The Ringworld Engineers

Chmeee had reinflated his pressure suit. Now he pulled his flying belt over it. He set a rock on each toe, then fiddled with the flying belt until it was straining upward. Now, that was clever. Kick the rocks away and flip the thruster on, and an empty suit would fly to the attack.

Louis hadn’t thought of anything comparable.

Maybe Teela came here only every couple of weeks. Maybe she stored tree-of-life roots elsewhere.

What did tree-of-life look like, anyway? These glossy clumps of dark-green leaves? Louis pulled one up. There were fat roots underneath, vaguely like yams or sweet potatoes. He didn’t recognize the plant, but he didn’t recognize anything that lived here. Most of what lived on the Ringworld, and everything here, must have been imported from the galactic core.

Teela laughed in Louis’s ear.

Chapter 32

Protector

Louis didn’t just jump; he screamed inside his helmet. There was laughter in Teela’s voice, and a slurring of consonants that she couldn’t help: lips and gums fused into a hard beak. “I never want to fight a Pierson’s puppeteer again! Chmeee, do you think you’re dangerous? That puppeteer almost got me.”

Somehow she was activating their dead earphones. Could she track them by the same means? Then they were dead. So assume she couldn’t.

“There were no signals from your ship. Communications dead. I had to know what was happening inside. So I rigged something to hook into the stepping discs. I can tell you that wasn’t easy. First I had to guess that a puppeteer might bring stepping discs from his home planet, then I had to deduce how they worked, and build it … and when I hooked in and flicked over, the puppeteer was reaching for the stasis field switch! I had to guess where the transmitter disc was, and tanj fast! But I got out, and your ship must be in stasis, and nobody’s coming to help you. I’m coming for you now,” said Teela, and Louis heard the regret in her voice.

Nothing to do but wait now. The Hindmost was out of the picture, with all of the equipment aboard Needle. Nothing left but what was in their hands.

It sounded like she’d be a while, though—if she wasn’t lying. Louis lifted on his flying belt.

A mile, two miles, and the roof was still far above. Ponds, streams, gentle hills: a thousand square miles of garden turned to wilderness. Lacy-leaved, bell-shaped trees formed a spreading jungle to port. Hundreds of square miles of yellow bushes to spinward and starboard still retained traces of the rows in which they’d been planted.

He found one big entrance to spinward, and at least three smaller ones, including the tu

Louis dropped to near the surface. They’d have to defend from four directions. If he could find some kind of bowl shape … there, off center, a stream with low hills around it. Why not the middle of a stream? He studied it from above, with the feeling that he was missing some crucial point.

Yah.

Louis streaked back to where Chmeee had taken cover. He shook Chmeee’s arm and pointed.

Chmeee nodded. He ran toward the corridor they’d entered by, towing his pressure suit like a balloon. Louis lifted via his flying belt and waved Harkabeeparolyn to follow.

A notched ridge of low hills, with a pond behind. Might make a nice ambush. Louis settled on the crest. He stretched out flat, where he could watch the entrance. He turned for a moment to hurl his coil of superconductor wire toward the pond, and watched to be sure it reached the water.

There was only one way out of Needle. The only stepping disc Teela could have reached led to a probe on the slope of Mons Olympus. Teela’s route was the route they’d followed, and it led here.

Several swallows of sugar syrup; several swallows of water. Try to relax. Louis couldn’t see Chmeee; he hadn’t any idea where the kzin had gone. Harkabeeparolyn was looking at him. Louis pointed at the corridor, then waved her away. She got it. She slid around the curve of a hill. Louis was alone.

These hills were too tanj flat. The thigh-high clumps of dark, glossy green leaves would hide a motionless man, but would impede movement.

Time passed. Louis used the sanitary facilities in his suit, feeling helpless and hurried. Back to his post. Stay ready. With her knowledge of the Repair Center’s interior transport systems, she’d come fast. Hours from now, or now …

Now! Teela came like a guided missile, just under the corridor’s roof. Louis glimpsed her as he rolled to fire. She was standing upright on a disc six feet across, hanging on to an upright post with handles and controls on it.

Louis fired. Chmeee fired from wherever he hid. Two threads of ruby light touched the same target. Teela was squatting by then, hidden by the disc. She’d seen all she wanted, placed their positions to the inch.

But the flying disc flared ruby flame, and it was falling. Louis had a last glimpse of Teela before she dropped behind the strange, lacy trees.

She had spread a tiny paraglider.

So assume she’s alive and unhurt, and move away fast. Economically, Louis went over the crest of the hill and watched from the other side. It could work, and his tail of superconductor thread was still in the pond.

Where was she?

Something leaped from the crest of the next hill over. Green light speared it in midair, and held while the thing flamed and died. So much for Chmeee’s spacesuit. But a flight of hand-sized missiles flew toward the base of the green laser beam. Half a dozen white flashes from behind the rise, and the snap! of lightning striking close, showed that Chmeee had succeeded in turning puppeteer-made batteries into bombs.

Teela was close, and she was using a laser. And if she was circling the pond, just beyond the crest … Louis adjusted his position.

Chmeee’s burnt suit had fallen too slowly. A protector would know it was empty. Cthulhu and Allah! How could anyone fight a lucky protector?

Teela popped up, lower down the hillside than Louis had expected, speared Louis on a lance of green light, and was gone before Louis’s thumb could move. Louis blinked. The flare shielding in his helmet had saved his eyes. But, instincts or no, Teela was trying to kill Louis Wu.

She popped up again elsewhere. Green light died on black cloth. This time Louis fired back. She was gone; he didn’t know whether he’d hit her. He’d glimpsed pliant leather armor a little loose on her, and joints swollen hugely: knuckles and finger joints like walnuts, knees and elbows like cantaloupes. She wore no armor except her own skin.

Louis rolled sideways and down the hill. He started crawling, fast. Crawling was hard work. Where would she be next? He’d never played this game. In two hundred years of life, he’d never been a soldier.

Two puffs of steam drifted above the pond.

To his left, Harkabeeparolyn suddenly stood and fired. Where was Teela? Her laser didn’t answer. Harkabeeparolyn stood like a black-robed target; then she ducked and ran down the hill. Flattened out and started to crawl left and upward.

The rock came from her left, and how could Teela have been there that fast? It smacked Harkabeeparolyn’s arm hard enough to smash bone and to rip the sleeve open. The City Builder woman stood howling, and Louis waited to see her cut down. Futzfutzfutz! but track the beam–

No beam came. And he shouldn’t be watching; he should be acting. He’d seen where the rock came from. There was a cleft between two hills, and he crawled as fast as he dared, to put hillside between himself and Teela. Then around … Tanj, where was Chmeee now? Louis risked a glance over the crest.

Harkabeeparolyn had stopped screaming. She sniffed. She dropped her flying belt and tore the black cloth away, one-handed. Her other arm flapped loose, broken. She began trying to take off her suit.