Larry Niven - The Ringworld Engineers

The aircraft burned like torches as they fell. Chmeee tested the sky with radar, deep-radar, and infrared. Empty. “Louis, were there more? Did any land?”

“I don’t think so. If they did, they ran out of fuel, and there aren’t any runways… Roads? Scan the roads. You can’t let them radio the big ship.” Radio would be line of sight, and the Ringworld atmosphere probably had a Heaviside layer.

There was one road, and tanj few straight patches on it. There were flat fields… It was some minutes before Chmeee was satisfied. The aircraft were dead, all of them.

“Next step,” said Louis. “You can’t just wipe out everyone in the fortress. I gather kzinti females can’t take care of themselves.”

“No… Louis, it’s odd. The females of the castle are much more intelligent than those of the Patriarchy.”

“As intelligent as you?”

“No! But they even have a small vocabulary.”

“Is it possible that your own people have been breeding your females for docility? Refusing to mate with the intelligent ones for hundreds of thousands of years? After all, you cull the slave species.”

Chmeee shifted restlessly. “It may be. The males here are different too. I tried to deal with the rulers of the exploration ship. I showed my power, then waited for them to attempt to negotiate. They attempted no such thing. They behaved as if there was nothing to do but fight until they or I were destroyed. I had to mock Chjarrl, to insult his pride in his ancestry, before he would tell me anything.”

But puppeteers never bred these kzinti for docility , Louis thought. “Well, if you can’t take the females out of the fortress and you can’t kill off the males, then you’ll tanj well have to deal with them. God Gambit?”

“Perhaps. Let us do it this way… ”

Well above arrow range, just above the range of the cannon on the intruder’s vehicle, the lander hovered. Its shadow covered the ashes of the fire in the courtyard. Louis listened to the voices from Chmeee’s translator, and waited for Chmeee’s signal.

Chmeee inviting archers to fire at him. Chmeee threatening, promising, threatening. Staccato thunder from a laser beam cutting rock, followed by a crash. Hissing, snarling, spitting.

No mention of Chmeee’s really dangerous master.

Four hours he was down there. Then Chmeee stepped from one of the narrow windows and floated upward. Louis waited till he was aboard, then lifted.

Presently Chmeee appeared behind him, minus flying belt and impact armor. Louis said, “You never signaled for the God Gambit.”

“Are you offended?”

“No, of course not.”

“It would have gone badly. And… I could not have done it. This is my own species. I could not threaten them with a man.”

“Okay.”

“Kathakt will raise my children as heroes. He will teach them arms, and arm them well, and when they are old enough he will turn them loose to conquer their own lands. They will be no threat to his own domains, you see, and they will stand a good chance to survive if I do not return. I left Kathakt my flashlight-laser.”

“Good enough.”

“I hope so.”

“Are we through with the Map of Kzin?”

Chmeee pondered. “I captured an aircraft pilot. They are all nobility, with names and comprehensive educations. Chjarrl told me much about the age of exploration after I mocked the accomplishments of his ancestors. We may assume that there is an extensive historical library within the Behemoth. Shall we capture it?”

“Tell me what Chjarrl told you. How far did they get on Mars?”

“They found a wall of falling water. Later generations invented pressure suits and high-altitude aircraft. They explored the edges of the Map, and one team reached the center, where there was ice.”

“I think we’ll just skip the Behemoth’s library, then. They never got inside. Hindmost, are you there?”

A microphone said, “Yes, Louis.”

“We’re heading for the Map of Mars. You do the same, but stay to port of us in case we have to flick across.”

“Aye, aye. Have you anything to report?”

“Chmeee picked up some information. Kzinti explored the surface of the Map of Mars, and they didn’t find anything un-Marslike. So we still don’t know where to look for an opening.”

“Perhaps from beneath.”

“Yah, could be. That’d be annoying. How are our guests holding out?”

“You should rejoin them soon.”

“Soon as I can, then. You see if there’s data on Mars in Needle ’s computer. And on martians . Louis out.” He turned. “Chmeee, do you want to fly this thing? Don’t exceed four miles per second.”

The lander surged up and forward in obedience to the kzin’s touch. A gray wall of cloud broke to let them through; then there was only blue sky, darkening as they rose. The Map of Kzin streamed below them. Then behind them.

Chmeee said, “The puppeteer seems docile enough.”

“Yah.”

“You seem very sure of the Map of Mars.”

“Yah.” Louis grinned. “It’s a very nice piece of misdirection, but it couldn’t be perfect, could it? They had too much to hide, by volume. We went under the Great Ocean on the way here. Guess what we found when we went under the Map of Mars?”

“Don’t play games.”

“Nothing. Nothing but sea bottom. Not even radiator fins. Most of the other Maps have radiator fins to cool the poles. Passive cooling systems. There has to be a system to cool the Map of Mars. Where’s the heat going? I thought it might be going into the sea water, but it wasn’t. We think the heat is pumped directly into the superconductor grid in the Ringworld floor.”

“Superconductor grid?”

“Big mesh, but it controls magnetic effects in the Ringworld foundation. It’s used to control effects in the sun. If the Map of Mars plugs into the grid, it has to be the Ringworld control center.”

Chmeee thought it over. He said, “They could not pump heat into the sea water. The warm, wet air would rise. Cloud patterns would stream inward and outward from great distances. From space the Map of Mars would appear as a great target. Can you imagine Pak protectors making such a mistake?”

“No.” Though Louis would have.

“I remember too little about Mars. The planet was never very important to your people, was it? It was no more than a source of legends. I do know that the Map is twenty miles high, to mimic the very rarefied air of the planet.”

“Twenty miles high, and fifty-six million square miles in area. That’s one billion, one hundred and twenty million cubic miles of hiding place.”

“Urrr,” said Chmeee. “You must be right. The Map of Mars is the Repair Center, and the Pak did their best to hide it. Chjarrl told me of the monsters and the storms and the distances of the Great Ocean. They would have made good passive guardians. A fleet of invaders might never have guessed the secret.”

Louis rubbed absently at four itching spots across his eyebrows. “One point twelve times ten to the ninth cubic miles. I have to admit it, that number leaves me numb. What were they keeping in there? Patches big enough to plug Fist-of-God Mountain? Machinery big enough to carry those patches, and plant them, and weld them tight? That winching equipment we saw on the rim wall, for the attitude jets? Spare attitude jets? Tanj, I’d love to find spare attitude jets. But they’d still have room to spare.”

“War fleets.”

“Yah. We already know about their big weapon, but — war fleets, of course, and ships to carry refugees, too. Maybe the whole Map is one big refugee ship. It must have been big enough to evacuate the Ringworld before the population started filling every niche in the ecology.”