The Ringworld Engineers

Louis was half into his pressure suit when the kzin reappeared in Needle. The kzin stripped off his own suit. “We are in no great hurry, Louis. Hindmost, the lander is useless. I set it to take off on fusion motors and fly to Mons Olympus, purely as a diversion. Teela may waste a few seconds destroying it.”

The microphone answered. “Good. I can report some progress, but I may not show it to you. We know that Teela can tap my communications.”

“Well?”

The Hindmost flicked in from the flight deck. Now he could speak without mechanical aids. “Most of my instruments are useless, of course. I do know our orientation. There is a massive source of neutrino emission, probably a fusion plant, some two hundred miles to port of spinward. Deep-radar shows cavities all around us. Most are merely room-sized. Some are tremendous, and these hold heavy machinery. I believe I have identified the empty cavern that held the repair crew’s scaffolding, from its size and shape and the cradles on the floor. Its exit is a massive curved door in the wall of the Map, hidden by the waterfall. I found storage for what must be patches for major meteor strikes, and another hatch. Small spacecraft, possibly warcraft — I can’t tell — and yet another hatch. There are six hatches in all beneath the waterfall. I managed to—”

“Hindmost, you were to find Teela Brown!”

“Did I hear you counsel Louis Wu to patience?”

“Louis Wu is human; he knows patience. You, you grazing beast, you have far too much.”

“And you propose to murder the human variant of a Pak protector. I hope you are not expecting some kind of duel? Scream and leap, and Teela will fight bare-handed? We must fight Teela with our minds. Patience, kzin. Remember the stakes.”

“Proceed.”

“I managed to locate the mapping of Mons Olympus, eight hundred miles to antispinward of port of us. I surmise that Teela kept a heavy laser firing on Needle, or some such similar artifice, to keep us in stasis while she towed us eight hundred miles. I cannot guess why.”

Louis said, “She towed us to where she had molten rock ready to pour. That place will turn out to be the site of her hypothetical multiple murder. We still have to figure out how. Tanj, maybe she’s overestimated our intelligence!”

“Speak for yourself, Louis. Likely it is below us.” One puppeteer head arced upward. “Nearly above us, by ship’s orientation, is a complex of rooms in which a good deal of electrical activity can be sensed, not to mention enough pulsed neutrino emission to indicate half a dozen deep-radar sets.

“I also found a hemisphere thirty-eight point eight miles in diameter, with another neutrino source partly up the wall. A moving source. Output is random, as with a fusion plant. It hasn’t moved far during the few minutes you’ve been gone, but it might traverse the full one hundred and eighty degrees of dome in fifteen hours plus or minus three. Meat-eater, warrior, does that suggest anything to you?”

“An artificial sun. Agriculture. Where?”

“Twenty five hundred miles toward the starboard edge of the Map. But since you will be invading through Mons Olympus, you must search twelve degrees to antispinward of starboard. There may be walls to penetrate. Did you bring the hand disintegrator?”

“Not being totally nonsentient, I did. Hindmost, if the lander should reach Mons Olympus, then we may exit through the stepping discs and straight out the lander’s cargo door. But Teela will shoot it down first.”

“Why should she? We are not aboard yet. She has deep-radar; she will know that.”

“Uurrr. Then she will track the lander, wait until we appear, and destroy us then. Is this the sapience that aids your people to sneak up on a leaf?”

“Yes. You will enter Mons Olympus hours before the lander arrives. I set the probe to follow us. There is a stepping-disc receiver in the probe. Of course you will have no way to return to Needle.”

“Uurrr. It sounds workable.”

“What equipment will you use?”

“Pressure suits, flying belts, flashlight-lasers, and the disintegrator. I also brought this.” Chmeee indicated the superconductor cloth. “Teela doesn’t know of it. That may help us. We can sew it into garments to cover our pressure suits. You, Harkabeeparolyn, can you sew?”

“No.”

Louis said, “I can.”

“So can I,” said the boy. “You have to show me what you want.”

“I will. It need not be elegant. We must hope that Teela will use lasers rather than projectiles or a war ax. Our impact armor will not fit over pressure suits.”

“Not quite true,” Louis said. “For instance, Chmeee, your impact armor would fit over my pressure suit.”

“Swaddled like that, you could not move fast enough.”

“Maybe not. Harkabeeparolyn, how are you holding up?”

“I’m confused, Louis. Are you battling with or against the protector?”

“She’s fighting us, but she’s hoping to lose,” Louis said gently. “She can’t say so. The rules she plays by are built into her brain and glands. Can you believe any of that?”

Harkabeeparolyn hesitated. Then “The protector acted like — like somebody it feared was supervising everything it said and did. It was like that in Panth Building when I was being trained.”

“That’s the way it is. The supervisor is Teela herself. Can you fight a protector, knowing that the whole world could die if you lose?”

“I think so. At worst I may distract the protector.”

“Okay. We’re taking you with us. We’ve got equipment that was meant for another City Builder woman. I’ll teach you as much as I can about what you’ll be wearing. Chmeee, she’ll have your impact suit between her pressure suit and the superconductor cloth.”

“She may have Halrloprillalar’s flashlight-laser. I lost mine through carelessness. I will carry the disintegrator. I also know how to rig spare batteries to release their power in a millisecond.”

“These batteries are my people’s. We designed them for safety,” the Hindmost said dubiously.

“Let me see them anyway. Next you must close off all avenues of communication. We must expect Teela to eat and return before we finish here. I wish we had more time. Louis, show Kawaresksenjajok how to sew our covering garments. Use superconductor for thread.”

“Yah, I thought of that. Tanj, I wish we had more time.”

They bounced toward the stepping disc, swaddled in gear.

Harkabeeparolyn was shapeless in layers of cloth. Her face within the helmet was tense with concentration. Pressure suit, flying belt, laser — she’d be lucky to remember how to work what she was wearing, let alone fight. From a distance it might be Louis Wu under all that cloth. Teela might hesitate. Anything might count.

She was gone. Louis followed, switching on his flying belt.

Chmeee, Harkabeeparolyn, Louis Wu: they floated like balls of black tissue paper above the rust-colored slope of Mons Olympus. The probe wasn’t floating. It must have hovered until it ran out of fuel, then dropped and rolled. It was badly battered. The stepping disc had survived.

The dials below Louis’s chin told him that the air was very thin, very dry, rich in carbon dioxide. A good imitation of Mars, but this was nearly Earth’s gravity. How had the martians survived? They must have adapted, buoyed by the sea of dust they lived in. Stronger than their extinct cousins… Stick to business!

The crater rim was forty miles upslope. It took them fifteen minutes. Harkabeeparolyn trailed. Her flying was jerky; she must have been constantly fiddling with the controls.

The hatch at the bottom of the crater was rock-and-rust-colored and rough-surfaced. It had exploded inward, downward.

They dropped into darkness.

Their flying belts held them. That shouldn’t have worked. The repulser units were repelling flat scrith plates overhead and underneath. But the scrith ceiling was not load-bearing. It was much thinner than the Ringworld floor below them.