Larry Niven - Fate of Worlds - Return From the Ringworld

“With my old memories restored, I remember how … interesting … things tended to be around you and Sigmund.” Louis handed her a drink bulb.

She took a sip. Viennese coffee: frothy, rich with chocolate and cream, with hints of cocoa and cinnamon. He remembered.

“Your smile hasn’t changed,” he told her.

“Are you going to get something to eat?”

With a sigh, he went back to ordering a meal. (By Alice’s standards he’d ordered three meals, but he had the appetite of youth.) “So the ARM will be making a port call on New Terra. I take it that wouldn’t be happening except for you stranding Julia?”

“If she or I had taken it upon ourselves to reveal the way, it would have gotten Julia court-martialed.”

Louis, frowning, carried his brimming tray to the table. “And what happens when you go home? Piracy charges?”

Piracy was among the concepts Puppeteers had purged from their servants’ version of English. Theft would do as a charge, when the time came. If the time came. “I’m too old for that to matter.”

“Come with me,” Louis said. “A ship and the woman I love. Things don’t get better.”

“Returning to Earth?” she guessed.

“Anywhere you’d like. But first — if only they will listen to reason — Baedeker and Nessus need me to give them a hand.”

“TWO OR FOUR,” LOUIS SAID. “It’s simple math. Say yes, and we double the odds of you getting home.”

Baedeker looked himself in the eyes. “I shall miss your humor, Louis.”

“Tanj it, I’m serious!” Louis shouted. He and Baedeker stood hip by haunch. The only place aboard Long Shot the four of them could meet was in one of the narrow, serpentine access tunnels. Past Baedeker, at one end of the corridor, Louis glimpsed an edge of the lifeboat’s passenger air lock. “We’ve been together for a long time. I mean to see this through.”

“We go to trade technology for freedom,” Nessus said. “Two or four? What does that matter?”

“Then why do you argue?” Louis countered.

Baedeker and Nessus exchanged a look. “Our ship is too crowded,” Nessus said.

“Isn’t this the galaxy’s fastest ship?” Alice asked. “Can’t we be at the Fleet within the hour? Louis and I can stand here in the corridor, if need be.”

Smart woman, Louis thought. Intelligence was another of her charms.

“Our undertaking is dangerous,” Baedeker conceded, starting to paw at the deck. “I have learned much about hyperdrive theory, but in my long absence, perhaps Ol’t’ro have, too. For that reason — or any other — they may decline the trade I will offer. They may lash out at us rather than negotiate. If they are interested, there is reason to distrust their mental stability. Even if they accept and withdraw immediately, we must deal soon after with the Kzinti and Trinoc war fleets rushing at Hearth.”

“And almost certainly the ARM fleets,” Alice offered. “Yes, they know about New Terra.”

Nessus twitched, looking ready to furl himself into a catatonic hassock. With his heads plunged deep into his thoroughly disheveled mane, in a muffled voice, he said, “And someone named Horatius as Hindmost. We know little about him.”

“In a way, isn’t this ship as much a complication as something to trade?” Louis said. “Ol’t’ro must have agreed, long ago, for you to offer Long Shot as payment for the Ringworld expedition. How will they feel about you trying to sell stolen goods back to them? And then there’s the Patriarchy embassy on Nature Preserve Three that Minerva told you about. The Kzinti will have something to say when the ship taken from them shows up.”

Baedeker’s pawing at the deck grew more frantic. “You see the dangers. Why won’t you see reason?”

Louis shrugged.

With a quiver and a sideways kick Baedeker locked his knee, pressing that hoof flat and motionless against the deck. “Louis, your father created the autodoc; it is rightfully yours. Before Nessus and I leave, we will transfer the device to your ship.”

Before our quixotic efforts inevitably fail, Louis read between the lines.

“And if negotiations fail?” Louis asked. “If the Kzinti come. If the ARM wants its revenge?”

“There are other approaches,” Nessus said. “They are … complicated.”

Louis caught Alice’s eye. “Suppose we bring the ’doc home? What would that do toward making amends for you with New Terran authorities?”

His words garnered a quick smile. It was the mention of home, he hoped, not the offer of the ’doc.

That’s progress on one front, Louis thought. “Baedeker, let’s go jettison the lifeboat. I’ll dock Endurance where the lifeboat is stowed.”

“That isn’t necessary,” Baedeker said. “We can teleport the autodoc to your ship.”

“And we will,” Alice said. “That’s not the point.”

“The point,” Louis continued, “is that we will see this through with you. Endurance is our ride home afterward.”

“And we’re here,” Nessus sang. He dropped Long Shot from hyperspace. With a deft touch, he fired the fusion thrusters just enough to produce a slow drift toward their destination.

“Home,” Baedeker sighed. He stood in the bridge’s hatchway, gazing at five clustered specks centered in the main view port. A light-hour distant, the Fleet of Worlds was visible using only modest magnification. “It is beautiful.”

He had believed himself trapped forever on the Ringworld. To see Hearth again was … melody failed him.

Nessus reached out, twining a neck with one of Baedeker’s. “I feel the same.”

Baedeker was still savoring the moment when the hyperwave set chirped.

“We are being hailed,” Voice sang.

“Trade places,” Baedeker said as the comm console buzzed again. He angled the camera so that it only saw him. “Voice, do not speak on this bridge but open the link. Translate for Louis and Alice,” who waited aboard Endurance.

“This is Space Traffic Control,” businesslike voices sang.

“This is Concordance vessel Homebound, ” Baedeker sang back. The ship’s real identity was only suitable for discussion with Ol’t’ro. After some back-and-forth with Minerva, they had found a plausible-sounding ship’s name not in current use.

“I do not have any Homebound in my active database, and you don’t seem to have a transponder.”

“This is an old ship,” Baedeker sang. And Kzinti had removed the Concordance STC transponder. “It does not surprise me that we are no longer in your database.”

New voices came: oddly familiar, stronger and firmer than the traffic controller who had greeted Long Shot ’s emergence. “This is Hearth Planetary Defense. Homebound, or whoever you are, keep your distance until we have arranged an inspection.”

“Understood,” Baedeker sang. Long Shot had a good match to the Fleet’s velocity; their slow inward drift should not seem threatening. “First, however, I have pressing business to discuss with” — he almost slipped up and asked for Ol’t’ro — “the Minister of Science.”

“I will inquire whether Minister Chiron is available.”

“Thank you,” Baedeker sang.

His instruments revealed a seething froth of activity: ships entering and leaving hyperspace; hyperwave chatter; STC transponder beeps; hyperwave-radar pings. The levels far exceeded anything that he could remember. Had activities in and among the alien diplomatic missions offset grain-ship traffic lost when New Terra broke off relations?

To his left, an auxiliary display flashed. Alice here. Most hyperspace-related turbulence is apt to be from defensive drones. Ol’t’ro protected his colony world this way, back in the Gw’oth War.