Ringworld's Children

CHAPTER 6 The Blind Spot

"Another one!" Forrestier shouted.

Tec Roxanny Gauthier looked. In the wall display, what was rising past the edge of the Ringworld was no more than a blurred point. Gray Nurse was on patrol among the inner comets, far, far away from any Ringworld action.

Roxanny asked, "Did you see where it came from?"

"Same as the other. One of the big salt oceans, an island cluster."

The fighter-recon crews didnt actually know anything. They were watching a wall display relayed from Control. The officers in Control could feed them any data they liked. That didnt stop crewfolk from speculating.

Roxanny said, "The first one was too small. Sos this one. Theyre not ships, theyre just probes."

"Fast, though. Tec Gauthier, whats that?"

That, rising from the same Great Ocean island, was a larger dot, elongated, moving with the same amazing speed as the probe.

"Thats a ship," Roxanny said. Headquarters would have to respond to that! Gray Nurse herself would not fight. She was a carrier. She was long and slender, built for spin gravity in emergencies, and she carried twenty fighter-recon ships. Roxanny belonged to the crew of the fighter Snail Darter.

Crewfolk numbered about two men for every woman, all between forty and eighty years old. Younger than forty, Command wouldnt trust your reflexes. Older than eighty, why hadnt you been promoted? In Sol system theyd been the best. Here, in this strange place, some were startled to find themselves average.

Roxanny Gauthier was fifty-one, and still one of the best. Lack of action didnt bother her. For two years shed enjoyed Gray Nurses modest rec facilities, kept herself in shape, competed ferociously in war simulations, and worked on her education. She enjoyed dominance games. Some of the fighter crew found her intimidating.

The Fringe War couldnt last forever. The forces involved controlled energies that were too powerful. If the Ringworld itself was getting involved, nothing would last much longer.

Gray Nurse came under power. Her nose swung around. The voice of Command — placid, not quite soothing — said, "All fighter-recon crews, we will be passing through the inner system in fifty to sixty hours. Youre on down time until then. Eat, sleep, wash. After you launch, youll wish you had."

One or two crewfolk blew raspberries. Gray Nurse hadnt launched a fighter since their arrival ten months ago.

Launch was ferocious. Louis heard a whine from the cabin gravity generators, and a planets mass settled on him and squeezed out all the air. That wasnt supposed to happen! Then—

—discontinuity—

—the view jumped, navy blue masked by flame colors around a black disk. The flames died, leaving the sun a deeper black disk on black sky.

He could breathe again.

The ships wall protected them from unfiltered sunlight by imposing a black patch on the sun. As Louiss eyes adjusted, he could make out stars, and here and there a spear of fusion light. A sudden starship zipped past, an advanced ARM design, too close.

Tunesmith said, "Sorry. I reworked the stasis field generator. The stasis effect was holding for too long. It would have left us vulnerable, but now it doesnt become active fast enough. Ill fix it. Is everyone all right?"

"We could have been crushed!" the Hindmost whimpered.

"Where is Hanuman?" Acolyte asked.

A virtual window appeared, and zoomed. "There, ahead of us."

The Fringe War was starting to notice Hanumans tiny ship and the larger craft following four minutes behind. Tunesmith jigged and jogged to avoid dangers unseen. Ahead of them, Hanumans Probe Two was jittering all over the sky. The black patch that covered the sun was expanding.

Tunesmith used the thrusters for a sustained surge; veered in the midst of the burn. The forward view went black, then cleared.

Probe Two was gone.

Louis had never had a chance to know the little protector. He asked, "Now, what did that accomplish, Tunesmith?"

Pyrotechnics sought them out, Fringe War weapons following Needles jittery path. Tunesmith ignored all that. "What youve seen buys us nothing yet—"

Probe Two was back. It had moved, pulled ahead by a crazy quarter of a million miles. Tanj dammit, what has Hanuman done?

Tunesmith said, "We are constantly testing each other, arent we, Louis? Let me show you what I have learned."

The puppeteers orchestral scream drowned out Louiss, "Wait!" Tunesmiths hands moved.

There was color and flow. Shapes werent there, just flow patterns of light and a few tiny dark comma shapes.

In the Blind Spot, in hyperdrive, Louis had never been able to see anything.

To go into hyperdrive this close to a sun was insane, but Hanumans Probe Two had done it anyway. And somehow popped out again. And Tunesmith was about to do that too! They screamed at him but he did it. He went into hyperdrive while too close to a sun.

Born and raised on the Map of Earth, Acolyte hadnt even guessed the danger. Launch must have been scary enough. In this nightmare of scrambled light and dark darting commas, he was only drawing breath to roar when they were out again.

Stars. The singularity hadnt eaten them, it had spit them out. Louis looked around, savoring his ability to see. Close behind him was a black half-moon rimmed in fire: the sun chopped in half.

Hyperdrive gone wrong might, in theory, take them anywhere. Louis had not expected to see a black arc of Ringworld eclipsing half the sun — out of all the quintillions of suns in the universe, he had not thought he would still be next to this one — but it was there.

Tunesmith said, "Hindmost… no? Louis, then. Will you tell me if that was the Blind Spot your histories speak of?"

Louis said, "The Blind Spot is what you dont see in hyperspace. If you try to look through a window, youre blind. You can only see whats inside the cabin. Its why most pilots use paint and curtains to cover up a General Products hull. There are freaks, though, people and other LEs who can at least use a mass detector without going nuts. I can do that. Hindmost?" The puppeteer was in footstool mode. "Acolyte?"

The Kzin said, "Tunesmith, if you cant see while flying in hyperspace, this will be a fun ride."

"But thats not the point!" Louis tried to explain the obvious. "Ships just disappear if they drop into hyperspace too near a big mass. The space is too warped. What happened? We should be dead, or somewhere else in the universe, or in some other universe. Why arent we? Were still in Ringworld system!"

Tunesmith said, "I found no convincing theory anywhere in the records. I must evolve one. Hyperspace is a false term, Louis. The universe accessed through the Outsider drive corresponds to our own Einstein universe, point-to-point, but there are fixed velocities, quantized.

"Youre aware that you can map any part of a mathematical domain onto the whole domain? For every point in one domain, you can place a unique point in the other. I thought the relationship here might be point-to-point except that space warped by nearby masses isnt represented. A ship that tried what Hanuman tried would go nowhere. Then I thought of an alternate model. Well have to look at the recordings to know if Im right, but after all, Hanuman did get in and back out — Excuse me," Tunesmith said, and turned to his controls.

Hot Needle of Inquiry began to dodge.

The war wasnt letting them through. Thermonuclear fireworks bloomed outside the ship. The ship surged, and protective blackness washed across the walls.

Louiss inclination was to beat Tunesmith over the head with something heavy until he talked, but that would not be prudent while he was flying them through a firestorm.

Tunesmith said, "Notice that we didnt travel far in hyperdrive. Hanuman didnt either. A light year in three days is characteristic of mass-free space. This close to a stars mass, space isnt flat. Im not sure we even exceeded lightspeed.

"We launched at point one C. Well be among the comets in a few hours. We can safely use hyperdrive then. Hindmost, will you take the controls?"

One head poked above the jeweled mane. "No."

Then get into ships memory and summon up what information we collected."

A mass pointer cant record, because the users mind is a necessary component. Tunesmith had built something better, something that took pictures in hyperdrive.

A virtual screen showed the streaming colors Louis remembered, and a deep violet dot expanding into a tadpole shape. Tunesmith said, "This explains why we didnt travel far. Too close to the suns mass—"

"Inside the singularity," Louis said.

"Louis, I dont think theres a mathematical singularity here at all. I found reference to a mass pointer in the Hindmosts library. Have you used a mass pointer?"

"Theres one in front of you. It only works in hyperdrive."

"This?" A crystal sphere, inert now. "What do you think you see with it?"

"Stars."

"Starlight?"

"…No. A mass pointer is a psionics device. You perceive, but its not with your usual senses. Stars look bigger than they should, as if youre seeing a whole solar system."

"Youve been perceiving this." Tunesmith waved into a recorded view of neon paint streaming through oil. "Dark matter. The missing mass. Instruments in Einstein space cant find it, but it huddles close around suns in this other domain youve been calling hyperspace. Dark matter makes galaxies more massive, changes their spin—"

"We rammed through that?"

"Wrong picture, Louis. My instruments didnt record any resistance. Well test that later. It might have been different if this had reached us." A deep violet comma-shaped shadow. "We find life everywhere we look in this universe. Would it be surprising if an ecology has grown up within dark matter? And predators?"

Maybe Tunesmith was mad. Louis asked, "Are you suggesting that ships that use hyperdrive near a star are eaten?"

Tunesmith said, "Yes."

Crazy. But… the Hindmost continued his work with the recordings and Needles instruments. He hadnt flinched at the notion of predators eating spacecraft.

The puppeteer already knew.

"I only held us in hyperdrive for a moment," Tunesmith said, "but these hypothetical predators only have one speed, Louis, and its fast. Singularity is a mathematical term. Certainly there are mathematics involved, but they may be more complex than just places where an equation gives infinities. Inside this morass of dark matter, the characteristic speed may be drastically lowered. The proof is that we live."

"We are being observed," the Hindmost said. "I sense ranging beams from ARM and Patriarchy telescopes and neutrino detectors. Ships begin to accelerate inward. The ship from Sheathclaws houses telepaths of both species, though they cant reach us yet. Ive found the comet cluster that hides the Kzinti flagship Diplomat. Its across the solar system, seven light-hours away and receding behind us. Tunesmith, do you have a plan?"

The Ghoul protector said, "I have the simple part. We will observe the Fringe War as we coast outward. Let our velocity carry us beyond the danger zone, the dark matter zone where predators lurk. Then swing around the system in hyperdrive. Approach Diplomat from the other side of the system. Await developments."

Hours passed. The Fringe War made no further test of Needles defenses. When the sun was only a bright point and the Ringworld was barely more than that, Tunesmith asked, "Hindmost, can you perceive hyperspace directly?"

"Yes."

"I cant. But if you cant fly for terror, I must fly Needle"

The puppeteer uncoiled. He took Needles controls. "Where shall I fly?"

"Take us ten light-minutes outward from Diplomats last position."

Human beings cant look into the Blind Spot. Most would go mad. Some can use a mass pointer to steer through hyperspace and keep their sanity too. Some Kzinti can perceive hyperspace directly; their female kin have mated into the family of the Patriarch for half a thousand years.

This time there was nothing. Not darkness, not featureless gray, not even the memory of sight. Louis fumbled until he could opaque the hull in crew quarters.

Acolyte said, "I dont know enough to ask intelligent questions, Louis."

"Were okay. I understand this. This is hyperdrive the way Im used to seeing it. Were outside the… borderline," Louis said. "Even if I have to unlearn everything I know."

All his life hed thought in terms of a mathematical singularity. In such a system, the realm of heavy masses — suns and planets — would be undefined in hyperspace. Ships couldnt go there.

"What were doing is a standard maneuver. We have a velocity, right? We were flung up from the Ringworld, toward the sun and past it and outward. We still have that huge velocity, straight out from the sun.

"But the Hindmost is taking us halfway around the system in hyperdrive. When he comes out, well have the same velocity we started with, but pointed back toward the sun and the Ringworld."

"Were out," the Hindmost said. They were in black space with one overbright star. Theyd been in hyperdrive about five minutes.

The Hindmost said, "The Fringe War doesnt normally reach this far out. Were safe for the moment. Our velocity vector is inward, toward Diplomat. We should act within ten minutes, before Diplomat can see our neutrino wake and Cherenkov radiation."

"Get me a view," Tunesmith ordered.

Ten light-minutes is further than the distance between Earth and Sol. The virtual window popped up, and zoomed, and wiggled a loose-packed comet out of the starscape, and zoomed…

A lens of steel and glass was the Kzinti command ship Diplomat emerging from its cometary nest.

That larger sphere just popping into view was Long Shot, close and closing.

Tunesmith barely glanced at the view. "Theyll be a few minutes matching. We have time. Hindmost, show us what we recorded in this last hyperdrive jump."

The hypercameras record was blank. Louis snickered.

Tunesmith reproved him. "Louis, theres nothing to see. Were outside the envelope of dark matter that collects around our star. Where there almost isnt any dark matter, there almost isnt space either! This is why we can travel faster than light does in vacuum, because distance in this domain is drastically contracted.

"Now I need only learn why there is more than one characteristic velocity. Ill get that by studying Long Shot. Hindmost, take us in range of Diplomat."

"Two fighting ships guard the near side of the comet."

"I see them. Use hyperdrive. Well beat our own light."

The Blind Spot flashed for only an instant.

Their target was still too far away to see, but the virtual window nailed it: a loose dark fluffy comet, icy puffball satellites drifting around it, and four ships, two linked. Tunesmiths knotty hands danced. Needle surged: the cabin gravity motors were whining again. The larger ships, Diplomat and Long Shot locked together at the airlocks, were coming up fast. Slowing. Slowing.

"Im taking the controls," Tunesmith said.

Diplomat fired lasers: crew quarters went black.

The virtual window was looking at something other than light. A flock of dim points was coming at them. Needle didnt have rocket motors; Tunesmith was using only the sluggish thrusters. Now the virtual window disappeared, and the hull was slapped sideways, then backward.

Louis just had time to realize that they were mated. Then Needles cabin gravity surged uneasily while the generators whined. Three ships, locked together, tried to turn round their common center of mass.

Diplomat ripped loose, tumbling, dwindling.

Hot Needle of Inquiry was using full thrust to push Long Shot. Needles overbuilt thrusters against Long Shots sizeable mass would give, what, around ten gravities? And Long Shot hadnt had cabin gravity when Louis flew it. In all that packed space there hadnt been room for extra machinery, or so he had assumed. Ten gravities would flatten any Kzinti aboard, knock them out or kill them.

Diplomat, the Kzinti command ship, fired a cloud of missiles, then disappeared in a black-cored fireball.

The missiles twinkled. Tunesmith was exercising his marksmanship. The warrior ships didnt fire — for fear of harming Long Shot? Tunesmith exploded the ship that tried to take up escort. The other fell behind.

A ship carrying antimatter is very vulnerable, Louis thought. Was that reassuring, or just scary?

Needles, thrust died. Tunesmith was out of his seat shouting, "Lander bay!" He reached a stepping disk and was gone.

Acolyte followed before Louis could quite get moving. The wall had become a window again, and Long Shot was a planet jammed against Needles, hull, with the cabin right up against Needles, new airlock, the view blocked by bronze "glue". Louis was out of his web, weapon in hand, running for the stepping disk. He saw Tunesmith race through the hangar, dive into the airlock, look, open the second door, leap, with Acolyte right behind. Then Louis flicked into the hangar.

He was ten feet behind Acolyte, moving at a dead run, leaning forward because he was about to enter free fall, a laser weapon in one hand. Pirate! he thought, elated, expecting no real resistance.

But light sputtered where Tunesmith disappeared. Acolyte stopped suddenly, then leapt out of sight.

In free fall now, Louis dug his feet into the wall and jumped behind his extended weapon.

Generated gravity slammed him to the floor.

That was confusing, if hed had time to think about it. Long Shot hadnt had gravity generators.

Long Shots life support system was only the pilots cramped cabin and a cramped sleep-and-rec room above it, now occupied by Tunesmith and three Kzinti. Two Kzinti were sprawled in pools of orange blood, chopped and seared and dead. A third was fluffed out like a yellow-and-black cloud with teeth. Louis held his aim on that one until he was sure it was Acolyte.

Tunesmiths voice spoke in Louiss helmet. "Time presses. Louis, take your place as pilot. Acolyte, return to Needle. Hindmost, go with him. You have your instructions."

Louis wriggled past Acolyte and took the pilots chair.

Acolyte pushed the dead Patriarchy warriors into the recreation space. He sprang toward the airlock. The puppeteer had gone ahead of him.

Tunesmiths communicator voice followed them. "Hindmost, what does it mean if we found cabin gravity aboard Long Shot?"

Silence.

"Hindmost!"

The puppeteer was reluctant, but he spoke. "It suggests that the Patriarchy has solved some of our secrets. Some of what we packed Long Shot with was data-collecting instruments. Some was mere misdirection. The Patriarchs science team must have learned how much superfluous space is there. Theyve used it to install a cabin gravity generator and who knows what else. What would human or Kzinti warriors do with so fast a ship if they knew there was extra space for thrusters, fighter ships, and weapons? Tunesmith, if you cant imagine that, ask Louis."

"Louis?"

"Just be glad this ship is ours again," Louis said. He studied Long Shots control system. A crude second control panel had been set beside the first. All the indicators had been reworked in Kzinti dots-and-commas.

Gravity rolled uneasily. They were in motion, and Long Shots cabin gravity generator wasnt happy with the unbalanced configuration.

Tunesmith was behind Louiss shoulder, his jaw against Louiss neck. "Can you fly it?"

"Yah," Louis said. "I may have to close my eyes—"

"Do you read the Heroes Tongue?"

"No."

"I do. Make room. Join your companions aboard Needle."

"I can fly Long Shot. I remember the controls."

"Theyve been changed. Go!"

"Can you fly this ship?"

"I must try. Go."

When Louis entered Needles hangar, Acolyte was already gone.

Louis took a moment to contain his fury. Typical of a protector, to bet his own life and everybody elses on his own not-yet-formed abilities, on nebulous theories, on risks Louis wouldnt have taken even in his teens and twenties. But that wasnt enough. Hed bet Louis Wus life because he might need him… and now he didnt. What the futz, just another gamble that hadnt paid off.

Inhale through the nose, hold it, flatten that abdomen, exhale… it felt remarkably good to be back in his teens and twenties. Lovely if he could live through it.

Needle lurched and separated from Long Shot.

Louis found the hidden stepping disk and flicked to crew quarters. Acolyte was there. The Hindmost was on the flight deck, his back to them. He said, "We must make our way separately. Louis, Acolyte, strap down."

Acolyte said, "I was to be copilot."

"Plans change," the Hindmost said without turning around.

Louis didnt even wonder how the Hindmost had gained control of the bronze "glue" that linked the hulls. Tunesmith didnt hesitate either. From Long Shot he said, "As you will, Hindmost. Your enemies in this part of space include every ARM and Patriarchy ship and very likely all strangers. Ive sheathed Needles hull in scrith, giving two layers of defense, but antimatter is still a danger. Make your way to the Map of Mars as best you can."

The Hindmost didnt answer. Hot Needle of Inquiry turned toward interstellar space.