标题: 《The Ringworld Throne 》作者：- Larry Niven【EPUB】 [打印本页] 作者: zaq 时间: 2014-6-6 07:32 标题: 《The Ringworld Throne 》作者：- Larry Niven【EPUB】 The Ringworld Throne by Larry Niven Prologue - The Map of Mount St. Helens A.D. 1733 -- Fall of the Cities (Puppeteer Experimentalist regime introduces superconductor plague to Ringworld) A.D. 2851 -- First contact: Lying Bastard impacts Ringworld A.D. 2878 -- Hot Needle of Inquiry leaves Canyon A.D. 2880 -- Hot Needle of Inquiry reaches Ringworld A.D. 2881 -- Ringworld stability restored A.D. 2882 The Hindmost danced. They were dancing as far as the eye could see, beneath a ceiling that was a flat mirror. Tens of thousands of his kind moved in tight patterns that were great mutating curves, heads cocked high and low to keep their orientation. The clicking of their hooves was a part of the music, like a hundred thousand castanets. *Kick short, kick past, veer. One eye for your counterpartner. In this movement and the next, never glance toward the wall that hides the Brides. Never touch.* For millions of years the competition dance, and a wide spectrum of other social vectors, had determined who would mate and who would not. Beyond the illusion of the dance loomed the illusion of a window, distant and huge. The Hindmost's view of Hidden Patriarch was a distraction, a ground-rules hazard, an obstacle within the dance. *Extend a head; bow --* The other three-legged dancers, the vast floor and ceiling, were projections from Hot Needle of Inquiry's computer memory. Dancing maintained the Hindmost's skills, his reflexes, his health. This year had been a time for torpor, for recuperation and contemplation; but such states could change in an instant. One Earthly year ago, or half of the puppeteer world's archaic year, or forty Ringworld rotations ... the Hindmost and his alien thralls had found a mile-long sailing ship moored below the Map of Mars. They had named it Hidden Patriarch and set sail, leaving the Hindmost behind. The window in the Hindmost's dance was a real-time