Ringworld's Children

CHAPTER 9 View from a Height

They geared up in Needle and flicked from there. The Hindmost wasnt with them. Theyd left the puppeteer in a depressed and uncommunicative state.

At lightspeed via stepping disks, theyd arrive ahead of Tunesmiths plug package.

Acolyte wore Chmeees spare pressure suit, retrieved from Needles stores. He looked like a bunch of grapes. Hanuman, in a skintight suit with a fishbowl helmet, went first. Louis stepped onto the plate.

The bottom dropped out.

Louis hadnt expected free fall. He hadnt expected to be thousands of miles up, either. He snatched at something: Hanumans hand. Hanuman pulled him to the stepping disk.

The Ringworld, two or three thousand miles below, skimmed past at ferocious speed. It looked infinite in all directions. The rim walls were too distant to show as more than sharp lines.

Acolyte yowled.

Louis didnt dare reach for the thrashing, terrified Kzin. Acolytes fathers spare pressure suit was all balloons, but there were waldo claws on all four limbs. It would have been like reaching into a threshing machine.

"Its all right. You have attitude jets," Louis shouted. "Use them when you feel like it."

The yowling stopped.

Louiss magnetic soles held him down. Hanuman had turned the stepping disk off. Otherwise theyd be back aboard Needle.

"Plenty of time, Acolyte," Louis said. "Were orbiting the sun." Louis held his voice calm, soothing. Hes only twelve. "Essentially were standing still, and the Ringworld goes at the usual seven hundred and seventy miles per second, so well see the whole thing go under us in seven and a half days. Hanuman — ?"

"Eight," Hanuman said. "Eight stepping disks are now in orbit. Tunesmith intended more. This was the nearest. Ive committed the stepping-disk system to memory. If we need to reach the surface, theres a service stack not too far, but meanwhile we can see it all. Can you pick out the puncture?"

"I dont see it yet."

"Look antispin."

"Its behind us? Stet, I have it. It looks like a target." Airless moonscape rimmed with cloud, scored with lines pointing inward toward a black dot.

The land racing below them still had river networks lined with the dark green of life. Through the land a white streak ran to antispin. Louis thought he knew what that was, but it was less urgent than the puncture. "Acolyte — ?"

"I see the wound. I do not see the plug package."

"I havent found that either," Hanuman said. Too small. Tunesmith, are you with us?"

"Half hour delay," Louis reminded him. "Sixteen minutes each way, lightspeed." This was a protector? But upgraded from an animal. You didnt expect a protector to forget things… and Hanuman must be very accustomed to Tunesmiths guidance.

Acolyte bounced against the stepping disk. Magnetic boots clung. He stood uncertainly. "My father tried to tell me about free fall," he said. "I dont think he ever feared it."

Tunesmith spoke from sixteen minutes in the past. "Ive sent the signal to deploy the double-X-large meteor plug. Tell me what you see, all three of you. Be free to interrupt each other, I can sort your voices."

A lamp lit above the target.

It didnt look much brighter than a street lamp, but its size… Louis squinted past the glare. "Something unfolding. Tunesmith, it looks like fire salamanders mating… or a balloon inflating… its bulking up into a shape like a sailing ships life preserver. Jets firing at fusion temperatures. What have you got there, Tunesmith?"

Acolyte: "Its settling. Slowing. A torus. Its much wider than the puncture, a thousand to two thousand klicks across. Was this what you wanted to hear?"

Hanuman: "The scrith foundation that holds the Ring together demonstrates tremendous tensile strength. Ive done the numbers. The forces that hold scrith together would generate showers of quarks if pulled apart. A bag made of such material would be strong enough to confine a hydrogen fusion explosion. Theres risk, Tunesmith, but it seems to be holding."

Acolyte: "Its settling—"

Louis: " — enclosing the puncture. Leaving the puncture exposed like a bulls-eye on a target. Im guessing your balloon stands fifty miles tall, so itll confine the atmosphere as long as it holds."

Hanuman: "Tunesmith, how good an insulator is a scrith balloon? We wouldnt see it if it werent leaking energy. When it cools enough, itll collapse. Tunesmith, it will leak air. The ground beneath will be uneven."

Answer came there none. Tunesmiths reaction was a Ringworld diameter away.

So he must have spoken sixteen minutes ago. "Watch for the second package," the protector said. "Tell me if it settles inside the ring."

Acolyte: "I dont see anything. Louis? Hanuman?"

Louis: "There wont be a meteor trail—"

Acolyte: "Rocket! I see it. Fusion, by its color. Settling slowly at the edge of the hole. Its down."

Louis: "Were drifting too far. I cant see the puncture any more."

Hanuman bent over the rim of the stepping disk. "Ill fix that. The next stepping disk is thirty degrees around the Ringworld arc. Ready?"

They flicked.

The Ringworld flowed beneath them. Theyd jumped thirty degrees, about fifty million miles. Louis, looking ahead of him, found a line of white several worlds wide, and a brighter line peeping above its center. Acolyte said, "There it is. We cant see detail, Tunesmith. We wont be over it for half a day."

Louis: "Theres a zoom function in our faceplates. Tunesmith, I dont see any change. Your balloon plug is still inflated. Everything outside the balloon is fog. Weve lost a… few percent of the Ringworld already."

Around the edges of the fog, the land would be ravaged by shock waves running through air, sea, earth, and the scrith foundation. Weather patterns would be shattered… Louis realized he was being optimistic. He was assuming that Tunesmith would plug the hole, stop the loss.

He had once estimated the Ringworlds population at thirty trillion, with hominid species in every possible ecological niche. That vast plain of fog would be water droplets condensed by a drop in pressure. Ecologies under that fog blanket would be dehydrated and suffocating. Around it theyd soon be ravaged by climate change.

But only if Tunesmith made a miracle.

"I think a ship in stasis crashed to antispin of the puncture," Louis said. "I cant see it from here."

Hanuman said, "We wont be over it for half a day. Im going to flick us home."

A moment later — plus a quarter hour — they were aboard Needle.

Moments afterward, so was Tunesmith. "Hanuman, report," he said.

"Your device deployed. It will hold for days, but it will leak. What are you expecting?"

"I sent a reweaving system to make more scrith. I based my design on nanotechnology from the doc aboard Needle. A complicated matter, this. The system must replace not only the scrith floor but the superconductor grid within."

Hanuman said, "There are species whose breeders evolved intelligent. Their protectors would be bright enough to help you with such problems."

"Bright enough to quarrel, too, and to hold the Ringworld hostage for the advantage of their own gene pool. Louis, tell me what you saw of a downed spacecraft."

"Just a streak," Louis said.

"Different from other streaks?"

He spoke too patiently. Louis flushed. "We saw it from a long way away, but — I reached the Ringworld aboard a ship in stasis. Lying Bastard came down with a horizontal velocity of seven hundred and seventy miles per second, like anything that brushes the Ringworld. We left a streak of molten lava and bare scrith. Now Ive seen one just like it. I think when one ship exploded, another got knocked down."

"Well have to find it."

"Thats easy, but not now," Louis pleaded. "Your orbiting stepping disk wont be in view of the puncture for twelve hours anyway. Let us get some sleep." He was ready to weep, exhausted physically and emotionally.

"Sleep, then."

They slept aboard Needle. Louis shared sleeping plates with Hanuman. The little protector just had to try it.