"And now its a little eyestorm. Tanj, this isnt even the main event! What they want is Long Shot. Needle is nothing."

"A Needle in a haystack? What you describe is mostly your imagination," said the Hindmost. "Much of a war goes unseen. That larger ship, I have identified it. Lure of Far Lands Limited, the Kdatlyno and Jinx business alliance. They wont fight, they will only observe. Here is Acolyte. Louis, go eat. Bathe."

Louis jerked awake. Something had disturbed him… a flash of light from the screen?

Acolyte and the Hindmost were asleep, sprawled far apart on the hard floor beneath the Meteor Defense Room walls. It was good to be clean; hed eaten like an army; sleeping plates would be good too. But anyone who slept aboard Needle would miss something.

Louis sat up. Nothing hurt! He grinned, remembering what an older woman had told him at his two hundredth birthday party. "Dearest, if you can wake in the morning with no pain in your joints and muscles, its a sure sign that you have died in the night."

The Hindmost had reset the wraparound screen. It showed a skyscape with windows in it, views of an eyestorm and the Other Ocean. Around the windows stars moved uneasily: ships of the Fringe War. All views were quiet now.

It did bother him, that he couldnt think of anything to do except watch. He was trying to outthink a protector. What chance would he have later if he couldnt find an angle now, while Tunesmith was being hunted across the system?

On the Ringworld were millions of seas. Louis couldnt guess where the Hindmost had put Hot Needle of Inquiry. He could get there by a stepping-disk setting. The first pair of ARM ships hadnt found it, and now they were too busy maneuvering. The war above the eyestorm had been quiet for hours, but ships continued to shift position.

Sudden light splashed around the Farland ship: antimatter bullets intercepted in transit. The Farland ship was accelerating away from the action. Its new course would miss the Ringworld. A ruby laser lit it brilliantly, but diffused, its attacker already deep in atmosphere. Ships tens of millions of miles apart had some chance to defend themselves.

But the war above the eyestorm was getting too tight.

Fire burst into the clouds where two ARM ships were hiding. Louis cried, "Wake up! Wake up! Youre missing action!"

The others stirred.

Tunesmiths deep-radar window showed one ARM ship diving through the puncture hole — leaving hard-won turf abandoned, but safeguarding data from its explorations, unless some ambush waited beneath the Ringworld floor. The other accelerated hard, running down the storms axis in a channel of clear air, the pupil of the eye.

Kzinti had deep-radar too. Two lens ships were diving. Fire followed them down.

The eyestorm flashed to a blue-white glare.

The Hindmost killed the zoom window before it could blind them. On a less expanded view — Tunesmith must have a camera on one of the shadow squares — a star glared near the Other Ocean, as big as… too big… far too big.

The puppeteer said, "I believe one of the ARM ships exploded. Antimatter. Well have a hole the size of…" The Hindmost thought it through, then folded into himself and was silent.

The eyestorm was gone, blasted apart. Cloud patterns showed an expanding ring of shock wave crossing seas and gray-green land. A hemisphere of cloud enveloped a dimming fireball.

"What has happened here?"

Tunesmith and the little chimp-protector were on the stepping disk: a sorcerer confronting wayward apprentices, demanding explanations. Louiss throat closed on him. It felt like he should have stopped this. It felt like Tunesmith would, should blame him.

"Antimatter explosion," Acolyte said.

"Is there a hole under that cloud?"

The question was already silly: the dome of cloud was dimpled in the center. It was being sucked into interstellar space. When Acolyte didnt answer, Louis said, "There was already a hole—"

"Of course. We have to move fast," Tunesmith said. "Come." He had the lip of the stepping disk up and was redirecting it.

Louis found his voice. "Sure, nows a good time to move fast. Youve brought the war home! And now the airs draining out of the Ringworld!"

What had been a fireball was nearly gone. The Ringworld floor was naked scrith within a slowly expanding ring of cloud. Clouds streamed toward the hole.

And Tunesmith had Louis by the forearm. He walked them to a stepping disk.

Hanumans eyes took it all in in one sweep:

Hed bent the laws that governed this universe and a hypothetical other. His mission was a total success. And none of it mattered. The Ringworld held everything worth saving, and the Ringworld floor was ripped open.

The puncture was on the far side of the arch. That was both good and ill. Death would be a long time marching around the curve to reach them here; but Tunesmiths countermeasures would have to cross that same gap.

The aliens saw it too. The most alien was the eldest, the most experienced, perhaps the wisest, and that one had shut down his mind. The hominid had lost hope. The youngest, the nothing-like-a-big-cat, was — like Hanuman — waiting for someone to solve it.

Tunesmith?

Tunesmith was in motion while Hanuman was still catching up. The Ghoul protector showed no doubts. When Tunesmith and Louis Wu vanished, the little protector followed. Tunesmith would fix it.

Machinery on a Brobdingnagian scale had been moved into the workstation under Mons Olympus.

Tunesmith dropped Louiss arm and moved among his instruments at a sprint. The little protector, Hanuman, scampered after.

Acolyte popped up next to Louis. "Louis, whats happening?"

"The airs draining out of the Ringworld."

"That would be… the end of everything?"

"Yah. Starting on the far side. We might have days, but only because the Ringworld is so endlessly big. I have no idea what Tunesmith thinks hes doing."

"What is that massive structure? Ive seen it—"

Hanuman rejoined them. "That is a meteor plug, largest version. Of course it was never tested."

It was the shape of an aspirin tablet and roughly the size of the Twin Peaks arcology or a small mountain, still small compared to the puncture in the Ringworld. Louis said, "I remember. It was in one of the caverns. He set it moving here on big stacks of float plates."

They watched it slide into the hole in the floor and fall, guided by magnetic fields toward the base of the linear launcher. Tunesmith was at the edge, watching. Louis and Acolyte went to join him.

Forty miles from the roof to the floor of the Repair Center ran the loops of the linear launcher. It was way overbuilt for something as small as Hot Needle of Inquiry. It would better accommodate something like this half-mile-wide package of Tunesmiths. The launchers bottom sat on an array of float plates, and that was moving to adjust its aim.

The package was near the bottom now, still falling, but slowing.

Tunesmith saw them watching. Immediately he hustled them away from the hole in the floor.

Lightning roared at their backs. Louis turned to see something tremendous flash past, out through the crater in Mons Olympus and gone.

Acolytes ears were curled into tight knots. Hanuman lifted his hands from his ears and said something inaudible. Louis couldnt hear anything. His ears still held the roar and agony of that lightning blast.

Louis didnt lose his deafness for some time. Acolyte recovered much faster. Louis could see the Kzin discussing… whatever… with Tunesmith and Hanuman while they all followed the action in a wall display of the Meteor Defense Room. The Hindmost remained in footstool mode.