Fate of Worlds: Return From the Ringworld

be incredibly robust or centrifugal force would have torn it apart. Clever, but Sigmund was more interested in the other technology purportedly on the shadow squares: solar power plants and vast numbers of sensors.

“… Thorough survey, across the spectrum,” Minister Norquist-Ng was saying. “Our scientists have proposed several theories, and we’ll want to give them — ”

“Excuse me, Minister.” Sigmund turned to address the camera. “I have to ask something time-sensitive. Who else came to investigate this phenomenon?” Are the three of them safe?

The light-speed delay to and from the hyperwave relay gave Norquist-Ng plenty of time to frown.

“You’re right, Sigmund, we have company,” Alice said. “Lots of ships, to judge from hyperspace ripples and comm chatter. But the comm is unintelligible, whether alien or just encrypted. Our Jeeves hasn’t yet had any luck with it.

“Having said that, everything we’ve intercepted, radio and hyperwave, is faint. I doubt we have anyone nearby.”

“Near being a relative term,” Sigmund said.

A minute and a half later — time enough, through hyperdrive, for any of the nearby ships to travel two light- days! — he saw Alice’s answering shrug.

Nessus turned a head toward the camera. “I keep us moving, a short hyperdrive jump every few minutes. In fact, if you’ll excuse us — ”

The holo froze for several seconds. When motion returned to the real-time feed, Nessus was giving his full attention to his instruments.

“Very well, Mr. Ausfaller,” Norquist-Ng said. “As I was saying — ”

Those ships. Might they be from Human Space? After so long, could the path be open back to Earth? But for what peaceful reason would anyone send so many ships? And if not peaceful, then …

“Whose ships are they, Nessus?” Sigmund interrupted again.

“We would need to get much closer to tell,” Nessus said, as with his other head he tugged and twisted at his mane. Clearly, he did not want to get closer. That might be only typical Puppeteer risk avoidance.

Or Nessus might hesitate lest Alice and Julia find an ARM ship to contact.

“Are you finished, Ausfaller?” Norquist-Ng asked. “We sent a ship to scope out an unprecedented event. It seems other worlds did, too. With reasonable precautions, I think we can avoid any — ”

Ostriches! Sigmund thought. Did isolation ever not backfire?

But Julia was also speaking. “… May … Ringworld left … one-light-hour hops…”

“Jeeves, back us up to the start of the captain’s last comment,” Sigmund directed.

“Yes, sir,” the conference-room AI said.

“We may have data on why the Ringworld left. We backed off several light-days in one-light-hour hops, hoping to see what led up to the departure. What we observed, scattered around and sometimes on the Ringworld, were gamma-ray bursts, some powerful.”

“So, gamma-ray bursts,” someone muttered from the back of the room. “The skies are full of them.”

“Not around planets,” Norquist-Ng barked at the hapless aide. “Ausfaller. Any ideas?”

“Antimatter,” Sigmund said. “The most powerful explosive imaginable. When matter and antimatter meet, all that’s left from the encounter is gamma rays.

“Someone was fighting over the Ringworld, and we’ve sent our people into the war zone.”

9

As Alice and Julia kept trying to bring a halt to the interminable consultation with New Terra, Nessus focused on piloting their ship. Warships armed with antimatter! Against antimatter, twing would be like tissue. Not even a General Products hull could withstand an antimatter bullet. No wonder the Ringworld — however the trick had been done! — had fled.

And good riddance.

Had he not been certain that the humans would wrest back control, he would already have started Endurance on its way to … anyplace but here.

Instead, every few minutes Nessus jumped the ship around the chaos. The task required surprising concentration. Although Jeeves could have proposed jump timing, the algorithm the AI used to simulate randomness might have been familiar to ARM ships executing the same algorithms. He could not imagine them predicting this pattern.

Earth finding the Fleet? That had come to serve his purposes. Earth discovering the ancient crime by which New Terra had been settled? That was a complication and a risk he had spent much of his life trying to prevent.

(Alice had recognized the map of Earth! She had tried to cover her slip, not said what caught her eye, but he knew. He had long suspected she was from outside. But wherever Alice was from, however she had come to be on New Terra — Sigmund, too, kept secrets — if she could have guided a ship back to Earth, it would have happened by now.)

“Could Endurance be spotted?” someone on New Terra asked.

“We’re stealthed, but that goes only so far,” Julia said. “We can’t avoid giving off heat, so infrared sensors might see us. Our power plant sprays neutrinos. And ships detecting this broadcast might be trying to track us down.”

“Let’s review calibrations on your passive sensors,” someone said, missing or ignoring Julia’s hint.

“Another jump,” Nessus announced, his heads shaking. Julia or Alice would have to take his place soon.

“Be right back,” Alice told the camera.

They emerged from hyperspace three seconds — and a light-hour — from their last position in normal space. As Nessus considered his next step, he half listened to the resumed consultation. People safe in their meeting room, light-years away, continued their endless questions. Were there snowballs nearby from which Endurance could replenish its deuterium tanks? How long would it take to refuel? Did they plan to deploy additional probes for monitoring? Were …

Through it all, Sigmund kept trying to bring the discussion back to the nearby fleets, and how Endurance might identify an ARM ship to contact. Norquist-Ng kept calling anything beyond lurking “premature” and any attempt at outreach “too risky.”

“Preparing to jump,” Nessus interrupted.

So much danger. So much tension. Nessus tuned out the endless meeting. He tried to concentrate only on the choreography by which to keep Endurance one step ahead of any ship that might come after them.

But old, dread memories of the Ringworld would no longer be denied.…

Earth Date: 2851

The Hindmost’s council chamber: a place Nessus had never expected to see. Now he was in it, the center of attention. By his own doing. At his own insistence.

Madness took many forms.

Every time he had left Hearth and herd, he had had to work himself into a manic state. But to come in a frenzy to the inner sanctum of the Concordance?

Focus! Nessus ordered himself. Taking a deep breath, he examined the council room. Sparely furnished and devoid of ornamentation. Locked doors and no stepping discs. Well lit, the entire ceiling a glow panel. Intimate, the benches close together, the Hindmost and his ministers seated haunch by haunch. And Nessus’ true audience: a hologram — and whoever was behind it.

If observation and deduction had not led Nessus astray. A long chain of inference, from very few facts, led to his conclusion as to who must hide behind Chiron. Not even his beloved would comment upon Nessus’ speculations.