The Ringworld Throne

feeling his way, following Warvia, though her eyes were closed, too.

A big hand on his chest stopped him. He opened his eyes into slits.

Finally, here it was, a place to hide from the wind: a rock tunnel into the mountain. But they’d stopped within the cleft, with the tunnel’s mouth barely in view. From the cleft a slope of shattered rock ran up to a rough rock entrance.

Barraye spoke for the first time. “Teegr, that is not shelter.”

He asked, “Why not? Monsters inside?”

“Yes. Vishnishtee.”

They set the web on its rim and propped it to face the opening. Barraye had gone silent again. Saron said, “Louis Wu, can you see?”

The bronze web spoke. “Yeah, barely. How deep is that thing?”

“We think that this is passage through the high mountain. None of us have gone that far.”

“You’ve been inside?”

Deb spoke. “Most of High Point and near a hundred of airborne visitors hid in the passage when the Death Light shone. We could only hunt at night. After the Death Light faded, we were cast out and forbidden to return.”

A breathy voice said, “Describe the vishnishtee.”

Tegger’s eyes met Warvia’s. That voice from the web must be the vashnesht, Bram, but it sounded very like Whisper.

“The vishnishtee cared for us,” Deb said, “but none of us ever saw one.”

“What, never?”

“But sometimes one of us would disappear. There was a limit to how far we could go down the passage. We knew there was death in the passage, but there was death outside, too.”

“Couldn’t you make your own shelters? Rock would stop radiation… stop the Death Light.”

“We knew that. Hide in caves, the vishnishtee said. Make houses of rock? The mountain would shake rock down on our heads!”

The voice of Louis Wu said, “My companions are showing me a picture taken from tens of daywalks above you. It’s amazing how much detail you can see when you’re far enough away, Deb. The mountain you live on is kind of a flat cone, but around that tunnel, it’s like a sand castle piled against a wall with a pipe poking out of it.”

They waited for Louis Wu to make better sense.

“Yeah. What I mean is, the passage is older than the mountain and a lot stronger. Made of scrith, I bet. The mountain gradually settles under its own weight, but the passage stays right where it is, and vishnishtee have to keep digging the entrance again. Can you take me through?”

“No!” said Barraye and Saron and Jennawil.

Deb said, “We were cast out! If we’re seen, we will die!”

Saron said, “We have stayed on broken rock. We left no footprints and no scent. If a vishnishtee learns that we have come bearing this, we will die.”

It was Harpster who protested. “The eye of Louis Wu has come far to see so little.”

“That is as it is. Harreed, stay behind. If you find sign of us, conceal it. Harpster, are you strong enough to take Harreed’s place?”

And a voice said, “Leave the web.”

Nine hominids froze. Tegger could see no tenth. And that was not the voice of Whisper, nor the protector Bram, either, but it had the same breathy speech impediment.

The High Point People were quietly moving back through the cleft in the rock and downslope. Tegger and Warvia followed, leading the Ghouls, who by now were nearly blind in the black shadows of their hats. They left the bronze spinnerweb propped in the cleft and didn’t look back.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE — COLLIER

They were four in Hot Needle of Inquiry’s crew cabin: Bram and the Hindmost and Louis Wu, and Acolyte, in a great black coffin where their exercise space used to be. They all used the same shower and the same kitchen wall.

Sleeping arrangements weren’t a problem. The Hindmost wanted the sleeping plates, but that was all right. They’d moved the cargo plates beside the water bed. Louis used that.

He was sitting cross-legged on the bouncing surface, eating something crunchy and nutrition-free. Boredom had him eating too much. He might be getting too much painkiller, too.

Bram didn’t want him exercising alone in the lander bay. Louis had healed enough to want that. He had offered to take Bram along, teach him yoga or even some fighting techniques. Bram refused. He intended to be right here when…

What the futz was Bram expecting? Louis wondered. For most of two days he’d watched the wreckage of the refueling probe. It lay smashed on the maglev track in a window that overlaid six others-five, now-and Bram stood before it, watching.

Louis was getting cabin fever.

To ship’s port and starboard the glow of dying coals had faded to the black of cold basalt. In space that would have been stars, an infinite universe spread to either side.

Futz, he had stars. One webeye lay on the maglev track, looking down at the universe through the filigree surface. Another starscape, from the webeye Louis had sprayed onto the vacuum, had fuzzed out only hours ago.

In another window the stolen webeye moved into a smooth-bore tunnel, stopped in what was clearly an airlock for several hours, then moved on through several doors, past piles of strange equipment vaguely glimpsed, and stopped again. Louis had never seen what was carrying it, nor heard that voice again.

The flight deck was windows overlaid on windows, a perspective that could cross the eyes and twist them in their sockets. One was a graph like a constantly wiggling mountain range, purpose unknown. Three were replays: High Point Mountain swept past the refueling probe; the probe maneuvered until it was smashed by violet light; a protector died, his suit slashed open to vacuum.

Nothing was happening where the ruined probe lay on the maglev track. The window held Bram like a dark Dali silhouette, say Shades of Night Descending.

Louis closed his eyes and sagged back on the water bed.

Popped them open again. He’d seen blue-white light flash from one of the windows.

The light was out now, but the wrecked probe was glowing cherry-red. Something tiny was coming down the maglev track from far away, running straight into the window.

It came at astronomical speed, a foot above the track: something like a floating sledge. It decelerated savagely. Something manlike dropped off the back and rolled out of view as the vehicle eased to a stop inches from the window.

The Hindmost moved up beside Bram.

The probe cooled to murky red, darker, black.

That wasn’t a sled. It was a shallow box. The bottom was black like wrought iron. The sides were so transparent as to be barely visible, but Louis could pick them out by the knobs embedded for tiedowns. Lines held tools against the sides of the box: a wand with a handle, maybe a line saw; a widemouthed thing, gun or rocket launcher or energy weapon; a pry bar; stacked boxes; skeletal metal stuff.

A window behind it showed starscape and, rising into view, a nearly empty flat surface. Louis glared and looked away. The stolen webeye had left the tunnel and entered some kind of open elevator, at the worst possible time.

Louis heard, “I do not understand war, but I feel Louis might.”

“Even drugged?”

“Ask.”