Larry Niven - The Moon Maze Game

Scotty was studying the floating head carefully. “I know him,” he whispered. “Another Lunie, name of Piering. So he was supposed to be Professor Cavor? Geez, he must be pissed.”

“Shhh!” Angelique said, waving her hand angrily.

“I have never seen an attack by Martians, but I am assured that such has happened, and that the weaponry we have given them in this game accurately represents reality. So do the Selenites’ weapons and various troops, of course, and I’ve imitated our own cannon and transport and other devices as best I can.

“I ask you to be gentle with our young grubs, and to remember that the nurturance of tomorrow’s leaders is today’s greatest responsibility.”

Maud wiggled to find a more comfortable position in the chair, wincing as the helmet embraced her head. An instant later, the grubs “playing” game pieces commenced moving with purpose and apparent consciousness, shaking themselves and stretching as if from a prolonged slumber.

“How shall we begin our attack?” she asked. Her hands twisted in air, as if seeking control levers.

“Let’s try shelling the village,” Wayne said. “Soften them up a little.”

And she set herself to it.

“All right. Ah… burn down those villages.”

A thin current of moist air wafted through the room, but nothing else happened.

“It’s broken?” Scotty asked.

Wayne snapped his fingers. “The autopilot thinks you aren’t gaming hard enough. Rhyme it, Maud.”

She looked at Wayne as if he must be mad, but then laughed. With a level of theatricality she had not displayed in hours, Maud touched the tips of her fingers to her temples, and fluttered her eyelids closed.

“Children of Luna,” she whispered, “fulfill my desire. Use your strength and rain down fire!”

Their team’s little grubs mouthed the trigger strings controlling the cannons. The cannons roared, arcs of fire blazed above the field, and cannonballs the approximate size and heft of marshmallows sailed into the complex of buildings representing Luna.

With a fiery whoof they splintered or collapsed. Cannons on the lunar side popped, and some of the Earther buildings exploded.

Then the Martians weighed in, sending fire at either side, and the war was on.

Scotty set himself behind a foam pillar, wishing he had a better weapon than the crossbow. What he heard from inside the mansion drifted to him in bits of talk, incomprehensible.

The bubble wasn’t as big as it looked. The far landscape was hologram wallpaper, slick to the touch. Scotty prowled, looking for other doors. Nothing. Any exits must be within the mockup mansion-which wasn’t all there either.

Someone had to guard… but could Moresnot come through inside the mansion? The gamers would be shredded. Shouldn’t he be guarding Ali directly?

Twenty minutes had passed… and there was Wayne, taking too little care for cover while he looked for enemies. Scotty whistled from behind a tall brick-like chimney.

Wayne looked up. “How did you get up there?”

Scotty gestured around and up and over. “It’s not all that steep.”

“I relieve you,” Wayne said. “I took my shot. Earth lost. Mars and the Moon are still fighting.”

Sharmela was examining the game environs, perhaps measuring lines of sight.

“I think I see what the problem is,” she said finally. Her brown curls bounced as she nodded to herself. “We wasted shells hitting these buildings, but we’ve already seen that the Selenites are primarily an underground society. So there isn’t anything really valuable here.”

“So…?”

“So the Martians have been dealing with the Selenites a lot longer than we have. I think they’re strong enough to kick lunar butt, and the Selenites know it. So… they win against Luna, then invade us and die from germs?”

The plan seemed reasonable. Earth declined to engage as Mars attacked Luna, waiting until much of the destruction was already complete. Then and only then they joined the attack. The “floor” beneath the game seemed to open up, and smoke poured out: The Selenite society was destroyed.

But instead of the Martians sending walkers to invade Earth, they launched their assault from a distance, until the buildings were knocked apart, the grubs had retreated to safety, and all the little pieces scattered.

Maud groaned and said: “So to save us grief and pain, I beg you to begin again!” The battlefield shimmered and was whole: all holograms.

Just in case they had accidentally done the right thing, Maud looked around, hoping a door might open…

Nothing.

“Damn!” Mickey said, and slunk away, defeated. “I’ll take guard.”

Ali advised Maud next, and his attempt at a pincer assault came to no better a conclusion.

Scotty came in to find the boy in depression. “The Selenites split their army. I thought it was a mistake, but they ran a pincer on us. Chewed us up. When we got our cavalry as far as the left wall, the rest of the room lit up.” Ali gestured into a cratered moonscape. “Now we’re trying to figure this next part. We still have three sides, don’t we?”

“Martians there. Wells’ Martian tripod walkers and some big brained wrinkled critters. Selenites there, including a few we haven’t seen before. And those soldiers with us are human. Cavor himself must have played those.”

It was a roughly triangular distribution of troops. Three “front lines,” with a “no-man’s-land” in the middle, and battles along adjoining sides.

“I wish we had more time,” Wayne said.

Angelique said, “Yeah. And while you’re at it, butter brickle ice cream. Scotty, any suggestions?”

“Double cappuccino, one sugar. There must be a way…”

“No,” Darla said. “There doesn’t. This game could be dead. It might not know what to do, and we’re just burnin’ time. We could play this and never win. Or win, and it won’t make a lick of difference-we’re just waiting for the pirates to catch up with us.”

After watching the others flail about, Angelique had decided to try her hand.

East, by Angelique’s ornate compass, was the front door. And East was several ranks of grubs balanced elegantly on thick tails, dressed as British soldiers equipped with rifles and cannon, wagons, a railroad, and a steamship docked on the river.

South: Martian war tripods and other machines, and four spacecraft each built like a diseased potato with a hatch open at the nose. As the Martians marched onto the field, more emerged from the hatches.

North: A variety of creatures, all of the basic lunar insectoid design. They moved onto the field with various gaits.

West was unoccupied.

East: Maud got some soldiers moving in blocks, Angelique advising from the sides.

This time, they detected a weakness in the Martian war formation, a hesitation to engage they were able to exploit. Toy cannon roared, knocking down toy machines. When the hullabaloo was over… no door opened.

“Back to square one,” Angelique said in disgust.

Ali’s turn.

South: The Martian war machines were on the move. North: Four Lunie insectoids of varying shapes put their heads together and babbled in high-pitched gibberish, then set some much bigger creatures moving. Under Maud’s control, the humans declined engagement. The alien armies converged, fought, swarmed, died. Then all suddenly froze, and Reset.

Again and again the armies clashed, with Earth getting the worst of it until, by careful observation, flaws in the defense of Martian and Selenite became clearer.

Slowly, the Martians were driven back, Angelique directing their forces via the mystical Maud. Driving them back opened no door, but grubs toted new, shiny toys out of the darkness, and placed them among the ranks of Earth’s defenders.