Larry Niven Ringworld 3 Ringworld Throne

Author:Ringworld Throne
Language: eng
Format: epub

What had the Hindmost been *thinking* of, to put it here?

*Yeah, right.* Martians. They'd set a trap.

Sliding faster now, losing all stability. It was a long way down. Miles! Dust must have piled here over millenia [sic — should be "millennia"] in a prevailing wind ... a Great Ocean stratospheric wind, in a weather pattern huger than worlds. Another flaw in the accuracy of the Map of Mars.

Louis squatted, flattened himself against the stepping disk as it became a sled.

It picked up speed. The disk was trying to bounce him off. His hands had a death-grip and he tried to grip with his boot toes, too. An arcology-sized rock stood in his path. He leaned left, trying to steer. Nope. It was going to swat him hard.

Then he was elsewhere.

* * *

And his death-grip became something more, because he was falling into a black void.

He chopped off part of a shrill scream. *But I fixed it! I fixed it! I fixed it!*

He was clinging to a stepping disk welded to a gracefully curved cigar shape: the puppeteer's refueling probe. Around him was black sky and a glare of stars.

The stepping disk, the probe's hull, everything glowed. There must be light behind him. Without losing anything of his toe-and-finger grip, Louis twisted to look over his shoulder.

The Ringworld was adrift behind and below him. He could see fine detail: rivers like twisted snakes, undersea landscapes, a straight black thread that might be a Machine People highway.

The naked sun was trying to broil him. No problem: the suit was one he could sweat through. Night would be a greater threat. He hadn't thought he would need an oversuit.

He was level with the top of the rim wall, looking down at half-conical spill mountains and the rivers that ran from their bases. A thousand miles up. Far ahead of him he could make out lacy lines sketching a long double cone.

An attitude jet. He could see the twin toroids that he'd thought made up a Bussard ramjet; but they were tiny, forming the wasp waist of something far larger. The Ringworld attitude jet was made of wire so thin that it kept fading in and out of sight. A cage to guide the flow of the solar wind.

This one wasn't mounted yet: it wasn't pointed right. Louis hadn't felt fear like this in two hundred years. *But I got the bread back!*

The probe was coasting ... was motionless, while the Ringworld rotated below at 770 miles per second.

*The system must have reset. I took this one disk out of the link, but it must have reset. I don't understand the Hindmost's programming language. What else have I fouled up?*

The sashimi? That was easy. The plate must have drifted too far from the disk. The bread hadn't: it was still in range when the disks cycled.

He hung on, hung on ...

And the disk bumped against his faceplate.

He clung with his eyes closed. He was in no shape to confront anyone, any creature. In a few seconds he'd be safe and alone aboard Hot Needle of Inquiry.

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