by Larry Niven
"The airs draining out of the Ringworld."
"That would be… the end of everything?"
"Yah. Starting on the far side. We might have days, but only because the Ringworld is so endlessly big. I have no idea what Tunesmith thinks hes doing."
"What is that massive structure? Ive seen it—"
Hanuman rejoined them. "That is a meteor plug, largest version. Of course it was never tested."
It was the shape of an aspirin tablet and roughly the size of the Twin Peaks arcology or a small mountain, still small compared to the puncture in the Ringworld. Louis said, "I remember. It was in one of the caverns. He set it moving here on big stacks of float plates."
They watched it slide into the hole in the floor and fall, guided by magnetic fields toward the base of the linear launcher. Tunesmith was at the edge, watching. Louis and Acolyte went to join him.
Forty miles from the roof to the floor of the Repair Center ran the loops of the linear launcher. It was way overbuilt for something as small as Hot Needle of Inquiry. It would better accommodate something like this half-mile-wide package of Tunesmiths. The launchers bottom sat on an array of float plates, and that was moving to adjust its aim.
The package was near the bottom now, still falling, but slowing.
Tunesmith saw them watching. Immediately he hustled them away from the hole in the floor.
Lightning roared at their backs. Louis turned to see something tremendous flash past, out through the crater in Mons Olympus and gone.
Acolytes ears were curled into tight knots. Hanuman lifted his hands from his ears and said something inaudible. Louis couldnt hear anything. His ears still held the roar and agony of that lightning blast.
Louis didnt lose his deafness for some time. Acolyte recovered much faster. Louis could see the Kzin discussing… whatever… with Tunesmith and Hanuman while they all followed the action in a wall display of the Meteor Defense Room. The Hindmost remained in footstool mode.
Louis could only watch.
Tunesmiths meteor-plug package drifted toward the sun. Needle had been launched at a tenth of lightspeed; the launch system was capable of that. But over such a distance the packages fall seemed sluggish.
In a zoom window the puncture showed as a black dot on landscape that looked lunar: clear and sharp and barren of waters silver or the dark gray-green of life. Louis guessed the puncture was sixty to seventy miles across. A ring of fog surrounded it, bigger than the Earth and still growing.
The Ringworld was not yet aware of its death. Air and water would flow into the hole and out into vacuum, but first it all had to move… from up to three hundred million miles around each arc before the shock could reach the Ringworlds far side, the Great Ocean, here. Not much would be lost in a hundred and sixty minutes, while Tunesmiths package crossed the Ringworlds diameter. Even the Other Ocean wouldnt have begun to boil yet.
Hanuman wandered over. He said — loudly, spitting his consonants; it was fun to watch his lips — "I have been in this state for less than a falan. I still cannot grasp the scale of things. I did not grow up in a universe fifty billion falans old, on a ring spinning around one fleck of light among ten-to-the-twentieth of flecks. There were not that many of anything! My world was small, cozy, easily grasped."
"You get used to it," Louis said. He could barely hear himself. "Hanuman, what is that? What can it do? Were losing our atmosphere!"
"I know little."
"Share it with me," Louis demanded.
"Two bright minds with similar goals will solve problems in similar ways. The Vampire protector Bram saw a need to plug meteor holes. His first meteor plugs were small, but his mass driver under Mons Olympus is hundreds of falans old and hugely overbuilt. The Fist-of-God meteoroid impact must have frightened Bram witless.
"Tunesmith builds bigger yet. That package is his biggest effort." Hanuman was constantly in motion, bouncing around Louis as he spoke, arms swinging. "We shall see it in action. Tunesmith wants us to observe on site. If there is partial failure, then we must see what must be redesigned."
"This double-X-large meteor patch, how does it work?"
"I would be guessing."
"Its never been tested?"
"Tested when? You were stored in the doc for less than a falan. Tunesmith made and trained four Hanging People protectors, built a nanotech factory to make bigger meteor plugs, monitored the Fringe War, designed several probe ships, built a stepping-disk factory, redesigned your Hot Needle of—"
"Hes been busy?"
"Hes been crazy as a stingbug hive city! And if the plug doesnt work, its all for nothing."
"Do you have children?"
"Yes, and they have children. Since Tunesmith made me, Ive not had the chance to count them, nor even to sniff them. Of course they are all forfeit to Tunesmiths schemes and the Fringe War."
"Arent we all. Should Tunesmith have taken such a risk?"
"How should I judge?" Hanumans frantic dance, the hands pounding his chest, would have been an uncontrollable rage in any human. "Tunesmith implies that the greatest risk was not to act. Louis, how can you remain so still?"
"Fifty years… two hundred falans of yoga. Ill teach you."
"I must act," Hanuman said, "but not because to be still is wrong. It may be that way with Tunesmith. How can I know? I am enraged with no target."
The suns gravity was bending the packages course minutely.
Tunesmith and Acolyte walked over. Tunesmith asked, "Louis, do you have your hearing back? Have you rested?"
"I slept. Where did you land Long Shot?"
"Why would I tell you that?" Tunesmith waved it off. "You and Acolyte and Hanuman must observe my plug in action. Has Hanuman told you anything?"
"Its a double-X-large-size meteor plug."
"Good. I have a stepping disk in place—"
"You saw this coming," Louis said.
"I did."
"Could you have stopped it?"
"How?"
"Dont steal Long Shot?"
"I need to understand the Quantum II hyperdrive. Louis, you must see that the Fringe War would never have stayed in the comets. These Ball World species covet the technology that made the Ringworld. It isnt the Ringworld they want to preserve. They want the knowledge, and to keep it from each other."
Louis nodded. It wasnt a new thought. "Scrith armor. Cheap fusion plants."
"Trivia," Tunesmith said. "The Ringworld engineers needed motors to spin this structure up. They must have confined a hydrogen mass equivalent to a dozen gas giant Ball Worlds, then fed it all through force fields arrayed to act as hydrogen fusion motors. Your Ball World bandits dont have decent magnetic control, and what they have wont scale up. They might learn something by studying our motors on the rim wall. They would study the Ringworld. They need not preserve it. Am I talking sense?"
"Maybe."
"Louis, I want you in place to observe the meteor patch as it deploys."
"Tunesmith, it bothers me to be expendable."
"I dont use the word, Louis. I dont use the concept. All life dies, all life resists dying. I would not put you in unneeded danger."
"Interesting word."
"I have a stepping disk in place from which you may observe. A sight not to be missed. Hanuman will go. Will you? Acolyte, will you go? Or will you rest here in comfort to learn if all we know has been destroyed?"
Acolyte looked to Louis.
Louis threw up his hands. "Stet. You want us in pressure suits?"
"With all my heart," Tunesmith said. "Use full gear."
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 wi
th 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.
CHAPTER 10
A Tale to Tell
They woke, they breakfasted, they returned to the workstation under Olympus where Tunesmith was waiting.
Tunesmith had added to their gear. The new gear included two flycycles.
Nessus and his motley crew had carried four flycycles: flying structures built something like a dumbbell with a seat mounted between
the weights. Theyd all been ruined on that first voyage. These two must have been modeled on the wreckage; but they were longer, each with two seats and a big luggage rack.
Louis inspected one of the vehicles. The kitchen converter would store in the luggage rack or swing out. Mounts on the dash carried a flashlight laser and some other tools. Nessuss team had reached the Ringworld with gear similar to this, some of puppeteer make, some purchased off shelves in human space.
"I reworked the sonic fold too," Tunesmith said. "Orbiting Stepping-Disk Eight will be almost in place, Hanuman. You can take it from here."
"Stet." To Acolyte and Louis, Hanuman said, "Get into your pressure gear, then stow your baggage. Well push the flycycles through first."
"Wheres the Hindmost?" Louis asked.
"Hes still in a depressed state," said Tunesmith. "That worries me. He may be suffering a chemical imbalance. Ill put him in the doc after youre gone."
Louis didnt comment. They geared up and went.
And out into free fall with the Ringworld blazing below. The Kzin, the protector, Louis, and two flycycles drifted apart. Riding lights flashed on the flycycles.
Orbiting Stepping-Disk Eight had drifted in the night, twenty degrees, thirty-three million miles. Louis was looking almost straight down into a black hole with a glitter at the rim, in a quasi-lunar landscape marked with radial streamlines and glittering threads of frozen riverbed. A torus the size of a mountain range, glowing ruby from within and beginning to sag, was its border. It looked like God had dropped one of his toys. A plane of white cloud surrounded the torus, bigger than worlds.
To antispin, where cloud cover became patchy, a white scratch ran across the land.
Louis pointed it out. "A ship dug that gouge. Well find it at the antispin end, the far end. I dont see it yet, so itll be small. Hanuman, shall we start decelerating?"
"Yes. Board a flycycle, Ill take the other, Acolyte rides with whom he will. Acolyte?"
"With you," Acolyte said.
"Stet. Keep your altitude until your relative velocity is low, Louis. The sonic fold wont take more than a few times sonic speed. Ill keep you in sight. Guide us down to the ship."