by Larry Niven
"We are under attack," Speaker told him. "Some agency is flying our vehicles by remote control. Have you suggestions?"
You couldn't tell what Nessus was thinking. His lips, twice too many, loose and broad and knobbed to serve as fingers, moved continually but without meaning. Would the puppeteer be able to help? Or would he panic?
"Turn your intercoms about to give me a view of your path. Are either of you hurt?"
"No, but we are stuck," said Louis. "We can't jump. We're too high, moving too fast. Were headed straight for the Civic Center."
"For what?"
"The cluster of lighted buildings. Remember?"
"Yes." The puppeteer seemed to consider. "A bandit signal must be overriding the signals from your instruments. Speaker, I want readings from your dashboard."
Speaker read off, while he and Louis drew ever closer to the lights of the central city. At one point Louis interrupted. "We're passing that patch of suburbia with the street lights."
"Are they indeed street lights?"
"Yes and no. All the oval doors of the houses glow bright orange. It's peculiar. I think it's honest street lighting, but the power's been dimmed and cooled by time."
"I concur," said Speaker-To-Animals.
"I hate to nag, but we're getting closer. I think we're headed for the big building in the middle."
"I see it. The double cone with lights only in the top half."
"That's the one."
"Louis, let us try to interfere with the bandit signal. Slave your 'cycle to mine."
Louis activated the slave circuit.
His 'cycle slammed hard up against him, as if he'd been booted in the butt by a giant foot. An instant later the power cut off entirely.
Crash balloons exploded before and behind him. They were shaped balloons, and they interlocked around him like a pair of clasped hands. Louis could not so much as move his hands or turn his head.
He was falling.
"I'm falling," he reported. His hand, pressed against the dashboard by the balloons, still touched the slave circuit. Louis waited another moment, still hoping the slave circuit would take hold. But the beehive houses were coming too close. Louis shifted back to manual.
Nothing happened. He was still falling.
With a calm that was sheer braggadocio, Louis said, "Speaker, don't try the slave circuit. It doesn't work." And because they could see his face, he waited with his face immobile and his eyes open. Waited for the Ringworld to slap him dead.
Deceleration came suddenly, pushing hard upward on the cycle. The 'cycle turned over, leaving Louis Wu head down under five gees of pull.
He fainted.
When he came to, he was still head down, held by the pressure of the crash balloons. His head was pounding. He saw a hazy crazy vision of the Puppet Master cursing and trying to get his strings. untangled, while, the puppet Louis Wu dangled head down over the stage.
* * *
The floating building was short and wide and ornate. Its lower half was an inverted cone. As the flycycles approached it, a horizontal slit slid open and swallowed them.
They were passing into the dark interior when Speaker's flycycle, which had been edging closer to Louiss, quietly turned over. Balloons exploded around Speaker before he could fall. Louis scowled in sour satisfaction. He had been miserable long enough to appreciate the company.
Nessus was saying, "Your inverted attitude implies that you are being supported by fields electromagnetic in nature. Such fields would support metal but not protoplasm, with the result …"
Louis wriggled against his confinement; but not too hard. He would fall if he wriggled free of the balloons. Behind him the door slid shut, just faster than Louis's eyes could adjust to the dark. He saw nothing of the interior. He couldn't guess how far down the floor might be.
He heard Nessus saying, "Can you reach it with your hand?"
And Speaker, "Yes, if I can push between the … Yowrr! You were right. The casing is hot."
"Then your motor has been burnt out. Your flycycles are inert, dead."
"Fortunate that my saddle is shielded from the heat."
"We can hardly be surprised if the Ringworlders were adept at harnessing electromagnetic forces. So many other tools were denied them: hyperdrive, thrusters, induced gravity …"
Louis had been straining to see something, anything. He could turn his head, slowly, his cheek scraping against the balloon surface; but there was no light anywhere.
Moving his arms against the pressure, he felt across the dashboard until he thought he had found the headlight switch. Why he expected it to work, he could not have said.
The beams went out tight and white, and bounced dimly back from a distant curved wall.
A dozen vehicles hung about him, all at the same level. There were packages no larger than a racing jet backpack, and others as large as flying cars. There was even a kind of flying track with a transparent hull.
Within the maze of floating junk, a flycycle held Speaker-To-Animals upside down. The kzin's bald head and hairy orange mask protruded below the shaped crash balloons; and one clawed hand had been pushed forcefully out to touch the side of the 'cycle.
"Good," said Nessus. "Light. I was about to suggest that. Do you both understand the implication? Every electrical and electromagnetic circuit in your vehicle has been burnt out, provided it was working when you were attacked. Speaker's vehicle, and presumably yours, Louis, was attacked again as you entered the building."
"Which is pretty clearly a prison," Louis forced out. His head felt like a water balloon being filled too full, and he had trouble speaking. But he couldn't let the others do all the work even if the work was only speculating on alien technology while hanging head down.
"And if it's a prison," he went on, "then why isn't there a third zap gun in here with us? In case we should happen to have working weapons. Which we do."
"There unquestionably is one," said Nessus. "Your headlamps prove that the third zap gun is not working. The zap guns are clearly automatic; otherwise someone would be guarding you. It should be safe for Speaker to use the Slaver digging tool."
"That's good news," Louis said. "Except that I've been looking around -"
He and Speaker were floating upside down in an airborne Sargasso Sea. Of three archaic flying jet packs, one was still occupied. The skeleton was small but human. Not a trace of skin remained on the white bones. The clothing must have been good, for shreds of it still survived: brightly colored rags, including a tattered yellow cloak that hung straight down from the point of the flyer's jaw.
The other packs were empty. But the bones had to be somewhere … Louis forced his head back, back …
The basement of the police building was a wide, dim, conical pit. Around the wall were concentric rings of cells. The doors were trap doors above the cells. There were radial stairways leading down to the pit at the apex. In and around the pit were the bones Louis was searching for, shining dimly back at him from far below.
He couldn't wonder that one man in a ruined flying pack had been afraid to turn himself loose. But others, trapped here in cars and backpacks, had preferred the long fall to death by thirst.
Louis said, "I don't see what Speaker is supposed to use the Slaver disintegrator on."
"I have been thinking about that very seriously."
"It he blows a hole in the wall, it doesn't help us. Likewise the ceiling, which he can't reach anyway. If he hits the generator for the field holding us here, we fall ninety feet to the floor. But if he doesn't, we'll be here until we starve, or until we give up and turn ourselves loose. Then we fall ninety feet to the floor."
"Yes."
"That's all? Just yes?"
"I need more data. Will one of you please describe what you see around you? I see only part of a curved wall."
They took turns describing the conical cell block, what they could see of it in the dim, point-source light. Speaker turned on his own lights, and that helped.
&nb
sp; But when Louis ran out of things to say, he was still trapped, upside down, without food or water, hanging above a lethal drop.
Louis felt a bubbling scream somewhere in him, buried deep and well under control, but rising. Soon it would be near the surface …
And he wondered if Nessus would leave them.
That was bad. It was a question with an obvious answer. There was every reason why the puppeteer should leave, and no reason why he should not.
Unless he still hoped to find civilized natives here.
"The floating vehicles and the age of the skeletons both indicate that there is nobody tending the machinery of the cell block," Speaker speculated. "The fields that trapped us must have collected a few vehicles after the city was deserted; but then there were no more vehicles on the Ringworld. So the machines still work, because nothing has strained their powers in so long a time."
"That may be so," said Nessus. "But someone is monitoring our conversation."
Louis felt his ears prick up. He saw Speaker's fan out.
"It must have required excellent technique to tap a closed beam. One wonders if the eavesdropper has a translator."
"What can you tell about him?"
"Only his direction. The source of the interference is your own present whereabouts. Perhaps the eavesdropper is above you."
Reflexively Louis tried to look up. Not a prayer. He was head down, with two crash balloons and the flycycle between him and the ceiling.
"We've found the Ringworld civilization," he said aloud.
"Perhaps. I think a civilized being could have repaired the third zap gun, as you called it. But the main thing … let me think."
And the puppeteer went off into Beethoven, or the Beatles, or something classical-sounding. For all Louis could tell he was making it up as he went along.
And when he said let me think, he meant it. The whistling went on and on. Louis was getting thirsty. And hungry. And his head was pounding.
He had given up hope, several separate times, when the puppet= came on again. "I would have preferred to use the Slaver disintegrator, but it is not to be. Louis, you will have to do it; you are primate-descended, better than Speaker at climbing. You will secure the -"
"Climbing?"
"When I finish you may ask questions, Louis. Secure the flashlight-laser from wherever you put it. Use the beam to puncture the balloon in front of you. You will have to snatch at its fabric as you fall. Use it to climb over the flycycle until you are balanced on top. Then -"
"You're out of your mind."
"Let me finish, Louis. The purpose of all this activity is to destroy the zap gun, as you called it. Probably there are two zap guns. One is over the door you entered by, or under it. The other may be anywhere. Your only clue may be that it looks like the first zap gun."
"Sure, and it may not. Never mind that. How do you expect me to grab at the fabric of an exploding balloon fast enough to — No. I can't."
"Louis. How can I reach you if a weapon waits to burn out my machinery?"
"I don't know."
"Do you expect Speaker to do the climbing?"
"Can't cats climb?"
Speaker said, "My ancestors were plains cats, Louis. My burnt hand is healing slowly. I cannot climb. In any case, the leaf-eater's proposition is insane. Surely you see that he is merely looking for an excuse to desert us."
Louis saw. Perhaps he let the fear show.
"I will not leave you yet," Nessus said. "I will wait. Perhaps you will conceive a better plan. Perhaps the eavesdropper will show himself. I will wait."
* * *
Louis Wu, wedged upside down and motionless between two shaped balloons, naturally found it difficuk to measure time. Nothing changed. Nothing moved. He could hear Nessus whistling in the distance; but nothing else seemed to be happening.
Eventually Louis started counting his own heartbeats. Seventy-two to the minute, he figured.
Precisely ten minutes later he was heard to say, "Seventy-two. One. What am I doing?"
"Were you speaking to me, Louis?"
"Tanjit! Speaker, I can't take this. I'd rather die now than go crazy first." He began forcing his arms down.
"I command, Louis, under combat conditions. I order you to remain calm, and wait."
"Sorry." Louis forced his arms down, relax, jerk down, relax. There it was: his belt. His hand was too far forward. He forced his elbow back, relax, jerk back …
"What the puppeteer suggests is suicide, Louis."
"Maybe." He had it: the flashlight-laser. Two more jerks freed it from his belt and pointed it forward; he would burn into the dashboard but would not burn himself.
He fired.
The balloon collapsed slowly. As it did, the one at his back pushed him forward into the dashboard. Under the lighter pressure, it was easy to push the fiashligbt-laser into his belt and to clutch two handfuls of wrinkling, collapsing fabric.
He was also sliding out of his seat. Faster, faster — He gripped with manic force, and when he turned over, falling, his hands did not slip on the fabric. He hung by his hands beneath his flycycle, with a ninety foot drop below and -
"Speaker!"
"Here I am, Louis. I have secured my own weapon. Shall I pop the other balloon for you?"
"Yes!" It was right across his path, blocking him entirely.
The balloon did not collapse. One side of it puffed dust for two seconds, then disappeared in a great puff of air. Speaker had zapped it with one beam of the disintegrator.
"Finagle knows how you can aim that thing," Louis wheezed. He began to climb.
It was easy going while the fabric held out. Translate: Despite the hours hed spent with blood flowing to his brain, Louis managed not to let go. But the fabric ended in the vicinity of the foot throttle; and the 'cycle had rolled half over with his weight, so that he still hung from underneath.
He pulled himself close against the 'cycle, braced himself with his knees. He began to rock.
Speaker-To-Animals was making curious sounds.
The cycle rocked back and forth, further with each swing. Louis assumed, because he had to, that most of the metal was in the belly of the 'cycle. Otherwise the 'cycle would roll, and wherever he placed himself Louis would be underneath, and therefore Nessus would not have made the suggestion.
The 'cycle rolled far. Louis, nauseated, fought the urge to vomit. If his breathing passages got clogged now, it was all over.
The 'cycle rolled back, and over, and was precisely upside down. Louis lunged across the underside and snatched at the other end of the collapsed balloon. And had it.
The 'cycle continued its roll. Louis was flattened chestdown across the belly of the machine. He waited, clinging.
The inert hulk paused, hesitated, rolled back. His vestibular canals spun, and Louis lost — what? Yesterday's late lunch? He lost it explosively, in great agonizing heaves, across the metal and across his sleeve; but he didn't shift his position more than an inch.
The flycycle continued to heave like the sea. But Louis was anchored. Presently he dared to look up.
A woman was watching him.
She seemed to be entirely bald. Her face reminded Louis of the wire-sculpture in the banquet hall of the Heaven tower. The features, and the expression. She was as calm as a goddess or a dead woman. And he wanted to blush, or hide, or disappear.
Instead he said, "Speaker, we're being watched. Relay to Nessus."
"A minute, Louis. I am discomposed. I made the mistake of watching you climb."
"Okay. She's — I thought she was bald, but she isn't. Theres a fringe of hairbearing scalp that crosses over her ears and meets at the base of her skull. She wears the hair long, more than shoulder length." He did not say that her hair was rich and dark falling past one shoulder as she bent slightly forward to watch Louis Wu, nor that her skull was finely and delicately shaped, nor that her eyes seemed to spear him like a martini olive. "I think she's an Engineer; she either belongs to the same race or follows
the same customs. Have you got that?"
"Yes. How can you climb so? It seemed that you defied gravity. What are you, Louis?"
Clutching himself to his dead flycycle, Louis laughed. It seemed to take all his strength. "You're a Kdaptist," he said. "Admit it."
"I was raised so, but the teachings did not take."
"Sure they didn't. Have you got Nessus?"
"Yes. I used the siren."
"Relay this. She's about twenty feet from me. She's watching me like a snake. I don't mean she's intensely interested in me; I mean she's not interested in anything else at all. She blinks, but she never looks away.
"She's sitting in a kind of booth. There used to be glass or something in three of the walls, but that's gone, leaving not much more than some stairs and a platform. She's sitting with her legs over the edge. It must have been a way of watching the prisoners.
"She's dressed in … well, I can't say I go for the style. Knee-length and elbow-length overalls, ballooning out -" But aliens wouldn't be interested in that. "The fabric is artificial, obviously, and either it's new or it's self-cleaning and very durable. She -" Louis interrupted himself, because the girl had said something.
He waited. She repeated it, whatever it was; a short sentence.
Then she stood gracefully and went up the stairs.
"She's gone," said Louis. "Probably lost interest."
"Perhaps she went back to her listening devices."
"Probably right." If there was an eavesdropper in the building, Occam's Razor said it was her.
"Nessus asks you to focus your flashlight-laser to low and wide, and to be seen using it for lighting when next the woman appears. I am not to show the Slaver weapon. The woman could probably kill us both by turning off a switch. She must not see us with weapons."
"Then how can we get rid of the zap guns?"
A moment before Speaker relayed the answer. "We do not. Nessus says that he will try something else. He is coming here."