Louis thought of matters he would like to study, if he could access the ship’s computer. He’d have to ask the Hindmost later. He must review what was known of protectors. Where was that sashimi plate?
Running through a yoga set allowed him to curb his impatience. How fast was fast?
Forty-five minutes later the plate hadn’t come back.
His companions might be at one of these points—probably were—and Acolyte might have snatched the sashimi. Stilclass="underline" rethink.
The far point in the diagram had drifted a little.
Drifted a little, yeah. Louis’s windpipe closed up; he was wheezing. Two hundred million miles up the Arch as measured on a logarithmic scale, and drifting? That point had to be moving like an interstellar slowboat, at hundreds of miles per second.
It was the refueling probe, of course. They must have mounted a new stepping disk on its flank and set it orbiting along the rim wall. As for the sashimi plate, it must have burned as a meteor.
Louis pulled the disk up to expose the controls. He began to reset them, swearing and talking himself through it, trying to ignore the orchestra. “Now this should reset that link … tanj. Why not? Oh. Stet, dark means off, now try this …”
He dialed up a loaf of bread and set it on the stepping disk. Flick.
An hour and ten since he had cut his associates off from Needle. He’d cut them off from the entire Repair Center, come to that. It would be open war when they discovered that, and breach of contract, too.
Then again, what could they do about it?
The chuckle never reached his throat. Louis knew puppeteers. The Hindmost would have had auxiliary controls implanted surgically. Louis knew he should be wondering when to reset the stepping disks. The Hindmost might tolerate his fiddling, but Louis didn’t want to face Bram’s wrath.
The bread was back.
The cruiser was flying over water. The mountains were to its left now, drifting minutely to spinward. The platform must have turned … turned by sixty degrees. Louis let a slow grin form.
It was following the superconductor grid!
Superconducting cable lay as a substrate beneath the Ringworld floor, forming hexagons fifty thousand miles across. It guided the magnetic fields by which solar prominences could be manipulated. Evidently the cruiser was riding a magnetic levitation vehicle, possibly something worked up by City Builders, more likely something as old as the Ringworld itself.
Did the Hindmost know?
Reacting, he was still reacting. And the bread was back.
Worth the risk?
Louis stepped on the disk.
Pressure suits were missing from the lander bay: one for the Hindmost, Chmeee’s spare, and a set meant for Louis. It need not mean that Bram’s crew were in vacuum. The protector might be showing caution, using the suits for armor.
Louis stepped off to tuck a pressure suit under his arm, then a cummerbund, helmet, and air pack. Then on to Weaver Town.
Louis flicked in off balance. He stumbled and dropped everything he was carrying. Embarrassed, he looked warily about him.
Full daylight. The stepping disk sat on the mud bank of the Weavers’ bathing stream, canted at an angle. Nobody was using the pool. Louis listened for children’s voices, but he heard nothing.
He’d stooped to examine the disk when a waspish voice spoke close behind him. The fallen helmet said, “Greeting! What species are you?”
Louis stood up. “I am of the Ball People,” he said. “Kidada?”
“Yes. Louis Wu’s people?” The old Weaver peered at Louis uncertainly.
“Yes. Kidada, how long since Louis Wu left?”
“You’re Louis Wu made young!”
“Yes.” Kidada’s gape and stare made Louis uncomfortable. He said, “Kidada, I have been in a long sleep. Are the Weavers well?”
“We thrive. We trade. Visitors come and go. Sawur took ill and died many days ago. The sky has circled twenty-two times since—”
“Sawur?”
“Since the night you vanished with some hairy creature of legend just on your tail, and only a Ghoul child for witness. Yes, Sawur is dead. I nearly died, too, and two children died. Sometimes visitors bring a sickness that kills others but not themselves.”
“I hoped to talk to her.”
A gaunt smile. “But will she answer?”
“She advised me well.” Don’t wait until you’re desperate!
“Sawur told me of your problem, after you vanished.”
“I solved it. I hope I solved it. Otherwise I am enslaved.”
“Enslaved. But with tens of falans to free yourself.” Kidada sounded tired and bitter.
Louis was becoming aware of how much he wanted to talk to Sawur. He would have stayed to mourn, if he had the time.
Time. The sky had circled twenty-two times … two falans plus. One hundred sixty-five of the Ringworld’s thirty-hour days. They’d left him in that tank for more than half an Earth year!
And he now was playing catch-up. “Kidada, who moved our stepping disk?”
“I know not what you mean. This? It was here the morning you were gone. We’ve left it alone.”
The rim was muddy. Louis could see big fingerprints and scratch marks left by fingernails. Some visiting hominid—not Weavers, who had smaller hands—had been trying to alter the setting.
Ghouls. He might have known. He was glad he’d flicked in during daylight. The Night People wouldn’t even know he’d been here.
Louis donned his pressure suit. “Say hello to the children for me,” he said, and he flicked out.
Darkness.
Louis turned on his helmet lamp, and a half-seen skeleton was watching him.
He was in the Meteor Defense room. The screens were dark. His lamp was the only light.
These bones had been mounted for study. They weren’t attached at the joints: they barely touched. A frame of thin metal rods held them in place.
The skeleton stood ten inches shorter than Louis Wu. All of the bones had a rounded look: weathered. The ribs were improbably narrow, the fingers nearly gone. Time had turned bone structure to dust. Weather in here couldn’t be that erosive! But the knuckles still showed large, and all the joints were massive and greatly swollen. Those eroded projections in the massive jaw weren’t teeth. They were later bone growth.
Protector.
Louis let his fingertips play over the face. The bone was gritty with dust, and smooth. Smoothed by time, as surfaces turned gradually to dust.
This wasn’t an erosive environment. These bones must be a thousand years dead, at least.
The right hip had been shattered, the pieces mounted separately. And the left shoulder and elbow, and the neck: all fractured or shattered.
He might have died in a fall, or been beaten to death in combat.
The Pak had had their origin somewhere in the galactic core. A Pak colony on Earth had failed—the tree-of-life had failed, leaving the colony with no protectors—but Pak breeders had spread over the Earth from landing sites in Africa and Asia. Their bones were in museums under names such as Homo habilis. Their descendants had evolved to intelligence: a classic example of neoteny.
There was a mummified Pak protector in the Smithsonian Institute. It had been dug from under a desert on Mars, centuries ago. Louis had never seen it except as a hologram in a General Biology course.
This creature might be a deformed Pak, he thought. But there was that massive jaw.
Protectors lost their teeth. That was a pity, because teeth could have told him a lot. But the jaw was a bone cracker.
The torso was too long for a standard issue Pak.
It was not quite a Pak, and it was also not quite a Ghoul. Louis could guess when it had died, but when had it been born? The protector in the Smithsonian had spent thirty thousand years and more crossing from the galactic core to Earth. Gearing up for the expedition might have taken him that long again. Protectors could live a long time.