The Ringworld Throne

Acolyte dropped a big white imitation bone into the recycler. “Louis, are you healthy?”

“I’m not ready to race you again, not just yet.”

“You did well. What it cost you … you did well. I think my main nerve trunk was broken. Shall I put you in the ’doc?”

“No no no, it’s all coming to a head! Look—” Louis waved through the webeye window, at Whisper floating motionless above an infinite field of superconductor. His mind had had time to digest a little of that weird picture, and he spoke for the puppeteer as well as the adolescent Kzin. “Whisper’s in free fall. That means we’re looking at a vehicle moving at seven hundred seventy miles per second, antispinward. It’s a vehicle even if it has to stretch the full width of the maglev track. Two hundred feet wide and maybe longer than that.

“Those loops—Acolyte, you were in the ’doc when Bram was hinting around. You’re looking at the barest fringes of a rim wall ramjet. Lovecraft’s team had one all ready to go. Whisper’s holding it hostage.”

Whisper was looking back, watching the webeye. Bram must have told her what it was.

Bram flicked in. He was wearing Louis’s pressure suit with the helmet back. He looked at his allies; glanced into the windows; then turned to the kitchen. “Louis, Acolyte, Hindmost. What news?”

“As you see,” the Hindmost said. “An ARM carrier vessel orbits a hundred million miles out from the Ringworld’s underside. How will you deal with it?”

“Not yet.” Bram turned back to the windows. Now Whisper was clinging like a frightened monkey to the loop of superconductor.

“She’s begun deceleration. Acolyte, do you understand? We hope that King will consider a rim ramjet and the large sled too valuable to destroy.”

“Louis explained.”

Bram said, “Whisper expects me. What do you need of me before I go?”

The puppeteer bleated, “Give me access to the stepping disks!”

“Not quite yet, Hindmost.”

Louis asked, “What kind of opposition …”

“King has a long supply line. He’ll have a few spill mountain protectors. He will rotate them frequently unless he prefers to watch them die. They must scent their own kind, to know whom they protect, or else protect all beneath the Arch. King reserves that for himself.”

“Not many, then.”

“None, it may be. King’s own hands may serve him. The rim wall ramjet motors ca

Louis said, “Give us a hint. If you and Whisper are killed, what do we do?”

“Your contract. Protect all beneath the Arch.” Bram lowered his faceplate and fixed it in place. He was gone, a virtual particle in motion, and the port and starboard walls were glowing bright orange with the heat of the momentum exchange.

Tiny bottles popped into the kitchen well. The Hindmost inserted them one by one into the little medkit on the cargo plate stack. “Antibiotics,” he said.

“Thanks, Hindmost. I must have been clean out.”

More bottles. “Pain blockers.”

Whisper wasn’t in sight on the barge. She’d been conspicuous enough until now. She’d shown herself to King’s telescopes, with King’s treasure displayed vastly behind her. What was she playing at now?

Was she high in that cone of superconducting cable? How well did vampires climb?

Under the maglev barge?

The view ahead hadn’t changed. The track ran on and on. The barge and its unwieldy cargo might be decelerating, but even at high gee it would take awhile. Louis wondered if Whisper was pla

Nah. In ten hours at 770 miles/second, she’d covered around twenty-four million miles. But the track ran for two hundred million miles, and where in that length was her target? She couldn’t give King that much time to shoot at her.

Where, for that matter, was King? The vampire protector could be anywhere, if he’d trained High Point protectors to mount the ramjets for him. What was that?

Maglev sled, the small variety, almost lost on the vast track. Coming straight toward the window. Now veering from side to side, and slowing … matching speed with the barge … contact, and five matching pressure suits were past the webeye before Louis could blink. The Hindmost whistle-chimed, the view reversed, and … gone. They had already disappeared into the maze of coils.

Five matching pressure suits would be five spill mountain protectors, stet? They’d guard the ramjet, protect it from stray effects of a battle, serving both sides. For King, they would also serve as a distraction.

And anyone who had ever watched a magic act might guess that one of the five was King himself, his suit bulked out with additional weapons or armor.

Where were they?

Action far aft. Louis couldn’t make it out. This was going to be frustrating, he thought. He glanced at the Kzin: would Acolyte freak out? But he was watching with the patience of a cat at a mouse hole.

Traces of motion, distant flashes of light … and two maglev sleds were weaving through the coils! Sporadic flashes of light followed them. They dipped below view, then rose. One struck a coil and rebounded into an actinic blast, crashed into another coil and was out, over the edge of the track, gone. The other …

“Clever,” Louis whispered, and lowered his gaze to the bed of the barge. But there was nothing to be seen.

The Hindmost said, “Louis?”

“Whisper had the little sleds following the barge, right aft where King couldn’t see them. I only saw two, but maybe there were more, all slaved to the one she was in, and which one is that? Now she’s dipped them and rolled clear and sent them up again for King to shoot at. Even if King’s figured it out by now, it puts her in two places, and Whisper knows where he is. And I could be completely wrong.”

“The barge will stop soon. Then the dueling field expands, stet, Louis?”

“Ye gods, you’re right. If—”

Bram flicked in.

Light slashed where he had been, but Bram was among the superconductor loops and firing back with Louis’s flash. Light flared among the loops, a storm of energy beams. Bram stood up, holding his suit together with one hand.

The first beam hadn’t missed. It was hellishly intense, having gotten through the laser shielding on Louis’s suit.

Now two tiny man-shapes were firing among the loops, leaping, firing, chewing up the ramjet.

Louis said, “I just—” and stopped.

“Share it,” Acolyte spat.

“Light doesn’t hurt a superconductor. They’re all three using light-weapons. If King had known …”

Bram would be dead if he didn’t get to safety soon. He’d taken cover behind a thick loop of ramjet and was watching, just watching. Likely Bram had no better idea than he did, Louis thought, as to which man-shape was Whisper, which was King. He’d done what he could.

One combatant flared like a sun and dissolved.

The other flared brighter and was gone faster. Four shapes leaped like fleas, a pincer closing on Bram.

Louis started to laugh.

Bram ran for the stepping disk. He blazed like a sun and then he was gone, here, off the stepping disk, throwing back his helmet, pulling in air in great gasps. His pressure suit glowed dull red in spots. He stripped it away, keeping the gloves on until he was clear of the rest, hurled the suit into the shower and turned it on.

Louis was still laughing.

And Acolyte seemed to be smiling widely, but on a kzinti that was no smile. He said, “One of you will tell me what happened.”

“Whisper is dead and I am alone,” Bram said. “Is there more to know? King’s protector servants were to guard the ramjet and the barge while we fought. But we three came to fight war on a superconducting field, under superconducting coils. We all chose energy weapons. Stet, Acolyte? The Arch lives by the rim ramjets! We are protectors!”