Part 4 (1/2)

Needle balanced on belly thrusters. .992 gravities of thrust warped its path into the Ringworld's curve; left to itself, the s.h.i.+p would have flung itself outward toward interstellar s.p.a.ce. Louis watched the puppeteer's heads darting and weaving to check the dials and meters and screens around him. Louis couldn't read them.

The dark line had become a row of rings set well apart, each ring a hundred miles across, drifting past. During the first expedition, an old recording had shown them how s.h.i.+ps would position themselves fifty miles from the rim wall and wait for the rings to sweep them up and accelerate them from free fall to Ringworld rotational speed and then dump them at the far end, on the s.p.a.ceport ledge.

To left and right the black wall converged at vanis.h.i.+ng points. It was close now, a few thousand miles away. The Hindmost tilted Needle to coast along the linear accelerator. Hundreds of thousands of miles of rings ... but the Ringworlders had lacked gravity generators. Their s.h.i.+ps and crews would not tolerate high accelerations.

”The rings are inactive. I find not even sensors for incoming s.h.i.+ps,” a puppeteer head turned to tell them, and then turned quickly back to work.

Here came the s.p.a.ceport ledge.

It was seventy miles across. There were tall cranes built in beautiful curves, and rounded buildings, and low, wide flatbed trucks. There were s.h.i.+ps: four flat-nosed cylinders, of which three had been damaged, the curve of the hulls broken.

”I hope you brought lights,” Chmeee said.

”I do not want to be noticed yet.”

”Do you find any sign of awareness? Will you land us without lights?”

”No and no,” said the Hindmost. The spotlight flared from Needle's nose, tremendously powerful: an auxiliary weapon, of course.

The s.h.i.+ps were vast. An open airlock was a mere black speck. Thousands of windows glittered on the cylinders precisely like candy flecks sprinkled on a cake. One s.h.i.+p seemed intact. The others had been torn open and cannibalized in varying degrees, their guts opened to vacuum and prying alien eyes.

”Nothing attacks, nothing warns us,” the puppeteer said. ”The temperature of the buildings and machinery is as that of the ledge and the s.h.i.+ps, 174 (one hundred seventy-four degrees) Absolute. This place is long abandoned.”

A pair of ma.s.sive toroids, copper-colored, ringed the waist of the intact s.h.i.+p. They must have been a third the ma.s.s of the s.h.i.+p itself, or more. Louis pointed them out. ”Ramscoop generators, maybe. I studied the history of s.p.a.ceflight once. A Bussard ramjet generates an electromagnetic field to scoop up interstellar hydrogen and guide it into a constriction zone for fusion. Infinite fuel supply. But you need an inboard tank and rocket motor for when you're moving too slow for the ramscoop. There.” Tanks were visible within two of the rifled s.h.i.+ps.

And on all three of the rifled s.h.i.+ps, the ma.s.sive toroids were missing. That puzzled Louis. But Bussard ramjets commonly used magnetic monopoles, and monopoles could be valuable in other contexts.

Something else was bothering the Hindmost.

”Tanks to carry the lead? But why not simply plate it around the s.h.i.+p, where it would serve as s.h.i.+elding before it need be trans.m.u.ted into fuel?”

Louis was silent. There had been no lead.

”Availability,” Chmeee said. ”Perhaps they had to fight battles. Lead could be boiled from the hull, leaving the s.h.i.+p without fuel. Land us, Hindmost, and we will seek answers in the unharmed s.h.i.+p.”

Needle hovered.

”Easy to depart,” Chmeee insinuated. ”Ease us off the ledge and turn off the thrusters. We fall to flat s.p.a.ce, activate the hyperdrive and rush for safety.”

Needle settled on the s.p.a.ceport ledge. The Hindmost said, ”Take your place on the stepping discs.”

Chmeee did. He was ... not chuckling, but purring as he vanished. Louis stepped after him and was elsewhere.

Chapter 6 -.

”Now Here's My Plan ...”

The room felt familiar. He'd never seen one exactly like it, but it looked like the flight deck on any small interplanetary s.p.a.cecraft. You always needed cabin gravity, a s.h.i.+p's computer, thrust controls, att.i.tude jets, a ma.s.s detector. The three control chairs were recliners equipped with crash webs, controls in the arms, urinal tubes, and slots for food and drink. One chair was much larger than the others, that was all. Louis felt he could fly the lander blindfolded.

There was a broad strip of wraparound window above a semicircle of screens and dials. Through the window Louis watched a section of Needle's hull swing out and up. The hanger was open to s.p.a.ce.

Chmeee glanced over the larger k.n.o.bs and switches set before his own chair. ”We have weapons,” he said softly.

A screen blinked and showed a foreshortened puppeteer head, which said, ”Descend the steps to reach your vacuum equipment.”

The lander's stairs were broad and shallow, made for a kzin's tread. Below was a much larger area, living s.p.a.ce, with a water bed and sleeping plates and a kitchen the duplicate of the one in their cell. There was an autodoc big enough for a kzin, with an elaborate control console. Louis had been an experimental surgeon once. Perhaps the Hindmost knew it.

Chmeee had found the vacuum equipment behind one of an array of locker doors. He encased himself in what looked like an a.s.sortment of transparent balloons. He was edgy with impatience. ”Louis! Gear yourself!”

Louis pulled on a flexible one-piece suit, skintight, and attached the fishbowl helmet and backpack. It was standard equipment; the suit would pa.s.s sweat, letting the body be its own cooling system. Louis added a loose oversuit lined in silver. It would be cold out there.

The airlock was built for three. Good: Louis could picture times when he wouldn't want to wait outside while an airlock cycled for someone else. If the Hindmost wasn't expecting emergencies, he had prepared for them anyway. As air was replaced by vacuum, Louis's chest expanded. He pulled shut the ”girdle,” the wide elastic band around his middle that would help him exhale.

Chmeee strode out of the lander, out of Needle, into the night. Louis picked up a tool kit and followed at an easy jog.

The sense of freedom was heady, dangerous. Louis reminded himself that his suit's communication link included the Hindmost. Things had to be said, and soon, but not in the puppeteer's hearing.

Proportions were wrong here. The half-disa.s.sembled s.h.i.+ps were too big. The horizon was too close and too sharp. An infinite black wall cut the brilliant, half-familiar starscape in half. Seen through vacuum, the shapes of distant objects remained sharp and clear up to hundreds of thousands of miles away.

The nearest Ringworld s.h.i.+p, the intact one, looked to be half a mile distant. It was more like a mile. On the last voyage he had constantly misjudged the scale of things, and twenty-three years hadn't cured him.

He arrived puffing beneath the huge s.h.i.+p, to find an escalator built into one landing leg. The ancient machinery wasn't working, of course. He trudged up.

Chmeee was trying to work the controls of a big airlock. He fished a grippy out of the kit Louis carried. ”Best not to burn through doors yet,” he said. ”There is power.” He pried a cover off and worked at the innards.

The outer door closed. The inner door opened on vacuum and darkness. Chmeee turned on his flashlight-laser.

Louis was a little daunted. This s.h.i.+p would probably carry enough people to fill a small town. Easy to get lost here. ”We want inspection tubes,” he said. ”I'd like to get the s.h.i.+p pressurized. With that big helmet you couldn't get into an access tube built for men.”

They turned into a corridor that curved with the curve of the hull. There were doors just taller than Louis's head. Louis opened some of the doors. He found small living cubicles with bunks and pull-down chairs for humanoids his own size and smaller.

”I'd say Halrloprillalar's people built these s.h.i.+ps.”

Chmeee said, ”We knew that. Her people built the Ringworld.”

”That they did not do,” said Louis. ”I wondered if they built the s.h.i.+ps or took them over from someone else.”

The Hindmost spoke in their helmets. ”Louis? Halrloprillalar told you her people built the Ringworld. Do you think she lied?”

”Yes.”

”Why?”

She'd lied about other things. Louis didn't say so. He said, ”Style. We know they built the cities. All those floating buildings, they're the kind of thing you put up to show off your wealth and power. Remember the sky castle, the floating building with the map room in it? Nessus took back tapes.”

”I studied them,” said the puppeteer.