Now Hot Needle of Inquiry was sliding across the lava. Louis wondered if theyd have to run after the ship, but Tunesmith led them to a stepping disk that flicked them aboard. The Hindmost and Tunesmith moved to the control room; Acolyte and Louis stayed in crew quarters.

While Louis was getting into his suit, Probe Two launched in a flare of lightning and was gone into the sky. The launch system was inefficient, Louis thought. Bad for the environment. Tunesmith must have power to throw away.

Needle sank toward the base of the launcher.

Tunesmith was suited up much faster than the others. "Eat before you close your helmets!" he shouted. "Theres time." He raced through some diagnostic programs, then began using stepping disks to flick through the ship, stopping to observe, to fiddle. In two or three minutes he was back.

Needles control cabin had been given place for a copilot. Tunesmiths bolted-in seat was a layer of plates that moved to accommodate him. He glanced around at his crew — in place, webbed down, the Hindmost beside him — and launched.

CHAPTER 6

The Blind Spot

"Another one!" Forrestier shouted.

Tec Roxanny Gauthier looked. In the wall display, what was rising past the edge of the Ringworld was no more than a blurred point. Gray Nurse was on patrol among the inner comets, far, far away from any Ringworld action.

Roxanny asked, "Did you see where it came from?"

"Same as the other. One of the big salt oceans, an island cluster."

The fighter-recon crews didnt actually know anything. They were watching a wall display relayed from Control. The officers in Control could feed them any data they liked. That didnt stop crewfolk from speculating.

Roxanny said, "The first one was too small. Sos this one. Theyre not ships, theyre just probes."

"Fast, though. Tec Gauthier, whats that?"

That, rising from the same Great Ocean island, was a larger dot, elongated, moving with the same amazing speed as the probe.

"Thats a ship," Roxanny said. Headquarters would have to respond to that! Gray Nurse herself would not fight. She was a carrier. She was long and slender, built for spin gravity in emergencies, and she carried twenty fighter-recon ships. Roxanny belonged to the crew of the fighter Snail Darter.

Crewfolk numbered about two men for every woman, all between forty and eighty years old. Younger than forty, Command wouldnt trust your reflexes. Older than eighty, why hadnt you been promoted? In Sol system theyd been the best. Here, in this strange place, some were startled to find themselves average.

Roxanny Gauthier was fifty-one, and still one of the best. Lack of action didnt bother her. For two years shed enjoyed Gray Nurses 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.

The Fringe War couldnt last forever. The forces involved controlled energies that were too powerful. If the Ringworld itself was getting involved, nothing would last much longer.

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. Youre on down time until then. Eat, sleep, wash. After you launch, youll wish you had."

One or two crewfolk blew raspberries. Gray Nurse hadnt launched a fighter since their arrival ten months ago.

Launch was ferocious. Louis heard a whine from the cabin gravity generators, and a planets mass settled on him and squeezed out all the air. That wasnt 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 ships wall protected them from unfiltered sunlight by imposing a black patch on the sun. As Louiss 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 doesnt become active fast enough. Ill 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 Hanumans tiny ship and the larger craft following four minutes behind. Tunesmith jigged and jogged to avoid dangers unseen. Ahead of them, Hanumans 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 Needles jittery path. Tunesmith ignored all that. "What youve 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, arent we, Louis? Let me show you what I have learned."

The puppeteers orchestral scream drowned out Louiss, "Wait!" Tunesmiths hands moved.

There was color and flow. Shapes werent 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 Hanumans 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 hadnt 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 hadnt 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 dont see in hyperspace. If you try to look through a window, youre blind. You can only see whats inside the cabin. Its 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 cant see while flying in hyperspace, this will be a fun ride."

"But thats 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 arent we? Were still in Ringworld system!"