Ringworld's Children

their backs on a threat except to kick.

Ahead, arcs of glowing coronal gas streamed past. The stars were hidden in a ruby glare that might actually be Needles invisible hull giving off black body radiation.

The ships of the Fringe War… were not to be seen. The puppeteer had lost their pursuers by aerobraking his ship through the sun.

They were already nearing the ring of huge rectangles that cast shadows of night across the Ringworld. The Hindmost drifted his ship behind a shadow square, then boosted to some ferocious acceleration and ran for it.

Louis wondered idly if Tunesmith had turned off the meteor defense. Once before, the meteor defense had fired on Louis. Lying Bastard in stasis had smashed into the Ringworld floor and plowed a furrow across the land. Theyd survived without a bruise… but this time Tunesmith had futzed the timing on their stasis field.

This time the Ringworlds sun-powered superthermal laser didnt fire, or didnt fire quick enough to catch Needle.

But the Fringe War found them. 'Were being followed,' Acolyte said.

The Hindmost sang, 'Ill lose them. Dont distract me.'

The Ringworld came up like a vast fly swatter. Needle dove straight toward a long strip of nightbound land. Louis could see the Other Ocean almost below, a vast diamond dotted with clusters of islands, easing off to the side as Needle came down. The Hindmost aimed at lightning-lit cloud laid out like a flattened hourglass in a pattern several times larger than the Earth.

An eyestorm is the visible sign of a puncture in the Ringworld floor.

Its the Ringworld equivalent of the hurricanes and tornados that form on planets. Air draining through the puncture produces a partial vacuum. Air flowing from spinward slows against its spin velocity; it weighs less; it wants to rise. Air from antispinward speeds up, grows heavier, wants to sink. From overhead the pattern is a sketchy flattened hourglass with a puncture at the throat. From port or starboard the storm takes the appearance of an eye, upper lid and lower lid and a horizontal tornado whorl in the center, and perhaps an eyebrow of high cirrus.

A Ringworld protector, Tunesmith or Bram before him, would have filled in any large puncture by now. Lost air is hard to replace. The meteor crater at the heart of this storm would be a small one, and old: these storms took generations to form.

The Hindmost dove toward the whirling throat of the hourglass, slowing hard, with one large and two smaller ships still in his wake. Then Needle plunged into the black whirlwind as if in suicidal frenzy, and out. Out through the meteor crater into black interstellar space, looping hard around and up. The Hindmost fired a laser at the Ringworlds black underside. A ruby glare lit an array of spillpipes broken by another ancient meteor.

Have to tell Tunesmith, Louis thought. The Ringworld is wearing out. Its losing air and water. Everything needs repairs, underside, rim walls, landscape. Yah, in our copious free time.

They were driving through a plume of ice crystals now. A block of frozen seawater was being boiled away. Acolyte suddenly demanded, 'Louis, stop saying that!'

'Sorry.'

'I know what Its a ride means. Billions of your kind pay a sum for the privilege of being scared out of their wits under conditions of assured safety. A hero must risk real danger!'

'You did that when we fought Bram. Here we go,' as Needle surged upward. Its not a death trap. Its a ride.

The foamy black sea ice was nearly boiled away. Needle rammed up through a smashed drainhole, through a last barrier of ice, and into the sea above.

Hot Needle of Inquiry settled through black water and came to rest.

'And here the ship may stay,' the Hindmost said. He popped up the lip of a stepping disk and went to work on its controls.

Louis asked, 'How much of this were you expecting?'

'Contingencies,' the Hindmost said. 'If Tunesmith ever gave me a chance to move Needle, Id need a place to hide it. Here, Louis, this link leads to the Repair Center. The stepping disk network is open to us.'

Acolytes ears were up. He watched them like a tennis match.

Louis thought it through. The ocean around them would drain until an ice plug formed. Tunesmith could find them by the plume of water vapor, if he had the leisure. But Long Shot was slow in normal space, and if hyperdrive near a star was no longer sure death, it was still tanj dangerous. Tunesmith and Long Shot would be hunted across the sky for days yet.

So Hot Needle of Inquiry was… 'Hindmost, you cant hide the ship.'

'I have.'

'We need access to Needle for food, beds, showers, pressure suits. We need a stepping-disk link, and thats all Tunesmith needs too.'

'I can hide its location, Louis.'

The Hindmost was searching for the illusion of control. It seemed futile, but hey, Louis was doing the same. 'Think now,' Louis said. 'While Tunesmith is watching Hot Needle of Inquiry, why dont we steal Long Shot?'

'How?'

'I have no idea. But Im tired of being run around like a marionette by him or you, Hindmost. There has to be some way out of this box!'

'While Tunesmith is occupied, we might yet have a day or two to accomplish something.'

They flicked to the Meteor Defense Room.

Daylight had swept across the eyestorm. Louis was looking across a hundred and ninety million miles, past the rim of the sun and the black edges of shadow squares.

Silver knots and threads still marked rivers, lakes, seas; but time and a puncture wound had desiccated this land. Three ships dodged and weaved in and out of a flattened hourglass made of storm. These must be the ships that had followed Needle down. The big ship was Kzinti, and the smallest was an ARM fighter, and the third was ARM too. Theyd be able to detect each other through cloud, as anyone could given deep-radar.

Lightning flickered sporadically in the constriction, but a sudden sputter was too bright to be lightning.

'The trouble with an antimatter bullet,' Louis surmised, 'is that the crew will use any excuse to get it off the ship.'

Both ARM ships were chasing the Kzin ship. The Kzin dove back into cloud. Louis could track its deep-radar shadow through the axis of the eyestorm, one ARM ship in its wake, one darting ahead through open air. Then the Kzin ship was gone, down through the drainhole and out.

Two ARM ships now commanded perhaps a trillion square miles of Ringworld. They spent the next several hours quartering the area, returning every so often to the eyestorm.

'Guarding the puncture against entry,' the Hindmost suggested. 'You and Chmeee blurted that secret to all of known space, didnt you, Louis? Enter and leave the Ringworld through any meteor puncture. Otherwise face a solar-pumped superthermal laser meteor defense.'

'If they find Needle,' Louis said, 'theyll have access to the stepping-disk network. Hindmost, is that technology easy to copy? The United Nations never had the chance. Its a lot more advanced than transfer booths.'

The Hindmost didnt answer, of course.

Louis found himself staring at the display of the Other Ocean. The vast expanse of water and land looked like tapestry on a castle wall. Clusters of islands… continents; theyd be that big, as big as the maps in the Great