Larry Niven - The Ringworld Engineers

He eased close to the larger floating shape of Chmeee. “We go in the other side, with lights at low intensity and wide aperture. I go first because I’m human. Right?”

“Right,” said Chmeee.

The belts lifted by scrith repulsion, like the lander. There were small thrusters in back. Louis circled round, checked to see Chmeee following, and floated in one of the windows at what he hoped was the right level.

It was one big room, and it was empty. The smell made him want to sneeze. There was web furniture with the webbing rotted away, and a long glass table, shattered. At the bottom of the sloping floor, a shapeless thing proved to be a pack with shoulder straps. So: they had been here. And the smell—

“Cordite,” Chmeee said. “Chemical propulsives. If they shoot at us, cover your eyes.” He moved toward a door. He flattened himself against the wall and flung the door suddenly open. A toilet, empty.

A bigger door hung open with the slant of the floor. With stunner in one hand and flashlight-laser in the other, Louis moved toward it. He felt a driving excitement drowning the fear.

Beyond the ornately carved wooden door, a broad circular staircase wound down into darkness. Louis shined his light down along loops of railing to where the spiral of stairs and the bottom of the building all crumpled in on itself. The light picked out a two-handed weapon with a shoulder butt, and a box that had spilled tiny golden cylinders; another weapon further down; a coat equipped with straps; more scraps of clothing on the lower stair; a human shape crumpled in the crushed bottom of the stairway — a naked man, seeming darker and more muscular than the attackers.

Louis’s excitement was growing unbearable. Was this really what he had needed all along? Not the droud and wire, but the risk of his life to prove its value! Louis adjusted his flying belt and dropped over the railing.

He fell slowly. There was nothing human on the stairs, but things had been dropped: anonymous clothing, weapons, boots, another shoulder pack. Louis continued dropping… and suddenly knew he’d found the right level. Quick adjustments to his flying belt sent him slamming through a doorway in pursuit of a smell radically different from what Chmeee had called cordite.

He was outside the tower. He barely avoided smashing into a wall; he was still inside the lower, crushed building. Somehow he’d dropped his light. He flicked up the amplification in the binocular goggles and turned right, toward light.

There was a dead woman in the great doorway: one of the attackers. Blood had pooled beneath a projectile wound in her chest. Louis felt a great sadness for her… and a driving urgency that made him fly right over her, through the doors and out.

The amplified Archlight was bright even through cloud cover. He had found the attackers, and the defenders too. They were paired off, pale, slender forms with shorter, darker ones who still wore bits of clothing, a boot or a head covering or a shirt ripped open. In the fury of their mating they ignored the flying man.

But one was not paired with anyone. As Louis stopped his flight she reached up and grasped his ankle, without insistence and without fear. She was silver-haired and very pale, and her finely chiseled face was beautiful beyond words.

Louis turned off the flying belt and dropped beside her. He took her in his arms. Her hands ran over his strange clothing, questing. Louis dropped the stunner, pulled off his vest and flying belt — his fingers were clumsy — his impact armor, his undersuit. He took her without finesse. His urgency was greater than any consideration for her. But she was as eager as he.

He was not aware of anything but himself and her. Certainly he didn’t know that Chmeee had joined them. He knew that, joltingly, when the kzin rapped his new love hard across the head with his laser. The furry alien hand sank its claws in her silver hair and pulled her head back, and pulled her teeth loose from Louis Wu’s throat.

The wind blew dust up Louis Wu’s nostrils; it whipped his hair in a storm around his face. Louis brushed it back and opened his eyes. The light was blinding-bright. His fumbling hands found a plastic patch on his neck, then binocular goggles covering his face. He pulled them loose.

He rolled away from the woman and sat up.

Now it was dim. Almost dawn: the terminator line split the world into light and dark. Louis ached in every muscle. He felt as if he’d been beaten. Paradoxically, he felt wonderful. For too many years he had used sex only rarely, and only as cover, because wireheads traditionally have no interest in such things. Last night his whole soul had been involved.

The woman? She was about Louis’s height, and on the stocky side of pretty. Not flat-chested, but not busty either. Her black hair was bound in a long braid, and there was a disconcerting fringe of beard along her jaw. She slept the sleep of exhaustion, and she’d earned it. They both had. Now he was beginning to remember. But his memories didn’t make much sense.

He’d been making love — no, he’d been head over heels in love with the pale, slender woman with the red lips. Seeing his blood on her mouth, feeling the sting in his neck, had left him only with a terrible sense of loss. He’d howled when Chmeee twisted her head around until her neck snapped. He’d fought when the kzin plucked him off the dead woman. The kzin had tucked him under one arm; he was still raging, still fighting, while Chmeee fished the medkit out of Louis’s vest and slapped a patch on his neck and tucked the medkit away again.

Then Chmeee had killed them, all the pretty silver-haired men and women, spearing them accurately through their heads with the brilliant ruby needle of his flashlight-laser. Louis remembered trying to stop him, and being thrown rolling across the broken pavement. He’d staggered to his feet, and seen someone else moving, and moved toward her. Her, the dark-haired woman, the only defender left alive. They’d moved into each other’s arms.

Why had he done that? And Chmeee had tried to get his attention… hadn’t he? Louis remembered a shrieking as of tigers at war.

“Pheromones,” he said. “And they looked so harmless!” He stood up and looked about him in sheer horror. The dead were all around him: the dark ones with wounded necks, the pale ones with blood on their mouths and black char marks in their silver hair.

The guns hadn’t been enough. What the vampires had was worse than a tasp. They put out a superstimulus cloud of pheromones, human scent-signals of sexual readiness. One of the vampires, or a pair, must have reached the tower. And the defenders had come out, running, shedding guns and clothing in a haste that sent one over the banister to his death.

But why, with the vampires dead, had he and the dark-haired woman… ?

The wind tossed at Louis’s hair. Yah. The vampires were dead, but he and the dark-haired woman were still in a cloud of pheromones. They’d mated in frenzy… ”If the wind hadn’t come up we’d still be Doing It. Yah. Now, where the tanj did I leave… everything?”

He found the impact armor and the flying belt. The undersuit was torn to shreds. What about the vest? He saw that the woman’s eyes were open. She sat up suddenly, with a horror in her eyes that Louis could well understand. He said to her, “I’ve got to have the vest because the translator’s in it. I hope Chmeee doesn’t frighten you off before I can—”

Chmeee. How had this looked to him?

Chmeee’s great hand engulfed Louis’s skull and twisted it backward. Louis clung to the woman with his body and his mind, and thrust, thrust, but his eyes were filled with that orange beast-face, and his ears with screaming insults. It was distracting…