Ringworld's Children (7 page)

Roxanny Gauthier was fifty-one, and still one of the best. Lack of action didn't bother her. For two years she'd enjoyed
Gray Nurse's
modest rec facilities, kept herself in shape, competed ferociously in war simulations, and worked on her education. She enjoyed dominance games. Some of the fighter crew found her intimidating.

Gray Nurse
came under power. Her nose swung around. The voice of Command--placid, not quite soothing
--
said, "All fighter-recon crews, we will be passing through the inner system in fifty to sixty hours. You're on down time until then. Eat, sleep, wash. After you launch, you'll wish you had."

One or two crewfolk blew raspberries.
Gray Nurse
hadn't launched a fighter since their arrival ten months ago.

Launch was ferocious.
Louis heard a whine from the cabin gravity generators, and a planet's mass settled on him and squeezed out all the air. That wasn't supposed to happen! Then--

--
discontinuity
--

--the view jumped, navy blue masked by flame colors around a black disk. The flames died, leaving the sun a deeper black disk on black sky.

He could breathe again.

The ship's wall protected them from unfiltered sunlight by imposing a black patch on the sun. As Louis's eyes adjusted, he could make out stars, and here and there a spear of fusion light. A sudden starship zipped past, an advanced ARM design, too close.

Tunesmith said, "Sorry. I reworked the stasis field generator. The stasis effect was holding for too long. It would have left us vulnerable, but now it doesn't become active fast enough. I'll fix it. Is everyone all right?"

"We could have been crushed!" the Hindmost whimpered.

"Where is Hanuman?" Acolyte asked.

A virtual window appeared, and zoomed. "There, ahead of us."

The Fringe War was starting to notice Hanuman's tiny ship and the larger craft following four minutes behind. Tunesmith jigged and jogged to avoid dangers unseen. Ahead of them, Hanuman's
Probe Two
was jittering all over the sky. The black patch that covered the sun was expanding.

Tunesmith used the thrusters for a sustained surge; veered in the midst of the burn. The forward view went black, then cleared.

Probe Two
was gone.

Louis had never had a chance to know the little protector. He asked, "Now, what did that accomplish, Tunesmith?"

Pyrotechnics sought them out, Fringe War weapons following
Needle's
jittery path. Tunesmith ignored all that. "What you've seen buys us nothing yet--"

Probe Two
was
back.
It had moved, pulled ahead by a crazy quarter of a million miles.
Tanj dammit, what has Hanuman done?

Tunesmith said, "We are constantly testing each other, aren't we, Louis? Let me
show
you what I have learned."

The puppeteer's orchestral scream drowned out Louis's, "Wait!" Tunesmith's hands moved.

There was color and flow. Shapes weren't there, just flow patterns of light and a few tiny dark comma shapes.

In the Blind Spot, in hyperdrive, Louis had never been able to see anything.

To go into hyperdrive this close to a sun was insane, but Hanuman's
Probe Two
had done it anyway. And somehow popped out again. And Tunesmith was about to do that too! They screamed at him but he did it. He went into hyperdrive while too close to a sun.

Born and raised on the Map of Earth, Acolyte hadn't even guessed the danger. Launch must have been scary enough. In this nightmare of scrambled light and dark darting commas, he was only drawing breath to roar when they were out again.

Stars. The singularity hadn't eaten them, it had spit them out. Louis looked around, savoring his ability to see. Close behind him was a black half-moon rimmed in fire: the sun chopped in half.

Hyperdrive gone wrong might, in theory, take them anywhere. Louis had not expected to see a black arc of Ringworld eclipsing half the sun--out of all the quintillions of suns in the universe, he had not thought he would still be next to
this
one--but it was there.

Tunesmith said, "Hindmost... no? Louis, then. Will you tell me if that was the Blind Spot your histories speak of?"

Louis said, "The Blind Spot is what you don't see in hyperspace. If you try to look through a window, you're blind. You can only see what's inside the cabin. It's why most pilots use paint and curtains to cover up a General Products' hull. There are freaks, though, people and other LEs who can at least use a mass detector without going nuts. I can do that. Hindmost?" The puppeteer was in footstool mode. "Acolyte?"

The Kzin said, "Tunesmith, if you can't see while flying in hyperspace, this will be a fun ride."

"But that's not the point!" Louis tried to explain the obvious. "Ships just disappear if they drop into hyperspace too near a big mass. The space is too warped. What happened? We should be dead, or somewhere else in the universe, or in some other universe. Why aren't we? We're still in Ringworld system!"

Tunesmith said, "I found no convincing theory anywhere in the records. I must evolve one. 'Hyperspace' is a false term, Louis. The universe accessed through the Outsider drive corresponds to our own Einstein universe, point-to-point, but there are fixed velocities, quantized.

"You're aware that you can map any part of a mathematical domain onto the whole domain? For every point in one domain, you can place a unique point in the other. I thought the relationship here might be point-to-point except that space warped by nearby masses isn't represented. A ship that tried what Hanuman tried would go nowhere. Then I thought of an alternate model. We'll have to look at the recordings to know if I'm right, but after all, Hanuman
did
get in and back out--Excuse me," Tunesmith said, and turned to his controls.

Hot Needle of Inquiry
began to dodge.

The war wasn't letting them through. Thermonuclear fireworks bloomed outside the ship. The ship surged, and protective blackness washed across the walls.

Louis's inclination was to beat Tunesmith over the head with something heavy until he talked, but that would not be prudent while he was flying them through a firestorm.

Tunesmith said, "Notice that we didn't travel far in hyperdrive. Hanuman didn't either. A light year in three days is characteristic of mass-free space. This close to a star's mass, space isn't flat. I'm not sure we even exceeded lightspeed.

"We launched at point one C. We'll be among the comets in a few hours. We can safely use hyperdrive then. Hindmost, will you take the controls?"

One head poked above the jeweled mane. "No."

'Then get into ship's memory and summon up what information we collected."

A mass pointer can't record, because the user's mind is a necessary component. Tunesmith had built something better, something that took pictures in hyperdrive.

A virtual screen showed the streaming colors Louis remembered, and a deep violet dot expanding into a tadpole shape. Tunesmith said, "This explains why we didn't travel far. Too close to the sun's mass--"

"Inside the singularity," Louis said.

"Louis, I don't think there's a mathematical singularity here at all. I found reference to a mass pointer in the Hindmost's library. Have you used a mass pointer?"

"There's one in front of you. It only works in hyperdrive."

"This?" A crystal sphere, inert now. "What do you think you see with it?"

"Stars."

"Starlight?"

"...No. A mass pointer is a psionics device. You perceive, but it's not with your usual senses. Stars look bigger than they should, as if you're seeing a whole solar system."

"You've been perceiving
this."
Tunesmith waved into a recorded view of neon paint streaming through oil. "Dark matter. The missing mass. Instruments in Einstein space can't find it, but it huddles close around suns in this other domain you've been calling hyperspace. Dark matter makes galaxies more massive, changes their spin--"

"We rammed through that?"

"Wrong picture, Louis. My instruments didn't record
any
resistance. We'll test that later. It might have been different if
this
had reached us." A deep violet comma-shaped shadow. "We find life everywhere we look in this universe. Would it be surprising if an ecology has grown up within dark matter? And predators?"

Maybe Tunesmith
was
mad. Louis asked, "Are you suggesting that ships that use hyperdrive near a star are
eaten?"

Tunesmith said, "Yes."

Crazy. But... the Hindmost continued his work with the recordings and
Needle's
instruments. He hadn't flinched at the notion of predators eating spacecraft.

"I only held us in hyperdrive for a moment," Tunesmith said, "but these hypothetical predators only have one speed, Louis, and it's
fast.
'Singularity' is a mathematical term. Certainly there are mathematics involved, but they may be more complex than just places where an equation gives infinities. Inside this morass of dark matter, the characteristic speed may be drastically lowered. The proof is that we live."

"We are being observed," the Hindmost said. "I sense ranging beams from ARM and Patriarchy telescopes and neutrino detectors. Ships begin to accelerate inward. The ship from Sheathclaws houses telepaths of both species, though they can't reach us yet. I've found the comet cluster that hides the Kzinti flagship
Diplomat.
It's across the solar system, seven light-hours away and receding behind us. Tunesmith, do you have a plan?"

The Ghoul protector said, "I have the simple part. We will observe the Fringe War as we coast outward. Let our velocity carry us beyond the danger zone, the dark matter zone where predators lurk. Then swing around the system in hyperdrive. Approach
Diplomat
from the other side of the system. Await developments."

Hours passed. The Fringe War made no further test of
Needle's
defenses. When the sun was only a bright point and the Ringworld was barely more than that, Tunesmith asked, "Hindmost, can you perceive hyperspace directly?"

"Yes."

"I can't. But if you can't fly for terror, I must fly
Needle"

The puppeteer uncoiled. He took
Needle's
controls. "Where shall I fly?"

"Take us ten light-minutes outward from
Diplomat's
last position."

Human beings can't look into the Blind Spot. Most would go mad. Some can use a mass pointer to steer through hyperspace and keep their sanity too. Some Kzinti can perceive hyperspace directly; their female kin have mated into the family of the Patriarch for half a thousand years.

This time there was nothing. Not darkness, not featureless gray, not even the memory of sight. Louis fumbled until he could opaque the hull in crew quarters.

Acolyte said, "I don't know enough to ask intelligent questions, Louis."

"We're okay. I understand this. This is hyperdrive the way I'm used to seeing it. We're outside the... borderline," Louis said. "Even if I have to unlearn everything I know."

All his life he'd thought in terms of a mathematical singularity. In such a system, the realm of heavy masses--suns and planets--would be undefined in hyperspace. Ships couldn't go there.

"What we're doing is a standard maneuver. We have a velocity, right? We were flung up from the Ringworld, toward the sun and past it and outward. We still have that huge velocity, straight out from the sun.

"But the Hindmost is taking us halfway around the system in hyperdrive. When he comes out, we'll have the same velocity we started with, but pointed back toward the sun and the Ringworld."

"We're out," the Hindmost said. They were in black space with one overbright star. They'd been in hyperdrive about five minutes.

The Hindmost said, "The Fringe War doesn't normally reach this far out. We're safe for the moment. Our velocity vector is inward, toward
Diplomat.
We should act within ten minutes, before
Diplomat
can see our neutrino wake and Cherenkov radiation."

"Get me a view," Tunesmith ordered.

Ten light-minutes is further than the distance between Earth and Sol. The virtual window popped up, and zoomed, and wiggled a loose-packed comet out of the starscape, and zoomed...

A lens of steel and glass was the Kzinti command ship
Diplomat
emerging from its cometary nest.

That larger sphere just popping into view was
Long Shot,
close and closing.

Tunesmith barely glanced at the view. "They'll be a few minutes matching. We have time. Hindmost, show us what we recorded in this last hyperdrive jump."

The hypercamera's record was blank. Louis snickered.

Tunesmith reproved him. "Louis, there's nothing to see. We're outside the envelope of dark matter that collects around our star. Where there almost isn't any dark matter, there almost isn't space either! This is why we can travel faster than light does in vacuum, because distance in this domain is drastically contracted.

"Now I need only learn why there is more than one characteristic velocity. I'll get that by studying
Long Shot.
Hindmost, take us in range of
Diplomat."

"Two fighting ships guard the near side of the comet."

"I see them. Use hyperdrive. We'll beat our own light."

The Blind Spot flashed for only an instant.

Their target was still too far away to see, but the virtual window nailed it: a loose dark fluffy comet, icy puffball satellites drifting around it, and four ships, two linked. Tunesmith's knotty hands danced.
Needle
surged: the cabin gravity motors were whining again. The larger ships,
Diplomat
and
Long Shot
locked together at the airlocks, were coming up fast. Slowing. Slowing.