The trouble—”

The Hindmost’s voice blared from a speaker. “Louis! Chmeee! Set the lander on autopilot and flick across to me now!”

Chapter 29

The Map of Mars

Chmeee reached the disc ahead of Louis, in one monstrous bound. The kzin could take orders too, Louis thought. He forbore to remark on the fact.

The City Builders were looking out through the hull, not at the passing seascape—which was nothing but blue sea and cloud-striped blue sky merging at the infinity-horizon—but at a movie-screen-sized hologram. As Chmeee appeared on the receiver disc they turned and flinched and then tried to hide it.

Louis said, “Chmeee, meet Harkabeeparolyn and Kawaresksenjajok, librarians from the floating city. They’ve been of great help in gaining us information.”

The kzin said, “Good. Hindmost, what is the problem?”

Louis tugged at the kzin’s fur and pointed.

“Yes,” said the puppeteer. “The sun.”

The sun showed dimmed and magnified in the hologram rectangle. A brilliant patch near the center was shifting, twisting, changing shape as they watched.

Chmeee said, “Wasn’t the sun doing that shortly before we boarded the spaceport ledge?”

“Right. You’re looking at the Ringworld meteor defense. Hindmost, what do we do now? We can slow down, but I don’t see any way to save the lander.”

“My first thought was to save your valuable selves,” the puppeteer said.

The sea threw back a highlight from directly below the fleeing Needle. Now it seemed to be growing brighter, with a violet tinge. Suddenly, momentarily, it was unbearably bright. Then it was a black spot on the hull beneath their feet.

And a thread of jet-black, outlined in violet-white, stood upon the spinward horizon. A vertical pillar, reaching from ground to sky. Above the atmosphere it was invisible.

The kzin spoke words in the Hero’s Tongue.

“All very well,” said the Hindmost in Interworld, “but what is it firing on? I assumed we were the target.”

Louis asked, “Isn’t the Map of Earth in that direction?”

“Yes. Also a good deal of water and considerable Ringworld landscape.”

Where the beam touched down, the horizon glowed white. Chmeee whispered in the Hero’s Tongue, but Louis caught the sense. “With such a weapon I could boil the Earth to vapor.”

“Shut up.”

“It was a natural thought, Louis.”

“Yah.”

The beam cut off abruptly. Then it touched down again, a few degrees to port.

“Tanj dammit! All right, Hindmost, take us up. Take us high enough to use the telescope.”

There was a glowing yellow-white point on the Map of Earth. It had the look of a major asteroid strike.

There was a similar glow farther away, at the far shore of the Great Ocean.

The solar flare had dimmed and was losing coherence.

Chmeee asked, “Were there aircraft or spacecraft in those directions? Fast-moving objects?”

“The instruments may have recorded something,” the Hindmost said.

“Find out. And take us down to one mile altitude. I think we want to approach the Map of Mars from below the surface.”

“Louis?”

“Do it.”

Chmeee asked, “Have you knowledge of how that laser beam was produced?”

“Louis can tell you,” the puppeteer said. “I will be busy.”

Needle and the lander converged on the Map of Mars from two directions. The Hindmost held the two vehicles parallel so that it was possible to cross between them.

Louis and Chmeee flicked across to the lander for lunch. Chmeee was hungry. He consumed several pounds of red meat, a salmon, a gallon of water. Louis’s own appetite suffered. He was pleased that his guests weren’t watching.

“I don’t understand why you picked up these passengers,” Chmeee said, “unless it was to mate with the woman. But why the boy?”

“They’re City Builders,” Louis said. “Their species ruled most of the Ringworld. And I plucked these two out of a library. Get to know them, Chmeee. Ask them questions.”

“They fear me.”

“You’re a soft-spoken diplomat, remember? I’m going to invite the boy to see the lander. Tell him stories. Tell him about Kzin and hunting parks and the House of the Patriarch’s Past. Tell him how kzinti mate.”

Louis flicked across to Needle, spoke to Kawaresksenjajok, and was back in the lander with him before Harkabeeparolyn quite realized what was happening.

Chmeee showed him how to fly. The lander swooped and did somersaults and darted skyward at his command. The boy was entranced. Chmeee showed him the magic of binocular goggles, and superconductor cloth, and impact armor.

The boy asked about kzinti mating practices.

Chmeee had mated with a female who could talk! It had opened new vistas for him. He told Kawaresksenjajok what he wanted to know—which Louis thought was pretty dull stuff—and then got the boy talking about mating and rishathra.

Kawaresksenjajok had no practice but a lot of theory. “We make records if a species will let us. We have archives of tapes. Some species have things they can do instead of rishathra, or they may like to watch or to talk about it. Some mate in only one position, others only in season, and this carries over. All of this influences trade relationships. There are aids of various kinds. Did Luweewu tell you about vampire perfume?”

They hardly noticed when Louis left to return to Needle alone.

Harkabeeparolyn was upset. “Luweewu, he might hurt Kawa!”

“They’re doing fine,” Louis told her. “Chmeee’s my crewmate, and he likes children of all species. He’s perfectly safe. If you want to be his friend too, scratch him behind the ears.”

“How did you hurt your forehead?”

“I was careless. Look, I know how to calm you down.”

They made love—well, rishathra–on the water bed, with the massage unit going. The woman might have hated Panth Building, but she had learned a good deal. Two hours later, when Louis was sure he would never move again, Harkabeeparolyn stroked his cheek and said, “My time of mating should end tomorrow. Then you may recover.”

“I have mixed feelings about that.” He chuckled.

“Luweewu, I would feel better if you would rejoin Chmeee and Kawa.”

“Okay. Behold as I stagger to my feet. See me at the stepping disc? There I go: poof, gone.”

“Luweewu—”

“Oh, all right.”

The Map of Mars was a dark line, growing, becoming a wall across their path. As Chmeee slowed, microphones on the lander’s hull picked up a steady whispering, louder than the wind of their passage.