Ringworld

CHAPTER 7 — Stepping Discs

"That was rude," said Teela.

"Chiron doesn't want to meet Nessus. Didn't I tell you? They think Nessus is — crazy."

"They're all crazy."

"Well, they don't think so, but that doesn't make you wrong. Still want to go?"

Teela's answer was the same uncomprehending look she'd given him when he tried to explain whiplash of the heart. "You still want to go," Louis confirmed sadly.

"Sure. Who wouldn't? What are the puppeteers afraid of?"

"I understand that," said Speaker-To-Animals. "The puppeteers are cowards. But I fail to see why they insist on knowing more than they do. Louis, they have already passed the ringed sun, traveling at nearly lightspeed. Those who built the ring assuredly did not have faster-than-light travel. Thus they can be no danger to the puppeteers, now or ever. I fail to understand our role in this matter."

"It figures."

"Must I take that as an insult?"

"No, of course not. It's just that we keep running up against population problems. Why should you understand?"

"Quite so. Explain, if you please."

Louis had been scanning the tame jungle for a glimpse of Nessus. "Nessus could probably tell this better. Too bad. Okay, imagine a trillion puppeteers on this world. Can you do it?"

"I can smell them individually. The very concept makes me itch."

"Now imagine them on the Ringworld. Better, yes?"

"Uurr. Yes. With more than eight-to-the-seventh-power times as much room … But still I fail to understimd. Do you suppose the puppeteers plan conquest? But how would they transfer themselves to the ring afterward? They do not trust spacecraft."

"I don't know. They don't make war, either. That's not the point. The point is, is the Ringworld safe to live on?"

"Urrr."

"You see? Maybe they're thinking of building their own Ringworlds. Maybe they expect to find an empty one, out there in the Clouds of Magellan. Not an unreasonable hope, by the way. But it doesn't matter. They have to know if it's safe before they do anything."

"Here comes Nessus." Teela stood up and moved to the invisible wall. "He looks drunk. Do puppeteers get drunk?"

Nessus wasn't trotting. He came tippy-toe, circling a four-foot chrome-yellow feather with exaggerated wariness, moving one foot at a time, while his flat heads darted this way and that. He had almost reached the lecture dome when something like a large black butterfly settled on his rump. Nessus screamed like a woman, leapt forward as if clearing a high fence. He landed rolling. When he stopped rolling he remained curled into a ball, with his back arched and his legs folded and his heads and necks tucked between his forelegs.

Louis was running. "Depressive cycle," he shouted over his shoulder. By luck and memory he found the entrance in the invisible dome. He darted out into the park.

All the flowers smelled like puppeteer. (If all the life of the puppeteer world had the same chemical basis, how could Nessus take nourishment from warm carrot juice?) Louis followed a right-angle zigzag of manicured dusty orange hedge and came upon the puppeteer.

He knelt beside him. "It's Louis," he said. "You're safe." He reached gently into the tangled mop over the puppeteces skull and scratched gently. The puppeteer jerked at the touch, then settled down.

This was a bad one. No need to make the puppeteer face the world just yet. Louis asked, "Was that thing dangerous? The one that landed on you."

"That? No." The contralto voice was muffled, but beaufifully pure, and without inflection. "It was only a flower-sniffer."

"How did it go with those-who-lead?"

Nessus winced. "I won."

"Fine. What did you win?"

"My right to breed, and a set of mates."

"Is that what has you so scared?" It wasn't unlikely, Louis thought Nessus could be the counterpart to a male black widow spider, doomed by love. Then again, he might be a nervous virgin … of either sex, or of any sex …

The puppeteer said, "I might have failed, Louis. I faced them down. I bluffed them."

"Go on." Louis was aware that Teela and Speaker-To-Animals had joined them. He continued scratching gently in Nessus's mane. Nessus had not moved.

The muffled, infiectionless contralto voice said, "Those-who-lead offered me the legal right to reproduce my kind if I survive the voyage we must make. But this was not enough. To become a parent I need mates. Who will willingly mate with a straggly-maned maniac?

"It was necessary to bluff. Find me a mate, I told them, or I will withdraw from the voyage. If I withdraw, so will the kzin, I said. They were enraged."

"I can believe that. You must have been in the manic state."

"I worked myself up to it. I threatened them with ruin to their plans, and they capitulated. Some selfless volunteer, I said, must agree to mate with me if i return from the ring."

"Beautiful. Nice going. Did you get volunteers?"

"One of our sexes is … property. Nonsentient; stupid. I needed only one volunteer. Those-who-lead -"

Teela broke in. "Why don't you just say leaders?"

"I had tried to translate into your terms," said the puppeteer. "A more accurate translation of the term would be, those-who-lead-from-behind. There is a selected chairman or speaker-for-all or … the accurate translation of his title is Hindmost.

"It was the Hindmost who accepted me as his mate. He said that he would not ask another to so sacrifice his self-respect."

Louis whistled. "That's something. Go ahead and cringe, you deserve it. Better to be scared now, now that it's all over."

Nessus stirred, relaxing somewhat.

"That pronoun," said Louis. "It bugs me. Either I should be calling you she, or I should be calling the Hindmost she."

"This is indelicate of you, Louis. One does not discuss sex with an alien race." A head emerged from between Nessus's legs and focused, disapproving. "You and Teela would not mate in my sight, would you?"

"Oddly enough, the subject did come up once, and Teela said -"

"I am offended," the puppeteer stated.

"Why?" asked Teela. The puppeteer's exposed head dived for cover. "Oh, come out of there! I won't hurt you."

"Truly?"

"Truly. I mean honest. I think you're cute."

The puppeteer unrolled completely. "Did I hear you call me cute?"

"Yeah." She looked up at the orange wall of Speaker-To-Aninials and, "You too," she said generously.

"I do not mean to give offense," said the kzin. "But do not ever say that again. Ever."

Teela looked puzzled.

There was a dusty orange hedge, ten feet tall and perfectly straight, equipped with cobalt blue tentacles that hung limp. From the look of them, the hedge had once been carnivorous. It was the border to the park; and Nessus led his little group toward it.

Louis was expecting a gap in the hedge. He was unprepared when Nessus walked straight into it. The hedge parted for the puppeteer and closed after him.

They followed.

They walked out from under a sky-blue sky; but when the hedge had dosed after them, the sky was black and white. Against the black sky of perpetual night, drifting clouds blazed white in the light cast upon their underbellies by miles of city. For the city was there, looming over them.

At first glance it differed from Earthly cities only in degree. The buildings were thicker, blockier, more uniform; and they were higher, terribly high, so that the sky was all lighted windows and lighted balconies with straight hairline cracks of darkness marking the zenith. Here were the right angles denied to puppeteer furniture; here on the buildings where a right angle was far too big to bash a careless knee.

But why had the city not loomed similarly over the park? On Earth there were few buildings more than a mile high. Here, none were less. Louis guessed at light-bending fields around the park's borders. He never got around to asking. It was the least of the miracles of the puppeteer world.

"Our vehicle is at the other end of the island," said Nessus. "We can be there in a minute or less, using the stepping discs. I will show you."

"You feel all right now?"

"Yes, Teela. As Louis says, the worst is over." The puppeteer pranced lightly ahead of them. "The Hindmost is my love. I need only return from the Ringworld."

The path was soft. To the eye it was concrete set with iridescent particles, but to the feet it was damp, spongy soil. Presently, after walking a very long block, they came to an intersection. "We must go this way," said Nessus, nodding ahead of him. "Do not step on the first disc. Follow me."

At the center of the intersection was a large blue rectangle. Four blue discs surrounded the rectangle, one at the mouth of each walk. "You may step on the rectangle if you wish," said Nessus, "but not on inappropriate discs. Follow me." He circled the nearest disc, crossed the intersection, trotted onto the disc on the opposite side, and vanished.

For a stunned moment nobody moved. Then Teela yelled like a banshee and ran at the disc. And was gone.

Speaker-To-Animals snarled and leapt. No tiger could have aimed as accurately. Then Louis was alone.

"By the Mist Demons," he said wonderingly. "They've got open transfer booths."

And he walked forward.

He was standing on a square at the center of the next intersection, between Nessus and Speaker. "Your mate ran ahead," said Nessus. "I hope she will wait for us."

The puppeteer walked off the rectangle in the direction he was facing. Three paces brought him to a disc. And he was gone.

"What a layout!" Louis said admiringly. He was alone, for the kzin had already followed Nessus. "You just walk. That's all. Three paces takes you a block. It's like magic. And you can make the blocks as long as you like!" He strode forward.

He wore seven league boots. He ran lightly on his toes, and the scene jumped every three paces. The circular signs on the corners of buildings must be address codes, so that once a pedestrian reached his destination he would know it. Then he would circle the discs to got to the middle of the block.

Along the street were shop windows Louis would have liked to explore. Or were they something else entirely? But the others were blocks ahead. Louis could see them Mckering at the end of that canyon of buildings. He increased his pace.

At the end of a footstep the aliens were before him, blocking his path.

"I feared you would miss the turn," said Nessus. And he led off to the left.

"Wait -" But the kzin had vanished too. Where the blazes was Teela?

She must have gone ahead. Louis turned left and walked. Seven league boots. The city went by like a dream. Louis ran with visions of sugarplums dancing in his head. Freeway paths through the cities, the discs marked in a different color, ten blocks apart. Long-distance discs a hundred miles apart, each marking the center of a city, the receiver squares a full block across. Paths to cross oceans: one step to an island! Islands for stepping stones!

Open transfer booths. The puppeteers were fearfully advanced. The disc was only a yard across, and you didn't have to be entirely on it before it would operate. One footstep and you were stepping off the next receiver square. It beat the tanj out of slidewalks!

As he ran, Louis's mind conjured up a phantom puppeteer hundreds of miles tall, picking his way delicately along a chain of islands; stepping with care lest he miss an island and get his ankles wet. Now the phantom grew larger, and his stepping stones were worlds … the puppeteers were fearfully advanced …

He was out of stepping disc, at the shore of a calm black sea. Beyond the edge of the world, four fat full moons rose in a vertical line against the stars. Halfway to the horizon was a smaller island, brilliantly lighted. The aliens were waiting for him.

"Where's Teela?"

"I do not know," said Nessus.

"Mist Demons! Nessus, how do we find her?"

"She must find us. There is no need to worry, Louis. When -"

"She's lost on a strange world! Anything could happen!"

"Not on this world, Louis. There is no world as as ours. When Teela reaches the edge of this island, she will find that the stepping discs to the next islands will not work for her. She will follow the discs around the shoreline until she finds one that does work."

"Do you think its a lost computer we're talking about? Teela's a twenty-year-old girl!"

Teela popped into place beside him. "Hi. I got a little lost. What's all the excitement?"

Speaker-To-Ammals mocked him with a dagger-toothed grin. Louis, avoiding Teela's puzzled / questioning eyes, felt heat rising in his cheeks. But Nessus said only, "Follow me."

They followed the puppeteer where stepping discs formed a line along the shore. Presently there was a dirty brown pentagram. They stepped onto it …

They stood on bare rock, brilliantly lit by sun tubes. An island of rock the size of a private spaceport. In its center stood one tall building and a single spacecraft.

"Behold our vehicle," said Nessus.

Teela and Speaker showed disappointment; for the kzin's ears disappeared into their flaps, while Teela looked wistfully back toward the island they had just left, toward a wall of light formed by miles-high buildings standing shoulder to shoulder against interstellar night. But Louis looked, and he felt the relief loosening overtight muscles. He had had enough of miracles. The stepping discs, the tremendous city, the four tributary worlds hanging, pumpkin-colored, above the horizon … all were daunting. The ship was not. It was a General Products #2 hull fitted into a triangular wing, the wing studded with thruster units and fusion motors. Familiar hardware, all of it, and no questions asked.

The kzin proved him wrong. "This seems an odd design from the viewpoint of a puppeteer engineer. Nessus, would you not feel safer if the ship were entirely within the hull?"

"I would not. This ship represents a major innovation in design. Come, I will show you." Nessus trotted toward the ship.

The kzin had raised a good point.

General Products, the puppeteer-owned trading company, had sold many diversified wares in known space; but its fortunes had been founded on the General Products hull. There had been four varieties from a globe the size of a basketball to another globe more than a thousand feet in diameter: the #4 hull, the hull of the Long Shot. The #3 hull, a round-ended cylinder with a flattened belly, made a good multicrewed passenger ship. Such a ship had landed them on the puppeteer world a few hours ago. The #2 hull was a wasp-waisted cylinder, narrow and needle-tapered at both ends. Ordinarily it was just roomy enough for one pilot.

The General Products hull was transparent to visible light. To all other forms of electromagnetic energy, and to matter in any form, it was impervious. The company's reputation backed that guarantee, and the guarantee had held for hundreds of years and for millions of ships. A General Products hull was the ultimate in safety.

The vehicle before them was based on a General Products #2 hull.

But … as far as Louis could see, only the life-support system and the hyperdrive shunt were within the hull. Everything else — a pair of flat thruster units aimed downward, two small fusion motors facing forward, larger fusion motors on the wing's trailing edges, and a pair of tremendous pods on the wingtips — pods which must contain detection and communications equipment, since Louis could find no such equipment anywhere else — all this was on the great delta wing!

Half the ship was on the wing, exposed to any danger that could worry a puppeteer. Why not use a #3 hull and put everything inside?

The puppeteer had led them beneath the delta wing, to the tapered stem of the hull section. "Our purpose was to make as few breaks in the hull as possible," said Nessus. "You see?"

Through the glasslike hull Louis saw a conduit as thick as his thigh leading through the hull into the wing section. Things looked complex at that point, until Louis tumbled to the fact that the conduit was designed to slide back into the hull in one section. Then he picked out the motor that did it all, and the metal door that would seal off the opening.

"An ordinary ship," said the puppeteer, "requires many breaks in its hull: for sensors which do not use visible light, for reaction motors if such are used, for apertures leading to fuel tanks. Here we have only two breaks, the conduit and the airlock. One passes passengers and the other passes information. Both can be closed off.

"Our engineers have coated the hull's inner surface with a transparent conductor. When the airlock is closed and the aperture for the wiring conduit is sealed, the interior is an unbroken conducting surface."

"Stasis field," Louis guessed.

"Exactly. If danger threatens, the entire life-support system goes into Slaver-type stasis for a period of several seconds. No time passes in stasis; hence nothing can harm the passengers. We are not so foolish as to trust to the hull alone. Lasers using visible light can penetrate a General Products hull, killing passengers and leaving the ship unharmed. Antimatter can disintegrate a General Products hull entirely."

"I didn't know that."

"It is not widely advertised."

Louis moved back under the delta wing to where Speaker-To-Animals was inspecting the motors. "Why so many motors?"

The kzin snorted. "Surely a human cannot have forgotten the Kzinti Lesson."

"Oh." Naturally any puppeteer who had studied kzinti or human history would know the Kzinti Lesson. A reaction drive is a weapon, powerful in direct ratio to its efficiency. Here were thrusters for peaceful use, and fusion drives for weapons capability.

"Now I know how you learned to handle fusion-drive craft."

"Naturally I have been trained in war, Louis."

"Just in case of another Man-Kzin war."

"Must I demonstrate my skill as a warrior, Louis?"

"You shall," the puppeteer interrupted. "Our engineers intended that this ship be flown by a kzin. Would you care to inspect the controls, Speaker?"

"Shortly. I will also need performance data, test flight records, and so forth. Is the hyperdrive shunt of standard type?"

"Yes. There have been no test flights."

Typical, Louis thought as they walked toward the airlock. They just built the thing and left it here to wait for us. They had to. No puppeteer was willing to test-fly it.

Where was Teela?

He was about to call out when she reappeared on the pentagramic receiver plate. She had been playing with the stepping-discs again, ignoring the ship entirely. She followed them aboard, still looking wistfully back toward the puppeteer city beyond the black water.

Louis waited for her at the inner airlock door. He was ready to blast her for her carelessness. You'd think that after getting lost once she might learn a little caution!

The door opened. Teela was radiant. "Oh, Louis, I'm so glad I came! That city — it's such fun!" She grasped his hands and squeezed, beaming inarticulately. Her smile was like sunlight.

He couldn't do it. "It's been fun," he said, and kissed her hard. He moved toward the control room with his arm around Teela's slim waist, his thumb tracing the rim of her hip.

He was sure now. Teela Brown had never been hurt; had never learned caution; did not understand fear. Her first pain would come as a horrifying surprise. It might destroy her entirely.

She'd be hurt over Louis Wu's dead body.

The gods do not protect fools. Fools are protected by more capable fools.

A General Products #2 hull is twenty feet wide and three hundred feet long, tapering to points fore and aft.

Most of the ship was outside the hull, on the thin, oversized wing. The lifesystem was roomy enough to include three living-bedrooms, a long, narrow lounge, a control cabin, and a bank of lockers, plus kitchen, autodocs, reclaimers, batteries, etc. The control panel was fitted out according to kzinti custom, and was labeled in kzinti. Louis felt he could fly the ship in an emergency, but it would have taken a big emergency to make him try it.

The lockers held an ominous plethora of exploration gear. There was nothing Louis could have pointed to, saying, "That's a weapon." But there were things which could be used as weapons. There were also four flycycles, four flying backpacks (lift belt plus catalytic ramjet), food testers, phials of dietary additives, medkits, air sensors and filters. Someone was sure as tanj convinced that this ship would be landing somewhere.

Well, why not? A species as powerful as the Ringworlders, and as sealed in by their presumed lack of hyperdrive craft, might invite them to land. Perhaps this was what the puppeteers were expecting.

There was nothing aboard that Nessus could not point to and say, "That is not a weapon. That we took aboard for such-and-such a purpose."

There were three species aboard; four, if one thought of male and female human as of different species, which was something a kzin or a puppeteer might well do. (Suppose Nessus and the Hindmost were of the same sex? Why shouldn't it take two males and a nonsentient female to produce a baby?) Then the presumed Ringworlders could see at a glance that many kinds of sentient life could deal amicably with each other.

Yet too many of these items — the flashlight-lasers, the dueling stunners — could be used as weapons.

They took off on reactionless thrusters, to avoid damaging the island. Half an hour later they had left the feeble gravity wells of the puppeteer rosette. It occurred to Louis then that aside from Nessus, whom they had brought with them, and aside from the projected image of the puppeteer Chiron, they had seen not a single puppeteer on the puppeteer world.

After they had entered hyperdrive, Lotus spent an hour-and-a-half inspecting every item in the lockers. Better safe than surprised, he told himself. But the weaponry and the other equipment left a bitter aftertaste, a foreboding.

Too many weapons, and not one weapon that could not be used for something else. Flashlight-lasers. Fusion reaction motors. When they held a christening ceremony on the first day in hyperdrive, Louis suggested that the ship be called Lying Bastard. For their own reasons, Teela and Speaker agreed. For his own reason, Nessus did not object.

They were in hyperdrive for a week, covering a little more than two light years. When they dropped back into Einsteinian space they were within the system of the ringed G2 star; and the foreboding was still with Louis Wu.

Someone was sure as tanj convinced that they would land on the Ringworld.