Part 11 (1/2)

The black rectangle rose. Wire trailed, black and silver. The thread of Sinclair chain should have been invisibly thin, but it glowed silver, and a bright nimbus glowed around the dwindling repulser plate. The plate was a black dot now, harder to see than the bright halo around it. At that alt.i.tude it was a target for hordes of sunflower blossoms.

A superconductor will pa.s.s an electric current with no resistance whatever. It is this property that makes it so valuable to industry. But superconductors have another property. A superconductor is always the same temperature throughout.

Air and dust particles, and Sinclair wire, glowed by sunflower light. But the superconductor cloth and wire remained black. Good. Louis blinked away the dazzle and looked down at the water. ”King of the Gra.s.s People,” he said, ”come inside before you're hurt.”

Where the two wires entered the water, the water boiled. A streamer of steam blew into the white glare to spinward. Louis set the lander drifting to starboard. Already a fair patch of water was steaming.

The Ringworld engineers had built only two deep oceans, the Great Oceans, counterbalanced opposite each other. The rest of the Ringworld's seas were twenty-five feet deep throughout. Like humans, they apparently used only the top of a sea. That was to Louis's advantage. It was making it easier to boil a sea.

The steam cloud reached for sh.o.r.e.

G.o.ds don't gloat. That was a pity. ”We will watch until you are satisfied,” he told the king giant.

”Uurrr,” said Chmeee.

”I begin to see,” the king giant said, ”but ...”

”Speak.”

”The fire plants burn away clouds.”

Louis swallowed uneasiness. ”We will watch. Chmeee, you may offer our guest lettuce. It may be that you will want to eat with a door between you.”

They were fifty miles to starboard of the anch.o.r.ed wire, on the port side of a tall, bare island. The island blocked half the glare of those sunflowers still interested in cremating the lander ... but most of the sunflowers were distracted anyway. Some of the glare focused on the hovering black rectangle; some, on the steam cloud.

For the water was steaming for a couple of square miles around the wire and submerged boulder. The steam ran in a spreading cloud across the sea, fifty miles to sh.o.r.e, and there it caught fire. Five miles inland it ran, burning like a firestorm, and then it was gone.

Louis focused the telescope on the patch of steam. He could see water boiling. Plants would be starting to die. A five-mile strip of plants was getting no sunlight; plants around them were wasting their light on a steam cloud instead of making sugar with it. But a five-mile strip was nothing, nothing. The patch was half the size of a world.

He saw something else that made him swing the view straight upward.

The silver wire was falling, drifting to spinward in the wind. The sunflowers had burned through Sinclair molecule chain. Louis softly spoke a one-syllable word meaning impotence. But the thread of superconductor was still black.

It would hold. Sure it would.

It would be no hotter than boiling water, and everywhere the same temperature. More light from the plants wouldn't change that; it would only boil the water faster. And this was a big sea. And water vapor doesn't just vanish. Heat it and it rises.

”G.o.d eats well,” the king giant said. He was munching on a head of Boston b.u.t.ter lettuce: his twentieth or maybe thirtieth. He stood beside Chmeee, watching, and like Chmeee he did not speculate on what was happening outside.

Sea water boiled merrily. The sunflowers were sure as tanj determined to knock down that bit of potential fertilizer, that possible sunflower-eating bird. They couldn't judge alt.i.tude or distance. Evolution wouldn't let them keep that up until they starved. Time off for each blossom to focus on the green photosynthetic node, while others took turns.

Quietly Chmeee said, ”Louis. The island.”

Something large and black stood waist-deep in the water offsh.o.r.e. It was not human and not otter, but a little of both. It waited patiently, watching the lander with large brown eyes.

Louis spoke calmly, but with effort. ”Is this sea peopled?”

”We did not know it,” said the king giant.

Louis slid the lander toward the beach. The humanoid waited without fear. He was covered with short, oily black fur, and nicely streamlined: thick neck, drastically sloping shoulders, a broad nose flattened against his chinless face.

Louis activated the microphones. ”Do you use the speech of the Gra.s.s Giants?”

”I can use it. Talk slowly. What are you doing there?”

Louis sighed. ”Heating the sea.”

The creature's self-possession was remarkable. The idea of heating a sea didn't faze him. He asked the mobile building, ”How hot?”

”Very hot at this end. How many are you?”

”Thirty-four of us now,” said the amphibian. ”We were eighteen when we came here fifty-one falans past. Will the starboard part of the sea grow hot?”

Louis sagged with relief. He'd had visions of hundreds of thousands of people cooked because Louis Wu had played G.o.d. He croaked, ”You tell me. The river inlet's at that end. How much warmth can you stand?”

”Some. We will eat better; fish like warmth. It is polite to ask before you destroy even part of a home. Why are you doing this?”

”To kill off the fire plants.”

The amphibian considered. ”Good. If the fire plants die, we can send a messenger upstream to Fub.o.o.bish's Son's Sea. They must think us long dead.” He added, ”I forget my manners. Rishathra is acceptable to us if you will state your s.e.x, and if you can function underwater.”

Louis needed a moment to regain his voice. ”None of us mate in water.”

”Few do,” said the amphibian, with no obvious disappointment.

”How did you come here?”

”We were exploring downstream. Rapids carried us into the realm of the fire plants. We could not go ash.o.r.e, to walk. We must let the river carry us to this place, which I named Tuppugop's Sea, for myself. It is a good place, though one must be wary of the fire plants. Can you really kill them with fog?”

”I think so.”

”I must move my people,” the amphibian said. He disappeared without a splash.

”I thought you would kill him,” Chmeee told the ceiling, ”for his impudence.”

”It's his home,” said Louis. He turned off the intercom. He was weary of the game. I'm boiling someone's home, he thought, and I don't even know it'll work! He wanted the droud. Nothing else could help, nothing but the vegetable happiness of current running in his brain; nothing else would stop the black rage that had him pounding the arms of his chair and making animal noises with his eyes squeezed tightly shut.

That, and time. Time pa.s.sed, and the spell pa.s.sed, and he opened his eyes.

Now he could see neither the black wire nor the boiling of the water. It was all a vast fog bank drifting to spinward, catching fire as it reached sh.o.r.e, ten miles inward and gone. Then only the flare of sunflowers ... and a pair of parallel lines at the horizon.

White line above, black below, across fifty degrees of horizon.

Water vapor doesn't just disappear. Heated, it had gone up, and recondensed in the stratosphere. White edge of cloud, blazing under sunflower attack; black shadow across a tremendous patch of sunflowers. It must be five hundred to a thousand miles away, to be seen so near to its own shadow, and hundreds of miles across. And it was spreading-excruciatingly slowly, but it was spreading.