The Ringworld Throne

There were weapons: a knife of old metal turned to black rust, slender and a foot long. Two knives made of horn, each no bigger than a forefinger. There were six throwing knives, nearly identical though shaped from stone, as lethal as the day they were made. A slender pole of some durable metal alloy, the ends sharpened to chisels.

Patterns in the dust might once have been wooden shoes with heavy straps. Here were a fancy crossbow and a dozen bolts, each slightly different. This little box … a firestarter? Louis tried, but he couldn’t get a flame started. A stack of paper or parchment: maps?

There was a telescope … crude, but very finely shaped and polished, and set a little apart. Hello: these next to it were tool-working tools. Pumice, little knives … Bram and/or A

A hard black lump the size of his fist. Louis bent low to sniff. Dried meat? A thousand years beyond its date … but jerky always did smell and taste a bit gamy. Maybe a Ghoul would like that.

How long ago had Cronus died?

Ask?

Louis knew he was playing catch-up here. He’d learn more by asking … but he’d learn what Bram chose to teach. And time was constricting around him.

Louis patted Cronus’s shoulder bones. “Trust me,” he said, and flicked out.

He was glare-blind and way off balance.

He convulsed like a sea anemone, reaching between his knees for anything solid, eyes squinted shut against raw sunlight. His gloved fingers brushed something and closed hard.

The badly tilted stepping disk slid under him by a foot or two. He was gripping the rim of the disk itself, he hoped. He held very still.

His photosensitive faceplate turned smoky gray. Still crouched, gripping the edge of the stepping disk, he looked about him.

The Map of Mars wasn’t a very good map.

He could see a hundred shades of red without moving, but the sky was the dark blue of high-altitude Earth. The sun was too bright for Mars. Nothing could be done about the gravity either.

Maybe it didn’t matter to Martians. They lived safe from sunlight beneath sand fine enough to behave like a viscous fluid. Perhaps the sand would even buoy them against Ringworld gravity.

He’d expected to be at Mons Olympus, and it seemed he was. He was a long way up. The stepping disk rested near the top of a smooth forty-five-degree slope of piled dust, and it was starting to slide again.

What had the Hindmost been thinking of, to put it here?

Yeah, right. Martians. They’d set a trap.

Sliding faster now, losing all stability. It was a long way down. Miles! Dust must have piled here over mille

Louis squatted, flattened himself against the stepping disk as it became a sled.

It picked up speed. The disk was trying to bounce him off. His hands had a death-grip and he tried to grip with his boot toes, too. An arcology-sized rock stood in his path. He leaned left, trying to steer. Nope. It was going to swat him hard.

Then he was elsewhere.

And his death-grip became something more, because he was falling into a black void.

He chopped off part of a shrill scream. But I fixed it! I fixed it! I fixed it!

He was clinging to a stepping disk welded to a gracefully curved cigar shape: the puppeteer’s refueling probe. Around him was black sky and a glare of stars.

The stepping disk, the probe’s hull, everything glowed. There must be light behind him. Without losing anything of his toe-and-finger grip, Louis twisted to look over his shoulder.

The Ringworld was adrift behind and below him. He could see fine detail: rivers like twisted snakes, undersea landscapes, a straight black thread that might be a Machine People highway.

The naked sun was trying to broil him. No problem: the suit was one he could sweat through. Night would be a greater threat. He hadn’t thought he would need an oversuit.

He was level with the top of the rim wall, looking down at half-conical spill mountains and the rivers that ran from their bases. A thousand miles up. Far ahead of him he could make out lacy lines sketching a long double cone.

An attitude jet. He could see the twin toroids that he’d thought made up a Bussard ramjet; but they were tiny, forming the wasp waist of something far larger. The Ringworld attitude jet was made of wire so thin that it kept fading in and out of sight. A cage to guide the flow of the solar wind.

This one wasn’t mounted yet: it wasn’t pointed right.

Louis hadn’t felt fear like this in two hundred years.

But I got the bread back!

The probe was coasting … was motionless, while the Ringworld rotated below at 770 miles per second.

The system must have reset. I took this one disk out of the link, but it must have reset. I don’t understand the Hindmost’s programming language. What else have I fouled up?

The sashimi? That was easy. The plate must have drifted too far from the disk. The bread hadn’t: it was still in range when the disks cycled.

He hung on, hung on …

And the disk bumped against his faceplate.

He clung with his eyes closed. He was in no shape to confront anyone, any creature. In a few seconds he’d be safe and alone aboard Hot Needle of Inquiry.

A great clawed hand took him by the shoulder and rolled him over.

Chapter 23

The Ru

The Kzin pulled him to his feet. Louis was gasping, shivering. Acolyte couldn’t talk to him while his helmet was closed, and Louis was glad of that.

He was aboard Hidden Patriarch, near the stern.

Just another goddamn stu

Acolyte was trying to ask him something. The Kzin was holding—tanj dammit! Louis wrenched his helmet open.

Acolyte said, “I was prowling around the stern when this popped up on the stepping disk. Your visiting-gift, Louis? Preserved fish?”

Louis took the sashimi plate. The sliced fish was puffy and crisp to the touch.

“It’s been in vacuum,” he said. “Did a loaf of bread come by?”

“I let it pass. Louis, you stink of terror.”

What am I doing here?

In a moment he could be safe aboard Hot Needle of Inquiry, floating between sleeping plates while he got through his shivering, got his mind back, and tried to digest what he had and hadn’t learned.

Acolyte had seen him. If the Kzin could be persuaded to shut up, then—Yeah, right. The protector must have been observing Acolyte’s body language for half an Earth year. The Kzin couldn’t hide anything from him.

Louis said instead, “The dead could smell my terror.” He dropped his helmet and air pack and began opening zippers. “I thought I had the stepping disk controls figured out. Wrong! Oh, and the Martians set us a death trap. That almost got me, too.”

An adolescent’s half-bald head popped into view above a hatch. City Builder. The boy’s eyes widened in surprise, and he dropped from view.

The Kzin asked, “Martians?”

Louis began stripping off his suit. “Skip it. I’ve got to burn some energy. Can you run?”

The Kzin bristled. “I outran my father after we fought.”

“I’ll race you to the bow.”

Acolyte yowled and bounded away.

Louis’s pressure suit was pooled around his ankles. At the Kzin’s howl, his every muscle locked and he fell over.

That was a wonderful battle cry! Hissing ancient curses, Louis pulled the suit off, rolled to his feet and ran.