The Ringworld Engineers Part 28

The Hindmost gave them an expanded view. A long, narrow, utterly black triangle with a textured surface, it dropped straight down from the center of the Map of Kzin. "A radiator fin," the puppeteer said. "The antarctic must be kept refrigerated, of course."

The Ringworlders were utterly bewildered. "I don't understand," Harkabeeparolyn said. "I thought I knew some science, but ... what is it?"

"Too complicated. Hindmost-"

"Luweewu, I am not a fool or a child!"

She couldn't be much over forty, Louis thought. "All right. The whole point is to imitate a planet. A spinning ball, right? Sunlight falls almost level at the poles of a spinning ball, so it's cold. So this imitation world has to be cooled at the poles. Hindmost, give us more magnification."

The fin's textured surface became myriad adjustable horizontal flaps, silver above, black below. Summer and winter, he thought; and he heard himself say, "I can't believe it."

"Luweewu?"

He spread his hands helplessly. "Every so often I lose it. I think I've accepted it all, and then all of a sudden it's too big. Too tanj big."

Tears were br.i.m.m.i.n.g in Harkabeeparolyn's eyes. "I believe it now. My world is an imitation of a real world."

Louis put his arms around her. "It's real. Feel this? You're as real as I am. Stamp your foot. The world is as real as this s.h.i.+p. Just bigger. Way way bigger."

The Hindmost said, "Louis?"

A bit of telescope work had found him more fins, smaller ones, around the Map's perimeter. "Naturally the arctic regions must be cooled too."

"Yeah. I'll be all right in a minute. Take us toward Fist-of-G.o.d, but take your time. The computer can find it?"

"Yes. Might we find it plugged? You said that the eye storm has been plugged or repaired."

"Plugging Fist-of-G.o.d wouldn't be easy. The hole's bigger than Australia, and clear above the atmosphere." He rubbed his closed eyes hard.

I can't let this happen to me, he thought. What happens is real. What's real, I can manipulate with my brain. Tanj, I should never have used the wire. It's screwed up my sense of reality. But ... cooling fins under the poles?

They were out from under the Map of Kzin. Deep-radar showed nothing of pipes beneath the contoured sea bottoms. Which must mean that the meteor s.h.i.+elding was foamed scrith. The pipes had to be there, or else flup would fill the ocean beds.

Those ridges on the Ringworld's underside-those long, long undersea canyons. A dredge in each of the deepest canyons, an outlet at one end: you could keep the whole ocean bed clear.

"Veer a little, Hindmost. Take us under the Map of Mars. Then under the Map of Earth. It won't take us too far out of our way."

"Nearly two hours."

"Risk it."

Two hours. Louis dozed in the sleeping field. He knew that an adventurer s.n.a.t.c.hes sleep when he can. He woke well ahead of time, with sea bottom still gliding past above Needle's roof. He watched it slow and stop.

The Hindmost said, "Mars is missing."

Louis shook his head violently. Wake up! "What?"

"Mars is a cold, dry, nearly airless world, isn't it? The entire Map should be cooled, and desiccated too, somehow, and raised nearly above the atmosphere."

"Yeah. All of that."

"Then look up. We should be beneath the Map of Mars. Do you see a fin far larger than that beneath the Map of Kzin? Do you see a nearly circular cavity bulging twenty miles inward?"

There was nothing above their heads but the inverted contours of a sea bottom.

"Louis, this is disturbing. If our computer memory is failing us ..." The Hindmost's legs folded. His heads dipped downward, inward.

"The computer memory is fine," Louis said. "Relax. The computer's fine. See if the ocean temperature is higher above us."

The Hindmost hesitated, half into fetal position. Then, "Aye, aye." The puppeteer busied himself at the controls.

Harkabeeparolyn asked, "Do, I understand you? One of your worlds is missing?"

"One of the smaller ones. Sheer carelessness, my dear."

"These aren't b.a.l.l.s," she said thoughtfully.

"No. Peeled like a round fruit, the peel spread flat."

The Hindmost called, "The temperatures in this vicinity vary. Ignoring the regions around fins, I find temperatures from forty to eighty degrees Fahrenheit."

"The water should be warmer around the Map of Mars."

"The Map of Mars is not in evidence, and the water is not warmer."

"Wha...at? But that's weird."

"If I understand you-yes, there is a problem." The puppeteer's necks arched out and curved around until he was looking into his own eyes. Louis had seen Nessus do that, and wondered if it was puppeteer laughter. It could be concentration. It was making Harkabeeparolyn queasy, but she couldn't seem to look away.

Louis paced. Mars had to be refrigerated. Then where? ...

The puppeteer whistled an odd harmonic. "The grid?"

Louis stopped in midstride. "The grid. Right. And that would mean ... futz! That easy?"

"We make progress of sorts. Our next move?"

They'd learned a good deal, looking at undersides of worlds. So-"Take us on to the Map of Earth, bas.e.m.e.nt level, please."

"Aye, aye," said the Hindmost. Needle continued to spinward.

So much ocean, Louis thought. So little land. Why had the Ringworld Engineers wanted so much salt sea in two single bodies? Two for balance, of course, but why so large?

Reservoirs? Partly. Preserves for the sea life of an abandoned Pak world? A conservationist would call that praiseworthy; but these were Pak protectors. Whatever they did was done for the safety of themselves and their blood descendants.

The Maps, Louis thought, were a superb piece of misdirection.

Despite the contoured ocean floor, Earth was easy to recognize. Louis pointed out the flat curves of the continental shelves as they pa.s.sed beneath Africa, Australia, the Americas, Greenland ... fins under Antarctica and the Arctic Ocean ... the Ringworlders watched and nodded politely. Why would they care? It wasn't their home.

Yeah, he'd do his best to get Harkabeeparolyn and Kawaresksenjajok home, if there was nothing else he could do for them. Louis Wu was as close to Earth now as he would ever be.

More sea bottom pa.s.sed above them.

Then sh.o.r.eline: a flat curve of continental shelf bordering a maze of gulfs and bays and river deltas and peninsulas and island cl.u.s.ters and raggedy detail too fine for the human eye. Needle ran on to port of spinward. They pa.s.sed beneath hollow mountain ranges and flat seas. A finely ruled line ran straight to spinward, and at its near end, a glint of light- Fist-of-G.o.d.

Something huge had struck the Ringworld long ago. The fireball had pushed the Ringworld floor upward into the shape of a tilted cone, then ripped through. Pointing almost away from that great funnel shape was the track of a much later meteorite: a crippled General Products s.p.a.cecraft, with its pa.s.sengers frozen in stasis, had touched down at a horizontal seven hundred and seventy miles per second. Futz, they'd actually bent the scrith!

Hot Needle of Inquiry rose into a spotlight beam: raw sunlight flooding vertically through the crater in Fist-of-G.o.d Mountain. Shards of scrith, stretched thin when that old fireball broke through, stood like minor peaks around a volcano cone. The s.h.i.+p lifted above them.

Desert sloped down and away. The impact that made Fist-of-G.o.d had cremated all life over a region comfortably larger than the Earth. Far, far away, a hundred thousand miles away, the blue of distance became the blue of sea; and only Needle's thousand-mile height let them see that far.

"Get us moving," Louis said. "Then give us a view from the lander's cameras. Let's see how Chmeee's doing."

"Aye aye."

Chapter 27 -.

The Great Ocean Six rectangular windows floated beyond the hull. Six cameras showed the lander's flight deck, lower deck, and four outside views.

The flight deck was empty. Louis scanned for emergency lights and found none.

The autodoc was still a great coffin, closed.

Something was wrong with the outside cameras. The view wavered and s.h.i.+fted and streamed with glowing colors. Louis was able to make out the courtyard, the arrow slits, several kzinti standing guard in leather armor. Other kzinti sprinted to and fro on an fours: blurred streaks.

Flames! The defenders had built a bonfire around the lander!

"Hindmost? Can you lift the lander from here? You said you had remote controls."

"I could take off," the Hindmost said, "but it would be dangerous. We are ... twelve minutes of arc to spinward and a bit to port of the Map of Kzin-a third of a million miles. Would you expect me to fly the lander with a lightspeed delay of three and a half seconds? The life-support system is holding well."

Four kzinti streaked across the courtyard to throw open ma.s.sive gates. A wheeled vehicle pulled in and stopped. It was larger than the Machine People vehicle that had brought Louis to the floating city. Projectile weapons were mounted on its four fenders. Kzinti emerged and stood studying the lander.

Had the castle's lord called on a neighbor for help?

Or had a neighbor come to claim rights to an impregnable flying fort?

The vehicles guns swiveled to face the cameras, and spat. Flame bloomed; the cameras shuddered. The great orange cats ducked, then rose to study the results.

No emergency lights showed on the flight deck.

"These savages haven't the means to harm the lander," the Hindmost said.

Explosive projectiles sprayed the lander again.

"I'll just take your word for it," Louis said. "Continue monitoring. Are we close enough that I can get to the lander by stepping discs?"

The puppeteer looked himself in the eyes. He held the pose for several seconds.

Then he spoke. "We are two hundred thousand miles to spinward of the Map of Kzin, and a hundred and twenty thousand miles to port. The portward distance is irrelevant. The spinward distance would be lethal. It gives Needle and the lander a relative velocity of eight-tenths of a mile per second."

"Too much?"

"Our technology is not miraculous, Louis! Stepping discs can absorb kinetic energies of up to two hundred feet per second, no more."

The explosions had scattered the bonfire. Armored kzinti guards were building it up again.

Louis bit down on a bad word. "All right. The fastest way to get me there is to run us straight to antispinward until I can use the stepping discs. Then we can take our time running to starboard."

"Aye, aye. What speed?"

Louis opened his mouth and left it open while he thought. "Now, that is one fascinating question," he said. "What does the Ringworld meteor defense consider a meteor? Or an invading s.p.a.cecraft?"

The puppeteer reached behind him, chewed at the control. "I've cut our acceleration. We should discuss this. Louis, I don't understand how the City Builders knew it was safe to build a rim transport system. They were right, but how did they know?"

Louis shook his head. He could see why the Ringworld protectors might program the meteor defense not to fire on the rim walls. A safe corridor for their own s.h.i.+ps-or maybe they found that the computer was firing on the att.i.tude jets whenever the att.i.tude jets fired a high-velocity plume of gas. "I'd say the City Builders started with small s.h.i.+ps and built up. They tried it and it worked."

"Stupid. Dangerous."

"We already know they did things like that."

"You have my opinion. At your orders, Louis: what speed?"

The high desert sloped gradually down: a baked and lifeless land, an ecology shattered and heated to incandescence thousands of falans ago. What had struck that blow from underneath the Ringworld? A comet wouldn't normally be that big. There were no asteroids, no planets; they had been cleaned out of the system during the building of the Ringworld.

Needle's velocity was already respectable. The land ahead was beginning to turn green. There were silver threads of river.

"On the first expedition we flew at Mach 2, using flycycles," Louis said. "That'd take us ... eight days before I can use the stepping discs. Too tanj long. I'm a.s.suming the meteor defense fires on things that move fast relative to the surface. How fast is fast?"

"The easy way to find out is to accelerate until something happens."

"I do not believe I heard a Pierson's puppeteer say that."

"Have faith in puppeteer engineering, Louis. The stasis field will function. No weapon can harm us in stasis. At worst we will return to normal status after we strike the surface, and proceed henceforth at a lower speed. There are hierarchies of risk, Louis. The most dangerous thing we can do during the next two years is hide."

"I don't-if it was Chmeee saying-but a Pierson's ... give me a minute." Louis closed his eyes and tried to think. Then "See how this sounds. First we loft the ruined probe, the one we left in the Library-"

"I moved it."

"Where?"

"To the nearest high mountain with an exposed scrith crest. The safest place I could think of. The probe is still valuable, though it can no longer manufacture fuel."