The Ringworld Engineers

from his impact armor. As Chmeee reached the lander’s airlock, a thread of light lashed from a window. The laser beam chewed flame from the flagstones, then focused on the lander. Chmeee had disappeared. The beam held… then snuffed out as the slit window exploded in red and white flame.

“Careless,” the Hindmost murmured. “Giving such a weapon to enemies!” His other mouth nibbled at the controls. He switched to an inside camera. Louis watched Chmeee lock the airlock, then stagger toward the autodoc, struggling to take off his impact armor, dropping it as he moved. The kzin’s leg was gashed beneath the armor. He heaved the lid of the autodoc up and more or less fell inside.

“Tanj! He hasn’t turned the monitors on! Hindmost, we’ve got to help him.”

“How, Louis? If you tried to reach him via stepping discs, you would be heated to fusion temperatures. Between your velocity and the lander’s—”

“Yah.” The Great Ocean was thirty-five degrees around the curve of the Ringworld. The kinetic energy difference would be enough to blast a city. There was no way to help.

Chmeee lay bleeding.

Suddenly he cried out. He half turned over. His thick fingers stabbed at the autodoc’s keyboard. He heaved himself on his back, reached up and pulled the cover closed.

“Good enough,” Louis said. The arrow had entered the socket at a sharp outward angle. It might have missed destroying brain tissue… or it might not. “He was careless, all right. Okay, go on.”

“Chmeee used stun cannon to irradiate the entire castle. Then he spent three hours loading unconscious kzinti onto repulser platforms and taking them outside. He barred the gates. He went away, into the castle. For nine hours I saw nothing of him. Why are you grinning?”

“He didn’t take any females outside, did he?”

“No. I think I see.”

“He was tanj lucky to get his armor on fast enough. He got that slash on his leg before he finished.”

“It does seem that Chmeee is no threat to me.”

He’d be in the ‘doc twenty to forty hours, Louis estimated. Now it was Louis Wu’s decision alone. “There’s something we ought to discuss with him, but I guess there’s no help for it. Hindmost, please record the following conversation. Send it to the lander on a looped tape. I want it in Chmeee’s ears when he wakes up.”

The puppeteer reached behind him; he seemed to chew at the control panel. “Done. What is it we are to discuss?”

“Chmeee and I haven’t been able to make ourselves believe that you’ll take us back to known space. Or even that you can.”

The puppeteer peered at him from two directions. His flat heads spread wide, giving him binocular effect, the better to study his dubious ally and possible enemy. He asked, “Why should I not, Louis?”

“First, we know too much. Second, you don’t have any reason to go back to any world in known space. With or without the magic transmuter, the place you want to be is the Fleet of Worlds.”

Muscles in the puppeteer’s hindquarters flexed restlessly. (That was the leg a puppeteer fought with: turn your back on the enemy, zero in with wide-spaced eyes, kick!) He said, “Would that be so bad?”

“It might be better than staying here,” Louis conceded. “What did you have in mind?”

“We can make your lives very comfortable. You know that we have the kzinti longevity drug. We can supply boosterspice, too. There is room in Needle for hominid and kzinti females, and in fact we have a City Builder female aboard. You would travel in stasis, so crowding is not a problem. You and your entourage may settle on one of the four farming worlds of the Fleet. You would virtually own it.”

“What if we got bored with the pastoral life?”

“Nonsense. You would have access to the libraries of the home world. Access to knowledge humanity has wondered about since first we revealed ourselves! The Fleet is moving through space at nearly lightspeed, eventually to reach the Clouds of Magellan. With us you will escape the galactic core explosion. Likely we will need you to explore… interesting territories ahead of our path.”

“You mean dangerous.”

“What else would I mean?”

Louis was more tempted than he would have expected. How would Chmeee take such an offer? Vengeance postponed? A chance to damage the puppeteer home world in some indefinite future? Or simple cowardice?

He asked, “Is this offer contingent on our finding a magic transmuter?”

“No. Your talents are needed regardless. However… any promise I make now would be more easily carried out under an Experimentalist regime. Conservatives might not recognize your value, let alone Chmeee’s.”

That was nicely phrased, Louis conceded. “Speaking of Chmeee—”

“The kzin has defected, but I leave my offer open to him. He has found kzinti females to save. Perhaps you can persuade him.”

“I wonder.”

“And after all, you may see your worlds again. In a thousand years, known space may have forgotten the puppeteers. Mere decades will have passed for you, falling near lightspeed with the Fleet of Worlds.”

“I want time to think it over. I’ll put it to Chmeee when I get the chance.” Louis glanced behind him. The City Builders were watching him. It was a pity he couldn’t consult them, because he was deciding their fate too.

But he had decided. “What I’d like to do next,” he said, “is move on to the Great Ocean. We could come up through Fist-of-God Mountain and go slowly enough—”

“I have no intention of moving the Needle at all. There may be threats other than the meteor defense, and surely it is enough!”

“I’ll bet I can change your mind. Do you remember finding a rig for hoisting the Bussard ramjets on the rim wall? Have a look at that rig now.”

For a moment the puppeteer remained frozen. Then he whirled and was out of sight behind the opaque wall of his quarters.

And that ought to keep him busy long enough.

At his leisure Louis Wu moved to his pile of discarded clothing and equipment. He fished the flashlight-laser out of his vest. Step four: coming up. A pity his autodoc was in the lander, a hundred million miles out of reach. He might need it soon.

There was certainly flare shielding on the outer hall of Needle. Every ship had that, at least on the windows. Under the impact of too much light, flare shielding became a mirror, and maybe saved the pilot’s eyesight.

It stopped solar flares, and it stopped lasers. If the Hindmost had set impervious walls between himself and his captive crew, surely he would have coated the entire flight deck with shielding.

But what about the floor?

Louis knelt. The hyperdrive motor ran the whole length of the ship; it was bronze colored, with some copper and hullmetal. Puppeteer machinery, with all angles rounded, it looked half melted already. Louis angled the flashlight-laser into it and fired through the transparent floor.

Light glared back from the bronze surface. Metal vapor spewed. Liquid metal ran. Louis let the beam chew deep, then played it around, burning or melting anything that looked interesting. A pity he’d never studied hyperdrive system engineering.

The laser grew warm in his hand. He’d been at this for some minutes. He shifted the beam to one of the six mountings that held the motor suspended in its vacuum chamber. It didn’t melt; it softened and settled. He attacked another. The motor’s great mass sagged and twisted.

The narrow beam flickered, strobelike, then faded. Battery dead. Louis tossed the flashlight-laser away from him, remembering that the puppeteer could make it explode in his hand.

He strolled to the forward wall of his cage. The puppeteer wasn’t in sight, but presently Louis heard the sound of a steam calliope dying in agony.

The puppeteer trotted around the opaque green section and stood facing him. Muscles quivered beneath his skin.

“Come,” said Louis Wu, “let us reason together.”