Ringworld's Children

CHAPTER 11 The Wounded Land

Most of the Mouse Eaters were dozing underground after a morning meal.

This wasnt Wembleths custom. Wembleth was a traveler; he adapted his behavior to his hosts. Hed been living with these nocturnal hunters for several turns of the sky, sharing their meals and their women, teaching them how to make and use tools hed learned of elsewhere.

Most of the villagers were inside their burrow houses. Older children and elders were cleaning up after the feast, with Wembleths help, while shadow withdrew from the sun. For him it was a good choice; he needed some sunlight to stay healthy. In a minute theyd all go in -

And the day lit up.

Children began screaming.

Mouse Eaters couldnt deal with mere daylight; what would this glare do to them? His own eyes squinted to teary slits. Wembleth scooped up two small children, hugged their faces against his chest, and shouted at the rest. "Get inside!" He darted into the nearest house. The others would have to follow, or find their own houses.

Windows were mere slits in Mouse Eater houses. Wembleth dropped his load of children into the dark, wiggled past more frightened children and out again.

In the horrid light children and elders were running blind. Elder Mouse Eaters tended to lose their sight anyway; it let them move around in daylight. Through squinted eyes Wembleth could still see. They could not. Adults were bigger than he was. Somehow he wrestled them into doorways.

He couldnt guess how much time passed. The light faded. A hot fierce wind blasted across the plaza, scattering coals from the commonfire, and died. Presently a softer wind was blowing the other way. When he couldnt find anyone, couldnt see anyway, he crawled indoors. Indoors was perfect blackness; his night sight had faded, and the horrid light had faded too. Wembleth lay down and gasped for air.

Something would change. Something always did, when things went bad. You had to watch for the opportunity that would follow.

Presently Wembleth realized that he was suffocating.

The blast Spit Snail Darter, in stasis, into a rocky cliff above a vast forest. When time resumed, the ship had become part of an immense landslide of shattered shale.

Far, far to spinward, a sea of mist ran all across the horizon, hiding everything up to the base of the Arch. Worlds away, the mist domed upward. The near edge of the mist was a shock wave still moving sluggishly toward Snail Darter.

"It looks like the end of the world. Any world. Lots of worlds," Oliver said.

"See whos around," Roxanny ordered.

Detective Oliver Forrestier busied himself with various sensors. Right Whale, the big ARM cruiser, had gone up against a nameless Kzinti juggernaut, just before the fireball and blackout. There had been other ships too… but now there was nothing. "No obvious contrails," Oliver said. "The cloud is spitting neutrinos… last traces of antimatter, I guess, and diminishing. No point sources. No big ships."

"The fireball is collapsing. Like its being sucked down," Claus said uneasily.

"Well," Roxanny said, "lets go look. Weve run out of enemies, right, Tec Forrestier? The blast must have smashed them all. Friends too. So our mission is to collect data. Lift us, Claus."

Snail Darter lifted. Tec-Two Claus Raschid asked, "Just go straight on in, Roxanny?"

"Stay low, take our time. Look around. Claus, theres a hole at the center of all this. A hole in the Ringworld is a way home."

"Roxanny, what has you so cheerful?"

Roxanny Gauthier laughed boisterously. "Were alive! Isnt that enough? Look at the trail we left! We can follow it right back to the explosion. Claus, Oliver, for all we know about stasis fields, did you really believe it? Does it make sense that you can stop time and restart it? When I saw the light, I knew I was in an antimatter explosion. I thought we were dead!"

"This was a city," Oliver said. He played his instruments along the grid of streets and buildings. "Big one. Spread out, like Sydney."

"Claus, slow us down," Roxanny said. "I dont see much in the way of corpses. Where are the dead? "

Oliver guessed. "Inside, taking cover from the shock wave. Look at your displays, Roxanny. Air pressure is down and dropping. They hid from the shock wave and then—"

"Suffocated? The airs draining out." Claus wasnt stupid; he was only coming out of denial. "Weve killed the whole Ringworld. Hey—"

"Well be ten thousand years investigating the structure, learning its secrets," Roxanny said. "What are you doing, Claus?"

"Landing. I can see a survivor."

Underground, Wembleth was suffocating.

He clawed his way into the light, but the air wasnt any better.

The light was no more than broad daylight, but there was a weirdness to spinward as if half the world had been taken away, leaving only fog and chaos. Wembleth made his way to the commons, his chest heaving.

An hour ago theyd been feasting. Now there was nobody. The fires had gone out. Mouse Eaters wouldnt come outside in an emergency, and Wembleth didnt have a better answer than they did.

Something shaped vaguely like a silver vinchs egg was dropping out of the sky.

Wembleth stood up, though he nearly fainted, and waved both arms. When in doubt, ask for help. It was his normal instinct, but his fading intellect backed him up:

Here were folk with the power to fly! Tales told of such power, but these were flying in the winds of a major disaster. Anyone who could do that must know something.

News of this disaster must be carried to other peoples.

Wembleth was on his hands and knees, his vision blacking out, when two men of unknown species descended to him. They wore hard armor, like the mythical Vashneesht. They offered him a bag to crawl into.

Wembleth did.

Air hissed into the bag. He could breath.

He didnt know how to tell the Vashneesht that others needed rescuing. It never occurred to him that Vashneesht — wizards — might be the cause of a world-destroying disaster.

Gravity near a Ball World follows an inverse square law. In contrast, the Ringworld is a plane surface. Gravity does not dwindle as you rise, nor do spin gravity nor magnetic force, until the Ringworld looks less like a plane than a ribbon, from hundreds of thousands of miles high.

The Ringworld engineers embedded a lacework of superconducting cable in the Ringworld floor. The grid allows magnetic manipulation of solar flares to cause a superthermal laser effect, the Ringworld meteor defense; but it also opens the entire Ringworld to magnetic levitation.

Magnetically powered vehicles could rise to any height.

It was night when the skycycles lifted. Sixty miles high, effectively out of the atmosphere, they followed the gouge spinward. Verdant landscape became stormy, in ripples and streams of lightning-lit cloud rather than in whorl patterns. Then it was all unbroken clouds.

The terminator, the shadow of the edge of a shadow square, swept over them. A growing sliver of sun became a noonday glare. How long had it been since Louis saw a sunrise?

They crossed above a tremendous, sagging, faintly glowing tube. Horsetails of mist were flowing over the tubes flaccidities and disappearing into vacuum. Tunesmiths plug wouldnt hold forever.

Soil and rock still clung to the scrith floor. There were pools and ribbons of foamy ice, all ravaged in a radial pattern. They followed it inward toward the puncture.

The rim of the hole glittered. Maybe, maybe Tunesmiths "reweaving" system was working.

"Spacecraft," Acolyte said. "Above the hole."

There was no exhaust. The ship hovered on thrusters: a cylinder with a flattened belly, a little bigger than the tank it had left behind, but with a bulb of transparent canopy for a nose.

"Thats an ARM design, Kittycatcher Class," Louis said. "A fighter. Three crew. Theyll have seen us by now."

"Will they fire on us?"

"We must look harmless enough." Louis was trying to persuade himself.

Hologram miniatures of his two allies blurred, then became two views of a dark-skinned woman in ARM uniform. A contralto voice blared from his speaker. "Intruders, answer at once or be destroyed! You have entered a war zone!"

"Im Luis Tamasan," Louis Wu answered. "Can you hear me?"

"We hear you, Luis Tamasan. Please approach Snail Darter."

"What are your intentions?"

"We are observers for the United Nations," the woman said. "What do you know of events in this region?"

"We came to observe a puncture in the Ringworld floor."

"Your associate is a Kzin."

Louis laughed. "Acolyte is local, a Ringworld native. Im local too."

She peered at his hologram. "You look human."

"Im human. Born here. Acolyte was too, and hes Kzin."

"There are Kzinti here?"

"Archaic Kzinti, in the Great Ocean." That should rouse their curiosity.

The ARM woman sounded peevish. "We tried every reasonable frequency. Why are you communicating in a mode used by the Fleet of Worlds?"

"Puppeteers found the Ringworld and puppeteers explored it first," Louis said with a trace of chill in his voice. "My parents and Acolytes father came here with Piersons puppeteers."

"Land there at the edge."

"We came to examine the puncture. May we circle above it?"

"Land now, Ringworlds children."

Louis said, "Down, Acolyte." He let his flycycle sink.

The ARM asked, "Acolyte, do you speak Interworld?"

"Madam LE, I do," the Kzin rumbled.

"While I serve the United Nations you may address me by my rank, as Copilot or Tec, not as Legal Entity. How may I call you?"

"Acolyte, until I earn a more worthy name."

"What is your connection to the Patriarchy?"

"I hear of them from my father. We see the lights of the Fringe War."

The skycycles settled on bare scrith.

Snail Darter descended with evident caution, and touched down. An airlock opened below its rounded tip. A human shape emerged, then a second pulling a bulb of some kind through a door that was too narrow. It got through anyway.

One ARM flew to meet the flycycles while the other lowered the bulb to the desiccated turf. The bulb was a rescue pod, an inflated balloon with a few opaque bulges of life-support gear. The shadow of a walking man showed in the bulb as it rolled toward the flycycles.

Tec-First Gauthier — easily recognized through her fishbowl helmet — must have had a clear view of Hanuman riding alert in Acolytes lap. Acolyte attached a line to Hanumans pressure suit, as if the Hanging Person might scamper away and have to be caught. The pair debarked and joined Louis. Gauthier settled before them.

"I feel small," Acolyte said uneasily.

This close to the puncture, the floor was polished by the antimatter blast: featureless scrith, translucent and smooth, artificial and infinite. Louis and his companions were tiny. Louis hadnt felt it until the Kzin spoke.

"LE Acolyte, LE Luis," said Gauthier — courtesy, because Acolyte couldnt ever have been registered as a Legal Entity, nor could Luis Tamasan. " — meet Tec Oliver Forrestier and LE Wembleth. Im Tec Roxanny Gauthier." Her manner had softened.

Tec Forrestier, the second flyer, was large and pale, perhaps a Belter raised in low G. Like Gauthiers his rust-colored curly hair was cut close to his scalp. He smiled and touched gloves with the man, then the Kzin. "Were glad to find you," he said, Gauthier asked, "Can you take Wembleth for us? We dont have room for him."

"Its a three man ship," Forrestier explained.

"Whats Wembleth, then?" Louis asked. "Local?"

Wembleth had lagged behind. Rolling a balloon by walking on its bottom didnt seem to bother him, but it was slow going. When he tried to stop, the balloon kept moving; he fell over, and got up without embarrassment.

Could Wembleth hear their communicators? He wasnt speaking.

Forrestier said, "We found him where the air was disappearing. Corpses and smashed burrows all around him. Do you recognize his type?"

"His species?" Louis studied Wembleth.

Wembleth blinked back as if light hurt his eyes, but they met Louiss without a flinch. He was eight inches shorter than Louis, five feet six or a little more. He was dressed in woven cloth, trousers and a loose shirt with patch pockets, all the color of sand. His feet were bare, large, and horny, with toenails like jagged weapons. His skin was darker than Louiss, paler than Roxanny Gauthiers, and his hands and face and neck were wrinkled. Thick hair, black and white, hid most of his face. Blue scrollwork on his brow and cheeks might have been ritual tattooing, or might have been naturally evolved camouflage. He was smiling, interested, where any normal man might have cowered in terror.

"I dont know this exact species." Louis hadnt met any locals within hundreds of millions of miles, but he didnt say that. He hadnt decided how far "Luis Tamasan" had traveled. He said, "There are thousands of hominid species on the Ringworld, maybe tens of thousands, and most of them are sapient. Wembleth is about average size. Dark skins pretty common too. Teeth—" Wembleth smiled; Louis winced.

Wembleths teeth were crooked and discolored. Four were missing, leaving black gaps. Louis could feel what that must be like. Wouldnt he be constantly chewing up his tongue?

Wembleth still had three canines, though. Louis asked, "Meat eater?"

Tec Gauthier shrugged. "We gave him a standard dole brick. Theres a setting for raw meat, of course, in case we get a Kzinti prisoner. He ate some of that."

"We can feed Wembleth, then. Even if his whole ecology is dead," Louis said.

"Good! Another matter. Tell me anything you can," Oliver Forrestier said, "about that." His arm swept a circle.

"The sudden mountain range." Obvious first question, yet Louis hadnt planned an answer. He improvised: "We saw it come down. Things of this scale, Ringworld scale, even my parents never have much to say. Chiron sent us to learn more."

"Chiron?"

"He brought my father to this place. A puppeteer."

"Stet. Come here, Luis." Forrestier walked toward the puncture seventy feet away. Louis followed.

Forrestier stopped. His toes were too near the edge. From this viewpoint it was still a bottomless pit ten or fifteen miles across. Shrinking, it was shrinking. The edge was hard to focus on; it blurred and shimmered when Louis moved his head.

Forrestier asked, "Is this normal?"

"Ive never looked into a rip in the floor of the world," Louis said. "Its scary." It was barely a lie. Hed seen Fist-of-God crater… but "Luis" hadnt.

Gauthier said, "Well, it looks like its repairing itself. Does it always do that? Over the years weve seen some of those hourglass storms die out. We think those are punctures and air leakage."

Louis frowned, projecting Dont understand. He remembered a word from far away, used as if it meant magicians, but it meant protector. "Vashneesht," he said. "There are secrets we never learn."

Tec-One Gauthier said, "Oliver, get back from there! Luis, Acolyte, shall we set up a tent?"

Roxanny and Oliver lifted a bulky package out of the ships lock. They set it on the scrith and moored it with stickstrip edges. The tent inflated itself, writhing and trying to bounce, because of course the stickstrip wouldnt hold on scrith. Roxanny left Oliver to deal with that while she went back for the kitchen doc.

Oliver saw what she was doing and exploded. "LE Gauthier, are you schitzy? We cant lose that!"

"We can live without for a few hours."

"Why did you try to give away Wembleth? A Ringworld native! Hes a wonderful find!"

"Wembleth is a prize, all right. I wish we could take them both, but hes still just a local. He doesnt know enough. I want Luis Tamasan! Id take the Kzin if I could fit him in the ship, but I cant, so well question him first."

"Roxanny, hes still a Kzin!"

"Youre afraid? Hes a kid. Theyre both teen children. Both their parents were on the Ringworld before the Fleet, and the kids must have been hearing about it all their lives."

Oliver considered. "What would their parents do to get them back?"

"Maybe well find that out too, after we know everything they do." She grinned. "Ollie, did you see the look on Luiss face? Like—"

Oliver had, and his voice showed his resentment. "Like he never saw a woman before. All right, Roxanny, have it your way. Well crawl into the tent with a Kzin, and by Finagle hes the first that gets fed! But weve got way more data than we were sent for, and the trick now is to get home with it!"

The ARMs were involved with erecting the tent. Nobody was looking at Louis when Tunesmiths miniature bust popped up on his dash.

The protector said, "I urgently need to know whether my reweaving system is working. Is the hole getting smaller? How drastically must I act to save something? I need hardly warn you not to fall into the puncture."

Was Snail Darter or its mother ship eavesdropping? Even if this line were private, little glowing hologram heads would be seen. Louis said quickly, "The hole is closing. Its closing. We have company." He turned the holoscreen off.

Now Tunesmith could do no more than listen.

The tent had inflated into a tube with a big airlock, an alcove for vacuum gear, a living space, and silver walls that must hide a toilet. Gauthier inside, and Forrestier outside, assisted the rest to enter.

Acolyte carried Hanuman, but left him in his pressure suit. "The suit takes care of sanitary matters," Acolyte said. Hanuman ooked.

Gauthier had thrown back her helmet, though she didnt move to strip off her suit. Oliver had done the same. The ARMs didnt seem to be excessively distrustful. Louis and Acolyte opened their own helmets. The varying species settled themselves around a small kitchen box.

Wembleth spoke syllables Louis had never heard. A translator voice spoke from one of his pockets: "Good, this is much more room." The hairy man zipped his rescue pod open and wriggled out with a sigh of contentment.

"Wembleth makes number four in a three man ship," Forrestier explained. "We found him surrounded by the dead of some larger, hairier species, gasping like a beached fish, but on his feet and pulling himself toward us by any ruined wall the storm hadnt flung away. We had to stuff him in Mission and Weapons and shut it all off. Weve questioned him — he knows things we need — but we cant fly like that, LE Luis. We need to defend ourselves."

"Well take him someplace he can live," Louis said.

"Well find a way to moor his rescue pod to your flying thing. We dont have a suit thatll fit him."

Tec Gauthier was handing out dole bricks from the little kitchen. She made adjustments to give Acolyte a brick of drippy red, then something fruity for Hanuman. "Its the only kitchen weve got, and its the doc too. In flight, in peacetime, this tent buds out from the hull. If we cant deploy it, we barely have room to wiggle. War is hell," she said lightly. "Can I give you something to drink?"

"Surprise me," Louis said. "Tea? Juice?"

"Beer?"

"Better not. And Acolytes too young."

Acolyte growled.

Roxanny laughed. "Sore you, Luis!"

She thought he was a child! He said, "Yes, LE."

She passed out squeezebulbs: something cranberry-flavored for Louis, boullion for Acolyte and Wembleth. "You both grew up on the Ringworld. Did your fathers tell you about planets?"

"We learned physics that way," Acolyte said. "Father — Chmeee — tried to show me what a Coriolis storm is, a hurricane. Im not sure I understand."

"Id love to see Earth," Louis said. A working spacecraft! His first chance to defect since the abominable Bram had found him… no, since before that. Since hed sliced up Needles hyperdrive motor!

There had to be a way to speak to Roxanny Gauthier alone.

Her suit wasnt quite a skintight: it only hinted at a shape that made his heart turn over. A strong woman, an athlete. Her face was severe, with a square chin and a straight-edged nose. Shed be in her fifties, Louis judged, based on body language and the way Forrestier deferred to her… unless she ranked him. Her hair was a sparse black puffball; she must depilate or shave her scalp periodically.

It took Louis by surprise, after all the hominids hed met, how much he longed for the sight of a woman.

But she was asking something. "Do you know anything about a big transparent ship?"

Louis shook his head. Acolyte was less cautious. "Like a General Products ship? What would we see, a glass bubble?"

"Yah, a big glass bubble. What do you know about General Products hulls?"

"Luiss father came here in a Number Two," Acolyte said. He was giving too much detail. Hed be caught in inconsistencies, Louis feared… but Chmeee must have described Liar, which had been a Number Two, when he told his son of the first expedition.

And Acolyte was enjoying himself.

"A huge glass bubble filled with gear. Massive machines inside," Gauthier said.

Forrestier said, "Or four flames moving across the sky. Its got four fusion motors. It was stolen, maybe by your Chiron."

Louis said, "Chiron doesnt tell us everything. Or anything."

Roxanny said, "Actually it was stolen twice, first by the Kzinti, then from the Kzinti. We didnt see it reach the Ringworld, but we think its here. We want it back."

"Tell us about the Chiron expedition," Oliver ordered.

Louis improvised. "Dad says it took two years, and it was way cramped." Stick to what you know where possible — "My mother came on the first expedition. She says Lying Bastard started as a Number Two and just grew out of all proportion, bigger every time a puppeteer thought of another safety feature. In the end Lying Bastard was a big flying wing with the General Products cylinder stuck into it. The stasis field enclosed the cylinder, but they lost everything that was on the wing." All of that would be in ARM records, including Louis Wus own speculations. Theyd find Louiss description of Chiron there too.

"So when Chiron built his ship, he wedged everything inside the hull. Ive been in it, but not since I was this high, and it was already cramped—"

"We would like to talk to Chiron," Oliver said. "Where may we find him?"

Acolyte said, "Chiron has told us most explicitly that we must not tell anyone how to find him."

To Roxanny Oliver said, "Long Shot was in the hands of Kzinti. Puppeteers might find that distressing, dont you think? A puppeteer might act to get it back." He asked Louis, "Did Chirons ship have a name?"

"Paranoia," Louis said without cracking a smile.

"How is it armed?"

"Paranoia has no armaments at all," Louis said, "barring tools which may be turned to that end. Were not to speak of those."

"Where on the Ringworld did your Paranoia land? Was it near the Great Ocean, where the first expedition left Teela Brown?"

Louis hadnt decided that either. "Cant say."

"Boy, you dont seem to have anything at all to trade," Roxanny Gauthier said. "What would you like to know from us? Did Chiron tell you what questions to ask?"

"He wants to know if the Ringworld is going to heal. I can see that the ruptures sealing itself. Even so, what can you tell us about the Fringe War? Is it about to go away?"

"I doubt it," Roxanny said.

"Or is it going to get so big and violent that it shatters everything?"

"That doesnt have to happen," she said firmly.

Oliver laughed. Roxanny looked around in annoyance, and Oliver said, "Just a passing thought. How old are you, Luis?"

Louis had planned to be in his thirties, but both ARMs seemed to think he was just past puberty. For some reason this delighted him. Tanj, why not? He said, "Eighty falans and a bit."

"And a falan would be?"

"Ten rotations of the sky."

"About seventy-five days? Thirty-hour Ringworld days?" Oliver was whispering to a pocket computer, bigger than a civilian version. "Youre about twenty years old, Earth time. Im forty-six. Roxanny?"

"Im fifty-one," she said without hesitation.

"We take boosterspice, of course. It keeps us from getting old. What crossed my mind," Oliver Forrestier said, "is that this is the first human woman youve ever seen other than your mother, Luis."

Roxanny was smiling, a reluctant smile. And Louis was flushing, suddenly aware that his eyes had lingered too long on Roxanny Gauthier; that hed edged closer to her than the cramped quarters demanded; that he couldnt look at her and talk coherently. The close air must be alive with pheromones… Roxannys and Olivers too. And as Oliver was the first human male hed seen or sniffed in twenty-odd years — and no room for a shower aboard Snail Darter — it wasnt surprising if Louis felt both horny and threatened.

"Sorry," he said, and eased back by an inch.

It crossed his mind that intimidation could take many forms. They wanted something from Luis: information Louis Wu would have to make up, but still -

Roxanny laughed lightly. "Never mind. Luis, would you like to see Snail Darter? Acolyte, we cant take you aboard. Its too cramped. Luis can tell you about it afterward."

Hanumans eyes met Louiss, but he said nothing. Wembleth and Acolyte had begun a halting conversation. Wembleth found the Kzin fascinating. Louis closed his faceplate and followed the ARMs out.

The ship was awesomely cramped.

Three seats faced away from each other around a central pillar. One seat was occupied. There was a pucker next to the airlock door for the now-detached tent. A hole in the floor led to a cavity the size of a man: the Weapons and Mission Room.

Roxanny entered first. She slid into the second seat. "LE Luis Tamasan, meet Tec-Two Claus Raschid. Claus, Luis," she said. "Not quite a native."

Claus turned around and offered a hand. He was darker than Roxanny, taller than Oliver, and his arm had a long reach. "Luis, Im the pilot. Sit there."

Louis had hoped to talk to Roxanny alone, or even Oliver alone. Theyd both come along, a little too closely agreed for Louiss comfort, leaving Acolyte and Wembleth (and Hanuman) alone in the tent.

Louis slid into the third seat. He felt planes shifting, adjusting to his height and weight and the bulk of his pressure suit. Basic seating: it fit him imperfectly.

Roxanny Gauthier tapped an instruction into her chair arms, using both hands. A crash web held Louis before he could move.

The force field in a crash web would protect a passenger in a collision; it was also useful for police work.

Louis didnt react right away. How would Luis react? Frozen in panic, at least long enough for Louis to think. And then what?

"For your protection. You did say you wanted to see Earth," Roxanny said, smiling like a cat.

Oliver slid in through the airlock and then down through the hatch, into the fourth chair. The Mission and Weapons Room fitted Oliver like a tight suit.

Louis wriggled a bit; the field permitted that much. He asked, "Are we going to Earth?"

"Back to Gray Nurse, anyway," the third crewman said. "Well be there in an hour. Wed better be. Roxanny, you left the kitchen doc behind."

"We had to," she said.

"Stet, but if anything goes wrong — stet. Luis, the carrier Gray Nurse is our first stop, and people other than us will decide where you go from there. I expect thats Earth, or at least Sol system. And hey, you can tell us some things while were on route. Chiron cant stop you now. Youll be the second Ringworlder to reach human space."

"Dont go through this hole," Louis said.

All three ARMs turned their heads to look at him. Roxanny asked, "Why not?"

That was a tough one. Louis Wu was certain that Tunesmith wouldnt allow an ARM spacecraft to escape this easily. Something would block them… but why would Luis Tamasan say something so out of character?

He said, "Chmeee says he left the world through Fist-of-God. My father came through a different puncture. Neither of them saw anything like this… shimmer. Fist-of-God Mountain isnt repairing itself, is it? But this hole is."

Claus said, "So is Fist-of-God. The crater closed itself weeks ago, before we noticed. We were hoping you could tell us about that."

Tunesmith must have tested his reweaving system, Louis guessed. Luis said nothing.

Claus Raschid had something on a virtual screen. "Here we are. Luis, try to follow this. The nearest puncture we know of is a million miles away. Too far. Theyll track us across the surface. Every tanj species in the Fringe War will want us as bad as we want you, because of what we might know. But we might escape if we go through immediately, right here, and with our motors off." The ship lifted. "Here is where Gray Nurse is waiting, our mother ship, in the dark, up against the Ringworld floor—"

Below them Oliver was yelling, "Raschid! What are you playing at?"

Louis tried to yell louder. Being immobilized was driving him frantic. "Drop something first! See what happens to it!"

"Im getting us home," Raschid told Oliver. The ship eased sideways. Now it was above the puncture. "All power sources off. Luis, if we had the auxiliary fuel tank Id drop that, but I dont."

They were falling. Louis glimpsed the tent sitting alone on the scrith. Theyd be all right, he told himself; they had Hanuman to guide them. The hole expanded. It was full of stars.

Snail Darter smashed down into something that gave.

Crash webs caught his captors recoiling upward. Louis felt his brain bounce in his skull. Already in a crash web, he recovered first… still immobilized. He could hear Oliver screaming below him.

Claus shouted, "What did we hit?"

"Get us out! Get us out!" Roxanny screamed.

Reweaving system, Tunesmith had said. How strong would threads made of scrith be? Strong enough to stop a falling spacecraft? But theyd cut through the hull. The hole must be laced with them.

"The thrusters are dead," Claus said.

"Where are they?" Louis demanded.

Claus craned around to snarl at him. Louis asked, "Theyre on the bottom, arent they?" It was ancient habit: shipbuilders tended to put thruster motors where they would have put rockets. "Whatevers in that hole, mending that hole, its cutting the thrusters apart. Well sink into it. How long before it reaches the power source? What do you use for a power source? Where is it?" Babbling, he was babbling. Why hadnt the stasis field been triggered? But if that happened, they might be here forever.

Claus was slow catching up. Roxanny Gauthier said, "Midship. Its a battery. If anything cuts into it—"

The ship was indeed sinking inch by inch into the puncture. Worse, it was beginning to tip over.

Claus was staring at them, not getting it. When he did, he yelled in terror. His hands danced above the controls.

Roxanny shouted, "Wait!"

The hatch in the floor closed. Olivers yell chopped off.

A rocket motor bellowed. The cabin section detached and rose fast, wobbled, then steadied. Claus took over manually; the cabin tilted far over, fell, tilted upright again.

"You killed him!" Roxanny said. "Oliver!"

"He was sitting in the wrong place." Claus glared at Louis Wu, who was in Olivers chair; then at Roxanny. "Wasnt that you yelling, Get us out?"

The tent billowed in the exhaust as the escape pod thumped down. Recoil threw Roxanny and Claus several inches before their crash webs caught them.

Through the wall of the tent Louis could just see that Acolyte and Hanuman were spreading the rescue pod open for Wembleth to enter.

A brilliant light flared from the direction of the puncture. Then that side of the cabin blackened. Louis yelled, "Roxanny, let me loose!"

"Wait it out, Luis."

A shock wave slammed the cabin.

"Theyre dying out there! Let me loose! Claus!"

Claus said, "Here." His hand moved, and Louis was free. He rolled out of his chair and into the tiny airlock.

The tent was splayed out in fragments like an exploded balloon. The blast had scattered its contents. Wembleth and his rescue pod rolled gently past, Wembleth tumbling like clothes in an Oil Age dryer, as Louis wiggled out of the airlock.

Acolyte was trying to find his feet, falling over, trying again. Hanuman was not in sight. Wembleth must have regained his senses: he was curled in a tight ball now, still tumbling.

"Acolyte? Are you all right? Pressure okay?"

"My suit is holding pressure. Do you see Hanuman?"

"No."

Wembleth was nearest. Louis flashed his attitude jets, dropped ahead of him, and ran alongside the balloon, pushing to stop its spin. The Ringworlder tried to help. They got it stopped, though Wembleth was unbalanced… off balance because Hanuman was clinging tight to him, face to chest. Hanuman still wore his pressure suit.

"Acolyte, Ive got them both."

They walked back toward the ruined tent. Acolyte, Claus, and Roxanny joined them. Roxanny was carrying something heavy, an oblong brick she hugged to her breast.

The kitchen doc hadnt been moved. It looked unharmed.

They moored it to Louiss flycycle, and moored Wembleths rescue pod to Acolytes. The ARMs gave orders as if they were superior officers. Louis asked at one point, "Any reason to take your escape vehicle? I dont think flycycle motors are up to that."

"Leave it," Roxanny said. "Its dead."

The explosion of the fighter ships battery might have damaged Tunesmiths reweaving system, Louis thought. Tunesmith should be told… but he was being told, by voice and camera feeds. He just couldnt answer, and that was fine with Louis.