Ringworld's Children

Hanumans eyes took it all in in one sweep:

Hed bent the laws that governed this universe and a hypothetical other. His mission was a total success. And none of it mattered. The Ringworld held everything worth saving, and the Ringworld floor was ripped open.

The puncture was on the far side of the arch. That was both good and ill. Death would be a long time marching around the curve to reach them here; but Tunesmiths countermeasures would have to cross that same gap.

The aliens saw it too. The most alien was the eldest, the most experienced, perhaps the wisest, and that one had shut down his mind. The hominid had lost hope. The youngest, the nothing-like-a-big-cat, was — like Hanuman — waiting for someone to solve it.

Tunesmith?

Tunesmith was in motion while Hanuman was still catching up. The Ghoul protector showed no doubts. When Tunesmith and Louis Wu vanished, the little protector followed. Tunesmith would fix it.

Machinery on a Brobdingnagian scale had been moved into the workstation under Mons Olympus.

Tunesmith dropped Louiss arm and moved among his instruments at a sprint. The little protector, Hanuman, scampered after.

Acolyte popped up next to Louis. 'Louis, whats happening?'

'The airs draining out of the Ringworld.'

'That would be… the end of everything?'

'Yah. Starting on the far side. We might have days, but only because the Ringworld is so endlessly big. I have no idea what Tunesmith thinks hes doing.'

'What is that massive structure? Ive seen it—'

Hanuman rejoined them. 'That is a meteor plug, largest version. Of course it was never tested.'

It was the shape of an aspirin tablet and roughly the size of the Twin Peaks arcology or a small mountain, still small compared to the puncture in the Ringworld. Louis said, 'I remember. It was in one of the caverns. He set it moving here on big stacks of float plates.'

They watched it slide into the hole in the floor and fall, guided by magnetic fields toward the base of the linear launcher. Tunesmith was at the edge, watching. Louis and Acolyte went to join him.

Forty miles from the roof to the floor of the Repair Center ran the loops of the linear launcher. It was way overbuilt for something as small as Hot Needle of Inquiry. It would better accommodate something like this half-mile-wide package of Tunesmiths. The launchers bottom sat on an array of float plates, and that was moving to adjust its aim.

The package was near the bottom now, still falling, but slowing.

Tunesmith saw them watching. Immediately he hustled them away from the hole in the floor.

Lightning roared at their backs. Louis turned to see something tremendous flash past, out through the crater in Mons Olympus and gone.

Acolytes ears were curled into tight knots. Hanuman lifted his hands from his ears and said something inaudible. Louis couldnt hear anything. His ears still held the roar and agony of that lightning blast.

Louis didnt lose his deafness for some time. Acolyte recovered much faster. Louis could see the Kzin discussing… whatever… with Tunesmith and Hanuman while they all followed the action in a wall display of the Meteor Defense Room. The Hindmost remained in footstool mode.

Louis could only watch.

Tunesmiths meteor-plug package drifted toward the sun. Needle had been launched at a tenth of lightspeed; the launch system was capable of that. But over such a distance the packages fall seemed sluggish.

In a zoom window the puncture showed as a black dot on landscape that looked lunar: clear and sharp and barren of waters silver or the dark gray-green of life. Louis guessed the puncture was sixty to seventy miles across. A ring of fog surrounded it, bigger than the Earth and still growing.

The Ringworld was not yet aware of its death. Air and water would flow into the hole and out into vacuum, but first it all had to move… from up to three hundred million miles around each arc before the shock could reach the Ringworlds far side, the Great Ocean, here. Not much would be lost in a hundred and sixty minutes, while Tunesmiths package crossed the Ringworlds diameter. Even the Other Ocean wouldnt have begun to boil yet.

Hanuman wandered over. He said — loudly, spitting his consonants; it was fun to watch his lips — 'I have been in this state for less than a falan. I still cannot grasp the scale of things. I did not grow up in a universe fifty billion falans old, on a ring spinning around one fleck of light among ten-to-the-twentieth of flecks. There were not that many of anything! My world was small, cozy, easily grasped.'

'You get used to it,' Louis said. He could barely hear himself. 'Hanuman, what is that? What can it do? Were losing our atmosphere!'

'I know little.'

'Share it with me,' Louis demanded.

'Two bright minds with similar goals will solve problems in similar ways. The Vampire protector Bram saw a need to plug meteor holes. His first meteor plugs were small, but his mass driver under Mons Olympus is hundreds of falans old and hugely overbuilt. The Fist-of-God meteoroid impact must have frightened Bram witless.

'Tunesmith builds bigger yet. That package is his biggest effort.' Hanuman was constantly in motion, bouncing around Louis as he spoke, arms swinging. 'We shall see it in action. Tunesmith wants us to observe on site. If there is partial failure, then we must see what must be redesigned.'

'This double-X-large meteor patch, how does it work?'

'I would be guessing.'

'Its never been tested?'

'Tested when? You were stored in the doc for less than a falan. Tunesmith made and trained four Hanging People protectors, built a nanotech factory to make bigger meteor plugs, monitored the Fringe War, designed several probe ships, built a stepping-disk factory, redesigned your Hot Needle of—'

'Hes been busy?'

'Hes been crazy as a stingbug hive city! And if the plug doesnt work, its all for nothing.'

'Do you have children?'

'Yes, and they have children. Since Tunesmith made me, Ive not had the chance to count them, nor even to sniff them. Of course they are all forfeit to Tunesmiths schemes and the Fringe War.'

'Arent we all. Should Tunesmith have taken such a risk?'

'How should I judge?' Hanumans frantic dance, the hands pounding his chest, would have been an uncontrollable rage in any human. 'Tunesmith implies that the greatest risk was not to act. Louis, how can you remain so still?'

'Fifty years… two hundred falans of yoga. Ill teach you.'

'I must act,' Hanuman said, 'but not because to be still is wrong. It may be that way with Tunesmith. How can I know? I am enraged with no target.'

The suns gravity was bending the packages course minutely.

Tunesmith and Acolyte walked over. Tunesmith asked, 'Louis, do you have your hearing back? Have you rested?'

'I slept. Where did you land Long Shot?'

'Why would I tell you that?' Tunesmith waved it off. 'You and Acolyte and Hanuman must observe my plug in action. Has Hanuman told you anything?'

'Its a double-X-large-size meteor plug.'

'Good. I have a stepping disk in place—'

'You saw this coming,' Louis said.