CHAPTER 9 — Shadow Squares

Blazing, the G2 sun dawned beyond the straight black rim of the ring. It was uncomfortably bright until Speaker touched a polarizer; and then Louis could look at the disc, and he found an edge of shadow cutting its arc. Shadow square.

"We must be careful," Nessus warned. "If we were to match velocities with the ring and hover above the inner surface, we would surely be attacked."

Speaker's answer came in a slurred rumble. The kzin must be tiring after so many hours behind the horseshoe of controls. "By what weapon would we be attacked? We have shown that the Ringworld engineers do not have so much as a working radio station."

"We cannot guess at the nature of their communications. Telepathy, perhaps, or resonant vibrations in the ring floor, or electrical impulses in metal wires. Similarly, we know nothing of their weaponry. Hovering over their surface, we would be a serious threat. They would use what weapons they have."

Louis nodded his agreement. He was not naturally cautious, and the Ringworld held him by the curiosity bump; but the puppeteer was right.

Hovering over the surface, the Liar would be a potential meteor. A big one. Moving at merely orbital speed, such a mass was a hellish danger; for one touch of atmosphere would send it shrieking down at several hundred miles per second. Moving at faster than orbital speed, holding a curved path with the drives, the ship would be a lesser but a surer threat; for if the drive were to fail, "centrifugal force" would hurl the ship outward/down at populated lands. The Ringworlders would not take meteors lightly. Not when a single puncture in the ring floor would drain all the world's breathing-air and spew it at the stars.

Speaker turned from the control board. It put him eye to eye with the puppeteer's flat heads. "Your orders, then."

"First you must slow the ship to orbital speed."

"Then?"

"Accelerate toward the sun. We can inspect the ring's habitable surface to some extent as it diminishes below us. Our major target shall be the shadow squares."

"Such caution is unnecessary and humiliating. We have no slightest interest in the shadow squares."

Tanj! Louis thought. Tired and hungry as he was, would he now be called on to play peacemaker for the aliens? It had been too long since any of them had eaten or slept. If Louis was tired, the kzin must be exhausted, spoiling for a fight.

The puppeteer was saying, "We have a definite interest in the shadow squares. Their area intercepts more sunlight than does the Ringworld itself. They would make ideal thermoelectric generators for the Ringworld's power supply."

The kzin snarled something venomous in the Hero's Tongue. His reply in Interworld seemed ludicrously mild. "You are unreasonable. We surely have no interest in the source of the Ringworld's power. Let us land, find a native, and ask him about his power sources."

"I refuse to consider landing."

"Do you question my skill at the controls?"

"Do you question my decisions as leader?"

"Since you broach the subject -"

"I still carry the tasp, Speaker. My word governs the disposal of the Long Shot and the second quantum hyperdrive, and I am still Hindmost aboard this ship. You will bear in mind -"

"Stop," said Louis. They looked at him.

"Your arguments are premature," said Louis. "Why not turn our telescopes on the shadow squares? That way you'll both have more facts to shout at each other. It's more fun that way."

Nessus faced himself, eye to eye. The kzin sheathed his claws.

"On a more pragmatic level," said Louis, "We're all bushed. Tired. Hungry. Who wants to fight on an empty stomach? I'm going to catch an hour under a sleep set. I suggest you do the same."

Teela was shocked. "You don't want to watch? Well be seeing the inner side!"

"You watch. Tell me what happens." He left.

He woke groggy and ravenous. Hunger pulled him from between sleeping plates, then kept him in the cabin long enough to dial a handmeal. Eating one-handed, he strolled out into the lounge.

"What's happening?"

Teela answered, rather coldly, across the top of a reading screen. "You missed everything. Slaver ships, Mist Demons, space dragons, cannibal starseeds, all attacking at once. Speaker had to fend them off with his bare hands. You'd have loved it."

"Nessus?"

The puppeteer answered from the control room. "Speaker and I have agreed to move on to the shadow squares. Speaker is alseep. We will be in clear space soon."

"Anything new?"

"Yes, considerable. Let me show you."

The puppeteer did things to the scope screen controls. He must have studied kzinti symbology, somewhere.

The view in the scope screen was like Earth seen from a great height. Mountains, lakes. valleys, rivers, large bare spots that might be desert.

"Desert?"

"So it would seem, Louis. Speaker took temperature and humidity spectra. Evidence accumulates that the Ringworld has reverted to savagery, at least in part. Why else would there be deserts?

"We found another deep salt ocean on the opposite side of the ring, as big as the one on this side. Spectra confirmed the salt. Clearly the engineers found it necessary to balance such tremendous masses of water."

Louis bit into his handmeal.

"Your suggestion was a good one," Nessus remarked. "You may be our most skilled diplomat, despite Speaker's training and mine. It was after we turned the scope on the shadow squares that Speaker agreed to a closer look."

"Oh? Why?"

"We found a peculiarity. The shadow squares are moving at a speed comfortably greater than orbital velocity." Louis stopped chewing.

"That is not impossible," the puppeteer added. "The shadow squares may hold matching stable elliptical orbits. They need not maintam a constant distance from the primary."

Louis swallowed mightily to clear the way for speech. "That's crazy. The length of the day would vary!"

Teela said, "We thought it might be to separate summer from winter, by making the nights shorter and then longer. But that doesn't make sense either."

"No, it doesn't. The shadow squares make their circuit in less than a month. Who needs a three-week year?"

"You see the problem," said Nessus. "The abnormality was too small to detect from our own system. What causes it? Does gravity increase anomalously near the primary, requiring a higher orbital speed? In any case, the shadow objects merit a closer look."

Passing time was marked by the sharp black edge of a shadow square passing across the sun.

Presently the kzin left his room, exchanged civilities with the humans in the lounge, and replaced Nessus in the control room.

Shortly thereafter he emerged. There was no sound to indicate trouble; but Louis suddenly saw that the puppeteer was backing away from a murderous kzinti glare. Speaker was ready to kill.

"Okay," Louis said resignedly. "What's the trouble?"

"This leaf-eater," the kzin began, and strangled on his anger. He started over. "Our schizophrenic leader-from-behind has had us in a minimum-fuel orbit since I went to rest. At this rate it will take us four months to reach the belt of shadow squarts." And Speaker began to curse in the Hero's Tongue.

"You put us in that orbit yourself," the puppeteer said mildly.

The kzin's voice rose in volume. "It was my intention to leave the Ringworld slowly, so that we might have a long look at the inner surface. We might then accelerate directly toward the shadow squares, arriving within hours instead of months!"

"There is no need to bellow, Speaker. If we accelerate toward the shadow squares, our projected orbit will intersect the Ringworld. I wish to avoid that."