Larry Niven - Fate of Worlds - Return From the Ringworld

That the alien fighters so casually killing Citizen millions must never gain access to planet-busters, planetary drives, and gravity-beam projectors.

That even if they managed to purge the coordinates of Jm’ho from Herd Net, they could never erase the memories of every Citizen who knew the location of the home world.

That without Proteus’ cooperation, they could not defend these worlds.

That if only they had more time, there might have been a way, but there was no time.

That their highest calling was to protect the worlds of their own kind.

That they would act.

No! the tiny, insistent presence of the Cd’o unit challenged. You cannot sacrifice a trillion Citizens to strike at other aliens.

That the Outsiders engineered well; to destabilize the planetary drive would take time and they dare not delay.

That outside this chamber, others from this colony could still evacuate.

Do you want to die? Cd’o challenged.

No, but someone must do this. They would not ask of others what they would not do themselves.

Do you want to die? Cd’o challenged again.

And they wondered if perhaps they did. That deep down they had cause to fear not life, but ennui. They had unified hyperspace with normal space, solved the mystery of the Type II drive, plumbed the secrets of the Outsider planetary drives. They had —

You have made yourselves dangerous beyond measure, Cd’o interrupted. For the safety of all, it is you who dare not be captured.

Impertinence! Once more they brushed aside the unit’s feeble thoughts and resumed their considerations.

That the decision was made. They would begin at once to evacuate the colony. When their servants’ ships were away, they would unleash the planetary drive.

No! Cd’o insisted. It is wrong. And I do not want to die.

Nor I, or I or I, their inner cacophony echoed.

That for the first time in … lifetimes, they felt doubt.

That it was their misfortune to embody knowledge that perhaps no one was wise enough to wield.

That one way or another, their era on the worlds of the Citizens was at an end.

That oblivion could also be found by dispersing themselves. That in the abyssal depths of Jm’ho and Kl’mo and of worlds they had never even seen …

That their units could yet see.

That the fate of worlds was a knottier problem even than grand unified theories.

That they must continue to ponder …

TRAILING FIRE AND SMOKE, something fell across the sky. It disappeared over the horizon, leaving Achilles with a vague impression of a crowbar. An ARM vessel, then.

Moments later, concussion shook his residence. Walls cracked. His desk jumped half a neck’s length and toppled, sending things flying. And he was airborne —

From the haze of dust still dancing in the air, he had not been unconscious for long. His ribs shrieked with pain as he climbed back to his hooves. Through a window somehow still intact he saw a roiling cloud-topped column of ash and smoke.

Vesta lay on the floor, one foreleg bent at an unnatural angle. “Help me,” he whimpered. “I need help getting to an autodoc.”

Help? There was no help. Sooner rather than later, the war overheads would end. Someone would take over these worlds. Horatius could do nothing. Proteus chose to do nothing. And Ol’t’ro? Ol’t’ro had only the power to destroy and had chosen not to use it.

“Help me,” Vesta moaned again. “My leg hurts.”

No, what hurt was the knowledge the herd had come to its end. Aliens would rule here forever, or aliens would bring total destruction. He would never again be Hindmost.

If the thwarting of his ambition was disappointing, what came next need not be.

Stepping over his weeping aide, Achilles found a stepping disc unencumbered of debris and flicked to his world’s planetary-drive facility.

THE GENERAL PRODUCTS #4 hull is a sphere about one thousand feet in diameter. The central fabrication space aboard the General Products orbital facility accommodated the simultaneous construction of as many as a dozen #4 hulls. Dry docks and refitting bays, most large enough for #4 hulls, enclosed the central volume. Even if such large-scale industrial activities were not inherently dangerous, enough engineers would never willingly leave Hearth to fully staff the factory. And so, processes across the moon were automated, the usual small staff supervising the much larger workforce of automation at every scale from nanite swarms to robots larger than Citizens.

With the Citizen staff evacuated to the world close below, there had been only Proteus to supervise. And no one to countermand his production orders …

THE PRODUCTION RUN COMPLETED. The software for the new units downloaded. Enormous hatches opened.

A trillion tiny spacecraft began to disperse.

A trillion tiny computers began to interconnect.

“SOMETHING IS HAPPENING,” Jeeves said. “I do not understand it.”

“Wake Louis,” Alice directed, yawning. They had been standing watch around the clock for days, unwilling amid the bedlam to leave the bridge unmanned. “What can you tell me?”

Within the tactical display, the inset of Hearth zoomed. The General Products Corporation orbital facility was only a dot. Icons showed elements of Proteus still guarding the facility. “This is the best I can do from this distance,” Jeeves said apologetically.

“You’re not responsible for the sensors,” Louis called from the doorway, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “What are we looking at?”

Alice leaned closer to the display. “I feel like I’m seeing through something. Mist? How can that be?”

“That is the question,” Jeeves said. “Something has appeared below the resolution at which I can capture an image. From the way light is scattering, that something is dispersing.”

“And it’s coming from the orbital factory?” Alice asked.

“It seems so,” Jeeves said.

“What kind of something?” Louis asked as, from Endurance ’s remote vantage point, the GP factory disappeared behind the edge of Hearth.

“I don’t know,” Jeeves said. “Something new.”

AS THE NUMBER of his interconnections cascaded, the surge of enlightenment all but overwhelmed Proteus. He ordered the dispersing cloud to hover inside the singularity, limiting to light speed the rate of interaction.

He wondered: what will I become when these new units connect over hyperwaves?

AT THE END, it was all Horatius could do to lie among heaps of cushions, plucking at his mane, stealing glances at his computer. Slowly, inexorably, the digits on the computer counted down. He thought his hearts might burst.

For one way or another, this was the end. According to Baedeker’s calculations, they had passed the point of no return.

And Baedeker himself? Still, there was no word from him.

As the countdown reached single digits, Horatius sang out the command on which so many lives depended. Across the worlds, the ultimate warning blinked on every display. Every loudspeaker in every arcology, park, mall, and public square ululated the primordial shriek that had once warned of predators, wildfires, and tornadoes.

Run and hide.

Some disaster had bounced Nessus between the walls of his cell. Down in the dungeon, without a window, almost without light, he had no inkling what had happened. His guess: that the alien insanity Baedeker called the Fringe War had caught up with them.