Ringworld's Children Read Online Free PDF Page A

One."
    Probe One was hard to see when its motor was off, but the motor was sputtering now as it dodged plasma weapons and missiles and, somehow, even lasers. Tunesmith's instruments followed it out toward interstellar space.
    The Ringworld system retained its outer comets. All the near masses--planets, moons, asteroids--had been stripped from Ringworld system long ago, but comets must have been judged no threat to the Ringworld. After all, there were no big masses to change their orbits and hurl them inward.
    Ships of half a dozen species had been hiding among the comets ever since Chmeee and Louis revealed the Ringworld's existence nearly forty years ago.
    Now ARM ships--human-built, the police and military branch of the United Nations--streaked in from offscreen. They looked more like tethers than ships, some with smaller ships attached. Probe One lit like a flashbulb-- guessed wrong about a laser! --and vanished.
    Tunesmith's screen swung wide, following nothing obvious.
    Louis hadn't seen any debris.
    "Hanging People" was a generic designation for hominids who lived a monkey lifestyle. Some weren't sapient. A Hanging People protector would still gain human intelligence or better. Hastily trained for spaceflight, it might outguess ARM defenses, but Tunesmith would still outthink it, would still keep control. Being a protector was all about control.
    Tunesmith's telescope swung half around the sky, a hundred and eighty degrees, or nearly that. Tunesmith's viewpoint focused on a fuzzy object... a comet, loosely packed ice drifting apart. Then on a spacecraft emerging from within the cloud.
    It was lens shaped, painted black with vivid orange markings in the dots-and-commas of Kzinti script.
    "Markings name this ship Diplomat," the Hindmost told Louis. "We've observed. Diplomat seems well armed, but it never comes close to the Ringworld star. Always it lurks among the comets. Always it can flee in hyperdrive."
    "That doesn't sound like Kzinti."
    "They learn. I deem Diplomat the command ship for the Patriarchy fleet."
    Probe One was back. It had circled halfway around Ringworld's sun through hyperspace in less than thirty minutes. Its huge intrinsic velocity had pointed away from the sun; now it carried the ship inward, straight toward Diplomat.
    Word from the other side of the sky would not have reached Diplomat yet. Minutes passed before the ship's Kzinti crew reacted to the intruder. Then threads of interplanetary dust glowed a bit in Diplomat's laser fire, and a handful of small ships zipped out of the ice cloud.
    Probe One began dodging. A laser: Probe One flared brilliantly. Louis squinted against the glare. Tunesmith's screen wasn't built to protect viewers from blindness. Probe One dodged out of the beam and into a scintillation of impacts and was still going.
    Louis asked, "General Products' hull?"
    "That, under a layer of Ringworld floor material."
    Another ship popped out nearby, just long enough for Louis to get a good view. It was much larger than Diplomat, a transparent sphere with complex machinery packed tightly inside the hull... gone now, like the soap bubble it resembled.
    "Long Shot," Louis said, anger rising.
    "I saw it," the Hindmost said.
    "They ran. Kzinti don't do that."
    "Long Shot is being used for courier service. It's too valuable to risk, and the Patriarchy will not have found room for armaments."
    "ARM and Patriarchy were supposed to share that ship. Chmeee and I gave it to them with that understanding."
    Probe One was too near the lens ship, accelerating sideways to get around it while fighting energy displays and lesser ships. Suddenly there was actinic light. Louis blinked hard. When he could see again, Probe One was gone.
    "What the futz was that?" he demanded.
    "Antimatter bullet. The newer ARM ships are all powered by antimatter, but we had not seen it used by the Patriarchy. They must manufacture their own in a particle accelerator somewhere. The ARM has a source, an antimatter solar