by Larry Niven
Against hyperdrive the kzinti hadn't a prayer.
Later, the puppeteers had come to set up trading posts in human space …
Man had been very lucky. Three times he had met races technologically superior to him. The kzinti would have crushed him without the Outsider hyperdrive. The Outsiders, again, were clearly his superiors; but they wanted nothing that man could give them, except supply bases and information, and these they could buy. In any case the Outsiders, fragile beings of Helium II metabolism, were too vulnerable to heat and gravity to make good warriors. And the puppeteers, powerful beyond dreams, were too cowardly.
Who had built the Ringworld? And … were they warriors?
Months later, Louis was to see Speaker's lie as his personal turning point. He might have backed out then — on Teela's behalf, of course. The Ringworld was terrifying enough as an abstraction in numbers. To think of approaching it in a spacecraft, of landing on it …
But Louis had seen the kzin in terror of the puppeteers' flying worlds. Speakees lie was a magnificent act of courage. Could Louis show himself a coward now?
He sat down and turned to face the glowing projection; and as his eyes brushed Teela he silently cursed her for an idiot. Her face was alive with wonder and delight. She was as eager as the kzin pretended to be. Was she too stupid to be afraid?
There was an atmopshere on the ring's inner side. Spectroanalysis showed the air to be as thick as Earth's, and of approximately the same composition: definitely breathable to man and kzin and puppeteer. What kept it from blowing away was a thing to be guessed at. They would have to go and look.
In the system of the G2 sun there was nothing at all but the ring itself. No planets, no asteroids, no comets.
"They cleaned it out," said Louis. "They didn't want anything to hit the ring."
"Naturally," said the puppeteer with silver curls. "If something did strike the ring, it would strike at a minimum of 770 miles per second, the speed of rotation of the ring itself. No matter how strong the material of the ring, there would always be the danger of an object missing the outer surface and crossing the sun to strike the unprotected, inhabited inner surface."
The sun itself was a yellow dwarf somewhat cooler than Sol and a touch smaller. "We will need heat suits on the ring," said the kzin — rubbing it in, Louis thought.
"No," said Chiron. "The temperature of the inner surface is quite tolerable, to all of our species."
"How would you know that?"
"The frequency of the infrared radiation emitted by the outer surface -"
"You see me exposed as a fool."
"Not at all. We have been studying the ring since its discovery, while you have had a few eights of minutes. The infrared frequency indicates an average temperature of 290 degrees absolute, which of course applies to the inner as well as the outer surface of the ring. For you this will be some ten degrees warmer than optimum, Speaker-To-Animals. For Louis and Teela it is optimum.
"Do not let our attention to details mislead or frighten you," Chiron added. "We would not permit a landing unless the ring engineers themselves insisted. We merely wish you to be ready for any eventuality."
"You don't have any detail of surface formations?"
"Unfortunately, no. The resolving power of our instruments is insufficient."
"We can do some guessing," said Teela. "The thirty hour day-night cycle, for instance. Their original world must have turned that fast. Do you suppose that's their original system?"
"We assume that it is, since they apparently did not have hyperdrive," said Chiron. "But presumably they could have moved their world to another system, using our own technique."
"And should have," the kzin rumbled, "rather than destroy their own system in the course of building their ring. I think we will find their own system somewhere nearby, as denuded of worlds as this one. They would have used terraforming techniques to settle all of the worlds of their own system, before adapting this more desperate expedient."
Teela said, "Desperate?"
"Then, when they had finished building their ring around the sun, they would have been forced to move all their worlds into this system to transfer their populations."
"Maybe not," said Louis. "They might have used big STL ships to settle their ring if it was close enough to their own system."
"Why desperate?"
They looked at her.
"I would have thought they built the ring for — for-" Teela floundered. "Because they wanted to."
"For kicks? For scenery? Finagles fist! Teela, think of the resources they'd have had to divert. Remember, they must have had a hell of a population problem. By the time they needed the ring for living room, they probably couldn't afford to build it. They built it anyway, because they needed it."
"Mmm," said Teela, looking puzzled.
"Nessus returns," said Chiron. Without another word the puppeteer turned and trotted away into the park.
CHAPTER 7 — Stepping Discs
"That was rude," said Teela.
"Chiron doesn't want to meet Nessus. Didn't I tell you? They think Nessus is — crazy."
"They're all crazy."
"Well, they don't think so, but that doesn't make you wrong. Still want to go?"
Teela's answer was the same uncomprehending look she'd given him when he tried to explain whiplash of the heart. "You still want to go," Louis confirmed sadly.
"Sure. Who wouldn't? What are the puppeteers afraid of?"
"I understand that," said Speaker-To-Animals. "The puppeteers are cowards. But I fail to see why they insist on knowing more than they do. Louis, they have already passed the ringed sun, traveling at nearly lightspeed. Those who built the ring assuredly did not have faster-than-light travel. Thus they can be no danger to the puppeteers, now or ever. I fail to understand our role in this matter."
"It figures."
"Must I take that as an insult?"
"No, of course not. It's just that we keep running up against population problems. Why should you understand?"
"Quite so. Explain, if you please."
Louis had been scanning the tame jungle for a glimpse of Nessus. "Nessus could probably tell this better. Too bad. Okay, imagine a trillion puppeteers on this world. Can you do it?"
"I can smell them individually. The very concept makes me itch."
"Now imagine them on the Ringworld. Better, yes?"
"Uurr. Yes. With more than eight-to-the-seventh-power times as much room … But still I fail to understimd. Do you suppose the puppeteers plan conquest? But how would they transfer themselves to the ring afterward? They do not trust spacecraft."
"I don't know. They don't make war, either. That's not the point. The point is, is the Ringworld safe to live on?"
"Urrr."
"You see? Maybe they're thinking of building their own Ringworlds. Maybe they expect to find an empty one, out there in the Clouds of Magellan. Not an unreasonable hope, by the way. But it doesn't matter. They have to know if it's safe before they do anything."
"Here comes Nessus." Teela stood up and moved to the invisible wall. "He looks drunk. Do puppeteers get drunk?"
Nessus wasn't trotting. He came tippy-toe, circling a four-foot chrome-yellow feather with exaggerated wariness, moving one foot at a time, while his flat heads darted this way and that. He had almost reached the lecture dome when something like a large black butterfly settled on his rump. Nessus screamed like a woman, leapt forward as if clearing a high fence. He landed rolling. When he stopped rolling he remained curled into a ball, with his back arched and his legs folded and his heads and necks tucked between his forelegs.
Louis was running. "Depressive cycle," he shouted over his shoulder. By luck and memory he found the entrance in the invisible dome. He darted out into the park.
All the flowers smelled like puppeteer. (If all the life of the puppeteer world had the same chemical basis, how could Nessus take nourishment from warm carrot juice?) Louis followed a right-angle zigzag of manicur
ed dusty orange hedge and came upon the puppeteer.
He knelt beside him. "It's Louis," he said. "You're safe." He reached gently into the tangled mop over the puppeteces skull and scratched gently. The puppeteer jerked at the touch, then settled down.
This was a bad one. No need to make the puppeteer face the world just yet. Louis asked, "Was that thing dangerous? The one that landed on you."
"That? No." The contralto voice was muffled, but beaufifully pure, and without inflection. "It was only a flower-sniffer."
"How did it go with those-who-lead?"
Nessus winced. "I won."
"Fine. What did you win?"
"My right to breed, and a set of mates."
"Is that what has you so scared?" It wasn't unlikely, Louis thought Nessus could be the counterpart to a male black widow spider, doomed by love. Then again, he might be a nervous virgin … of either sex, or of any sex …
The puppeteer said, "I might have failed, Louis. I faced them down. I bluffed them."
"Go on." Louis was aware that Teela and Speaker-To-Animals had joined them. He continued scratching gently in Nessus's mane. Nessus had not moved.
The muffled, infiectionless contralto voice said, "Those-who-lead offered me the legal right to reproduce my kind if I survive the voyage we must make. But this was not enough. To become a parent I need mates. Who will willingly mate with a straggly-maned maniac?
"It was necessary to bluff. Find me a mate, I told them, or I will withdraw from the voyage. If I withdraw, so will the kzin, I said. They were enraged."
"I can believe that. You must have been in the manic state."
"I worked myself up to it. I threatened them with ruin to their plans, and they capitulated. Some selfless volunteer, I said, must agree to mate with me if i return from the ring."
"Beautiful. Nice going. Did you get volunteers?"
"One of our sexes is … property. Nonsentient; stupid. I needed only one volunteer. Those-who-lead -"
Teela broke in. "Why don't you just say leaders?"
"I had tried to translate into your terms," said the puppeteer. "A more accurate translation of the term would be, those-who-lead-from-behind. There is a selected chairman or speaker-for-all or … the accurate translation of his title is Hindmost.
"It was the Hindmost who accepted me as his mate. He said that he would not ask another to so sacrifice his self-respect."
Louis whistled. "That's something. Go ahead and cringe, you deserve it. Better to be scared now, now that it's all over."
Nessus stirred, relaxing somewhat.
"That pronoun," said Louis. "It bugs me. Either I should be calling you she, or I should be calling the Hindmost she."
"This is indelicate of you, Louis. One does not discuss sex with an alien race." A head emerged from between Nessus's legs and focused, disapproving. "You and Teela would not mate in my sight, would you?"
"Oddly enough, the subject did come up once, and Teela said -"
"I am offended," the puppeteer stated.
"Why?" asked Teela. The puppeteer's exposed head dived for cover. "Oh, come out of there! I won't hurt you."
"Truly?"
"Truly. I mean honest. I think you're cute."
The puppeteer unrolled completely. "Did I hear you call me cute?"
"Yeah." She looked up at the orange wall of Speaker-To-Aninials and, "You too," she said generously.
"I do not mean to give offense," said the kzin. "But do not ever say that again. Ever."
Teela looked puzzled.
* * *
There was a dusty orange hedge, ten feet tall and perfectly straight, equipped with cobalt blue tentacles that hung limp. From the look of them, the hedge had once been carnivorous. It was the border to the park; and Nessus led his little group toward it.
Louis was expecting a gap in the hedge. He was unprepared when Nessus walked straight into it. The hedge parted for the puppeteer and closed after him.
They followed.
They walked out from under a sky-blue sky; but when the hedge had dosed after them, the sky was black and white. Against the black sky of perpetual night, drifting clouds blazed white in the light cast upon their underbellies by miles of city. For the city was there, looming over them.
At first glance it differed from Earthly cities only in degree. The buildings were thicker, blockier, more uniform; and they were higher, terribly high, so that the sky was all lighted windows and lighted balconies with straight hairline cracks of darkness marking the zenith. Here were the right angles denied to puppeteer furniture; here on the buildings where a right angle was far too big to bash a careless knee.
But why had the city not loomed similarly over the park? On Earth there were few buildings more than a mile high. Here, none were less. Louis guessed at light-bending fields around the park's borders. He never got around to asking. It was the least of the miracles of the puppeteer world.
"Our vehicle is at the other end of the island," said Nessus. "We can be there in a minute or less, using the stepping discs. I will show you."
"You feel all right now?"
"Yes, Teela. As Louis says, the worst is over." The puppeteer pranced lightly ahead of them. "The Hindmost is my love. I need only return from the Ringworld."
The path was soft. To the eye it was concrete set with iridescent particles, but to the feet it was damp, spongy soil. Presently, after walking a very long block, they came to an intersection. "We must go this way," said Nessus, nodding ahead of him. "Do not step on the first disc. Follow me."
At the center of the intersection was a large blue rectangle. Four blue discs surrounded the rectangle, one at the mouth of each walk. "You may step on the rectangle if you wish," said Nessus, "but not on inappropriate discs. Follow me." He circled the nearest disc, crossed the intersection, trotted onto the disc on the opposite side, and vanished.
For a stunned moment nobody moved. Then Teela yelled like a banshee and ran at the disc. And was gone.
Speaker-To-Animals snarled and leapt. No tiger could have aimed as accurately. Then Louis was alone.
"By the Mist Demons," he said wonderingly. "They've got open transfer booths."
And he walked forward.
He was standing on a square at the center of the next intersection, between Nessus and Speaker. "Your mate ran ahead," said Nessus. "I hope she will wait for us."
The puppeteer walked off the rectangle in the direction he was facing. Three paces brought him to a disc. And he was gone.
"What a layout!" Louis said admiringly. He was alone, for the kzin had already followed Nessus. "You just walk. That's all. Three paces takes you a block. It's like magic. And you can make the blocks as long as you like!" He strode forward.
He wore seven league boots. He ran lightly on his toes, and the scene jumped every three paces. The circular signs on the corners of buildings must be address codes, so that once a pedestrian reached his destination he would know it. Then he would circle the discs to got to the middle of the block.
Along the street were shop windows Louis would have liked to explore. Or were they something else entirely? But the others were blocks ahead. Louis could see them Mckering at the end of that canyon of buildings. He increased his pace.
At the end of a footstep the aliens were before him, blocking his path.
"I feared you would miss the turn," said Nessus. And he led off to the left.
"Wait -" But the kzin had vanished too. Where the blazes was Teela?
She must have gone ahead. Louis turned left and walked. Seven league boots. The city went by like a dream. Louis ran with visions of sugarplums dancing in his head. Freeway paths through the cities, the discs marked in a different color, ten blocks apart. Long-distance discs a hundred miles apart, each marking the center of a city, the receiver squares a full block across. Paths to cross oceans: one step to an island! Islands for stepping stones!
Open transfer booths. The puppeteers were fearfully advanced. The disc was only a yard across, and you di
dn't have to be entirely on it before it would operate. One footstep and you were stepping off the next receiver square. It beat the tanj out of slidewalks!
As he ran, Louis's mind conjured up a phantom puppeteer hundreds of miles tall, picking his way delicately along a chain of islands; stepping with care lest he miss an island and get his ankles wet. Now the phantom grew larger, and his stepping stones were worlds … the puppeteers were fearfully advanced …
He was out of stepping disc, at the shore of a calm black sea. Beyond the edge of the world, four fat full moons rose in a vertical line against the stars. Halfway to the horizon was a smaller island, brilliantly lighted. The aliens were waiting for him.
"Where's Teela?"
"I do not know," said Nessus.
"Mist Demons! Nessus, how do we find her?"
"She must find us. There is no need to worry, Louis. When -"
"She's lost on a strange world! Anything could happen!"
"Not on this world, Louis. There is no world as as ours. When Teela reaches the edge of this island, she will find that the stepping discs to the next islands will not work for her. She will follow the discs around the shoreline until she finds one that does work."
"Do you think its a lost computer we're talking about? Teela's a twenty-year-old girl!"
Teela popped into place beside him. "Hi. I got a little lost. What's all the excitement?"
Speaker-To-Ammals mocked him with a dagger-toothed grin. Louis, avoiding Teela's puzzled / questioning eyes, felt heat rising in his cheeks. But Nessus said only, "Follow me."
They followed the puppeteer where stepping discs formed a line along the shore. Presently there was a dirty brown pentagram. They stepped onto it …
They stood on bare rock, brilliantly lit by sun tubes. An island of rock the size of a private spaceport. In its center stood one tall building and a single spacecraft.
"Behold our vehicle," said Nessus.
Teela and Speaker showed disappointment; for the kzin's ears disappeared into their flaps, while Teela looked wistfully back toward the island they had just left, toward a wall of light formed by miles-high buildings standing shoulder to shoulder against interstellar night. But Louis looked, and he felt the relief loosening overtight muscles. He had had enough of miracles. The stepping discs, the tremendous city, the four tributary worlds hanging, pumpkin-colored, above the horizon … all were daunting. The ship was not. It was a General Products #2 hull fitted into a triangular wing, the wing studded with thruster units and fusion motors. Familiar hardware, all of it, and no questions asked.
