The Ringworld Engineers

There were no meteoroid punctures here. Yet there were patches of desert, Sahara-size and larger. On the ridges of mountain ranges he found the pearly gleam of naked Ringworld foundation. Winds had stripped away the covering rock.

Had the weather patterns grown this bad, this fast? Or did the Ringworld engineers like deserts? It struck Louis that the Repair Center must have been deserted for a very long time. Halrloprillalar’s people might never have found it at all, after the Ringworld engineers vanished. As they had to have vanished, if Louis’s guess was right.

“I want three hours’ sleep,” Chmeee said. “Can you fly the lander if something happens?”

Louis shrugged. “Sure, but what could happen? We’re too low for the meteor defense. Even if it’s based on the rim wall, it’d be firing on settled land. We’ll just cruise awhile.”

“Yes. Wake me in three hours.” Chmeee reclined his chair and slept.

Louis turned to the fore and aft telescopes for amusement and instruction. Night had covered the sunflower region. He ran the view up along the Arch to the nearest of the Great Oceans.

There, to spinward of the ocean and almost on the Ringworld median line: that tilted mock volcano was Fist-of-God Mountain, in a patch of Mars-colored desert much bigger than Mars. Farther to port, a reaching bay of the Great Ocean, itself bigger than worlds.

They had reached the shore of that bay and turned back, last time.

The islands were scattered in clusters across the blue ellipse. One was a small island, disc-shaped, desert colored. One was a disc with a channel cut through it. Strange. But the others were islands in a vast sea… there, he had found the map of Earth: America, Greenland, Eurasiafrica, Australia, Antarctica, all splayed out from the glare-white North Pole, just as he had seen it in the sky castle long ago.

Were they all maps of real worlds? Prill wouldn’t have known. The maps must have been made long before her species came on the scene.

He had left Teela and Seeker somewhere in there. They must still be in the area. Given Ringworld distance and native technology, they could not have gone far in twenty-three years. They were thirty-five degrees up the curve of the Arch — fifty-eight million miles away.

Louis really didn’t want to meet Teela again.

Three hours had passed. Louis reached out and shook Chmeee’s shoulder, gently.

A great arm lashed out. Louis threw himself backward, not far enough.

Chmeee blinked at him. “Louis, never wake me like that. Do you want the autodoc?”

There were two deep gashes just behind his shoulder. He could feel blood seeping into his shirt. “In a minute. Look.” He pointed at the map of Earth, tiny islands well separated from the other clusters.

Chmeee looked. “Kzin.”

“What?”

“A map of Kzin. There. Louis, I think we were wrong when we assumed that these were miniature maps. They are full size, one-to-one scale.”

Half a million miles from the map of Earth was another cluster. As with the Earth map, the oceans were distorted by the polar projection, but the continents were not “That is Kzin,” Louis said. “Why didn’t I notice? And that disc with a channel cut through it — that’s Jinx. The smaller red-orange blob must be Mars.” Louis blinked away dizziness. His shirt was wet with blood. “We can take this up later. Help me down to the autodoc.”

Chapter 9 — The Herdsmen

He slept in the autodoc.

Four hours later — with a trace of tightness behind and below his shoulder to remind him never to touch a sleeping kzin — Louis took his seat.

It was still night outside. Chmeee had the Great Ocean on the screen. He asked, “How are you?”

“Restored to health, thanks be to modern medicine.”

“You were not distracted by your wounds. Yet there must have been pain and shock.”

“Oh, I suppose Louis Wu at fifty would have gone into hysterics, but futz, I knew the autodoc was right there. Why?”

“It seemed to me at first that you must have the courage of a kzin. Then I wondered if current addiction has left you unable to respond to any lesser stimulus.”

“We’ll just assume it’s courage, okay? How are you making out?”

“Well enough.” The kzin pointed. “Earth. Kzin. Jinx; the two peaks rise right out of the atmosphere, as do the East and West Poles of Jinx. So does the Map of Mars. This is Kdat, the slave planet—”

“Not anymore.”

“The kdatlyno were our slaves. So were the pierin, and this is their world, I think. Here, you would know: is this the home world of the Trinocs?”

“Yah, and they’d settled this one next to it, I think. We can ask the Hindmost if he’s got maps.”

“We can be sure enough.”

“Granted. Okay, what is it? It’s not a roster of Earth-like worlds. And there are half a dozen I can’t identify at all.”

Chmeee snorted. “Obvious to the meanest intelligence, Louis. It is a roster of potential enemies, intelligent or near-intelligent beings who may one day threaten the Ringworld. Pierin, kzinti, martians, human, Trinoc.”

“But where does Jinx fit in? Oh. Chmeee, they couldn’t have thought the bandersnatchi might come at them with warships. They’re big as dinosaurs, and handless. And Down has intelligent natives, too. So where is it?”

“There.”

“Yah. That’s kind of impressive. The Grogs aren’t all that obvious a menace. They spend their whole lives sitting on one rock.”

“The Ringworld engineers found all of these species, and left the Maps as a message for their descendants. Are we agreed? But they did not find the puppeteer world.”

“Oh?”

“And we know they landed on Jinx. We found a bandersnatch skeleton during the first expedition.”

“So we did. They may have visited all these worlds.”

The quality of the light changed, and Louis saw the shadow of night receding to antispinward. He said, “Nearly time to land.”

“Where do you suggest?”

The sunflower field ahead was brightening with sunlight. “Turn us left. Follow the terminator line. Keep going till you see real dirt. We want to be down before dawn.”

Chmeee bent their path in a great curve. Louis pointed. “Do you see where the border dips toward us, where the sunflowers are spreading around both sides of a sea? I think the sunflowers must have trouble crossing water. Land us on the far shore.”

The lander dipped into atmosphere. Flame built up before and around the lander, throwing a white glaze over the view. Chmeee held the lander high, shedding their velocity slowly, dipping lower when he could. The sea fled beneath them. Like all Ringworld seas, it was built for convenience, with a highly convoluted shoreline, forming bays and beaches, and a gentle offshore slope to a uniform depth. There were seaweed forests and numerous islands and beaches of clean white sand. A vast grassy plain ran to antispinward.

The sunflower plague reached two arms around to engulf the sea. A river meandered in S-curves through the sunflowers to the delta where it entered the sea. To port the sunflowers were edging up against a swampy outflow river. Louis could sense the frozen motion, slow as the march of glaciers.

The sunflowers noticed the lander.

Light exploded from below. The window darkened instantly, leaving Chmeee and Louis dazzled.

“Fear not,” Chmeee said. “We can’t hit anything at this height.”

“The stupid plants probably took us for a bird. Can you see yet?”