The Ringworld Throne

“Really?”

“Trust me. Eight minutes for a beam from the sun to touch the Arch. Sixteen minutes across, thirty-two to cross and come back. If three starships pop up through a hole here, near the Great Ocean, and two and a half hours later they’re destroyed, and a ship lands here and is destroyed two hours later, where is the attacker?”

Sawur studied the sketch, then pointed. “Here, across the Arch. The first ships, he needed half an hour just to see them.”

“But what if it is attacked three hours later?”

Sawur said, “That would put the attacker here where you drew the Great Ocean.”

“Yeah.”

When shadow touched the sun, Louis had written a contract that ought to protect him, if a puppeteer would honor a contract.

He presented the cargo plate to Weaver Town while di

He watched Kidada swooping among the houses with Strill whooping in his arms, and hoped that they wouldn’t burn the thing out joyriding. One day they’d need it to lift something heavy.

The light was disappearing. Hunters had killed a predator; the meat tasted too much of cat. Weavers took slices and settled to watch the cliff as it came alight. Perched on his stack of cargo plates like a proper wizard, Louis nibbled cooked reeds and a root he’d microwaved in clay.

Puppeteers were dancing in a swirling rainbow. Louis watched with the others, then asked in Interspeak, “Are the pyrotechnics supposed to throw you off?”

“They are for loveliness. Louis, you must come to me.”

“How is it with the fearless vampire slayers?”

“I hear only voices. The cruisers have separated. Cruiser Two is gone to starboard with my webeye in the cargo shell. The Red Herders speak of an entity the male calls ‘Whisper.’ Tegger thinks Whisper has left them. Warvia thinks he dreamed. I think Whisper is our phantom protector. Louis, will you come?”

“We’ll have to reach terms—”

“I accept your contract—”

“You haven’t seen it!”

“I accept it provided you make no changes from this moment. As you’ve had no extortionate advantage, you will have written it fairly. My probe will arrive within twelve minutes.”

Louis looked at the sky. Nothing was visible yet. “Where will I pop out?”

“In your suite aboard Needle.”

Suite? It was one compartment, locked, that he had shared with a Kzin! “Contract pays me triple time during emergencies. Shall I arm myself?”

“Yes.”

“Sawur, get the children out of the water. Hindmost, land in the stream. Now, I remember crawling through the disk you mounted for refueling. It was pretty cramped.”

“I do learn, Louis! I’ve mounted a full-sized stepping disk on the side of the probe, big enough for you and your cargo plates, too.”

Louis thought, Fortunately I always keep my feathers numbered for just such emergencies. It wouldn’t have meant anything to a puppeteer. From his safe box he withdrew the flashlight-laser and a variable-knife, two powerful weapons. He set the flash for narrow, short range, high intensity. He extended the blade by two feet, then brought it back to a foot and a half.

Lose your hold on a variable-knife, the wire blade would cut whatever was close.

A violet-white light peeked above the cliff.

The refueling probe settled on fusion flame. The cavity in its nose, that was the refueling system: a filter to pass hydrogen ions, and a one-way stepping disk no wider than Louis’s hips. A much larger stepping disk had been mounted on its flank, a circular plate like an afterthought of a wing.

Weavers oohed and ahhed, then shied back from a wave of steam. The flame went out. As Louis glided above the probe, it splashed down on its flared motor, then rolled and toppled into the water.

The water dimpled above the stepping disk.

So: it was on. Louis cut the lift and dropped straight in. His peripheral vision caught a shadow leaping after him.

Chapter 19

The Knobby Man

Hot Needle of Inquiry had been built around a General Products #3 hull, with interior walls to separate the puppeteer captain from his alien crew. Currently the ship was more dwelling than spacecraft. Needle couldn’t exceed lightspeed because Louis Wu had cut the hyperdrive loose from its mountings, eleven years ago, for reasons that seemed good at the time. The ship itself had been embedded in magma during negotiations with the protector who had once been Teela Brown.

During that period and after, the Hindmost had deployed stepping disks through the ship and the Repair Center and elsewhere, too.

Louis expected to appear in the blocked-off crew quarters. The Hindmost hadn’t needed to suggest, maybe hadn’t dared to be overheard suggesting, that Louis come in fast.

The floating plates come down hard. Louis caught the recoil with bent knees, but he was still knocked off balance. He shouted, “Something’s—”

Something’s following me! Hindmost— But there was plenty going on here.

Thousands of Pierson’s puppeteers shifted and swirled and kicked, stage left. It might have been distracting, but it wasn’t. Louis and Chmeee had learned to ignore that part of the ship. That was the Hindmost’s, and the wall wasn’t glass. It was the invulnerable stuff a General Products hull was made of.

But one two-headed, three-legged alien, his mane curled and bejeweled in formal fashion, was between the kitchen wall and a coffin as big as a transfer booth lying on its side.

A knobby old man in a floppy vest was ru

A hidden stepping disk led to the Hindmost’s quarters. The Hindmost must be near or on it, Louis thought. He would be invulnerable there.

Instinct must have been too strong. The Hindmost turned his back instead.

It all happened very fast. Louis was still catching his balance. The Hindmost was spi

The Hindmost’s kick was good, square on target. Louis heard a clank: the knobby man must have been wearing a chest plate. Armor or no, that kick would have knocked a normal hominid into a coma. The knobby man turned with the impact, feet off the floor, one hand on the Hindmost’s ankle to borrow its momentum as the Hindmost pulled back for another kick. The knobby man stepped past the hoof and slammed a fist down hard on the puppeteer’s bejeweled mane, where the two necks co

That was the Hindmost’s skull.

And Louis was bringing the flash around. Too slow, too clumsy, the stu

Louis flinched violently away from the spi

The Hindmost was down, curled into a ball, heads and long necks tucked between his forelegs. The floor was ankle deep in water. The fallen flash was submerged, but it sent a thread of light through Needle’s transparent hull and into the lava beyond.

The wire blade hadn’t cut Louis in two. Blind luck. But his hands and wrists felt shattered, he was way off balance, and the knobby man was coming at him. Protector!

Louis rolled off the stepping disk and into a corner and started to stand up. His right wrist was a sea of pain. The left was only numb.