Niven - Stars and Gods

STARS AND GODS

TOR BOOKS BY LARRY NIVEN

Destinys Road

Ringworlds Children

Rainbow Mars

The Draco Tavern

N-Space

Playgrounds of the Mind

Scatterbrain

Stars and Gods

TOR BOOKS BY LARRY NIVEN AND STEVEN BARNES

The Descent of Anansi

Achilles Choice

Saturns Race

Dream Park

The Barsoom Project

The California Voodoo Game

The Moon Maze Game

WITH JERRY POURNELLE AND STEVEN BARNES

Beowulfs Children

WITH JERRY POURNELLE

Inferno

Escape from Hell

WITH EDWARD M. LERNER

Fleet of Worlds

Juggler of Worlds

Destroyer of Worlds

Betrayer of Worlds

The Fate of Worlds

WITH BRENDA COOPER

Building Harlequins Moon

LARRY NIVEN

A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK NEW YORK

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This e-book is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this e-book, or make this e-book publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce or upload this e-book, other than to read it on one of your personal devices.

This is a collection of fiction and nonfiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in these stories and novel excerpts are either products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously.

STARS AND GODS

Copyright 2010 by Larry Niven

All rights reserved.

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

ISBN 978-0-7653-0864-1

First Edition: August 2010

Printed in the United States of America

0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

,
by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

,
by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

,
by Larry Niven and Brenda Cooper

,
by Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner

,
by Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner

by Brenda Cooper in 2000 AD

We have here a collection of everything thats been going on in my life for the past six years or so, since I published Scatterbrain. The world has changed some. So have I. Im seventy-one years old, and feeling it.

Writing has not become easier, or so it seems. I see more implications in a given idea, so the stories get longer and more detailed. The really good ideas get used up first.

Hey! Time magazine published a list of required summer reading in their July 13, 2009, issue. Ringworld made the list, forty years after I wrote it! The Count of Monte Cristo made the list too. Just a dozen stories total.

Where was I? I was saying that writing hasnt gotten easier, but I seem to be putting books out faster. Part of the reason is collaborations. Ive done a lot of them, as you can see via this book. Collaborations are less lonely than solo flights. Certainly there are ideas (and fictional universes) that should not be shared but Ive started sharing even the Known Space universe. I told Jim Baen I would never do that, but things change.

And part of the reason is I get offers from folk who know my name. Ive joined some funny anthologies. And

Lisa Snellings Clark is an artist whose work generates stories. Shes put out some collaborations, little story collections, with some of the finest writers around. I want to join that company, and the title is fixed: Strange Light. Three stories so far.

So: six years, and not much in the way of disasters. The house hasnt burned down. No surgeries, save for a cataract. Deaths well, I think Ive reached that age, and so has the science fiction field.

Movies: none yet. When I started writing, I deliberately gave up the notion of restricting my special effects to things that could be put on a screen. Now, wow! They can do anything! And theyre using it to make movies like Meteor, in which incoming rocks can be shot down by bazookas.

So here is the best Ive been able to write in the past six years and more. Enjoy.

Louis Wu woke aflame with new life, under a coffin lid.

Dracula, he murmured; but the analogy had a dubious flavor. Boosterspice was centuries old. Nobody need turn vampire just to live a long time.

Displays glowed above his eyes. Bone composition, blood, deep reflexes, urea and potassium and zinc balance: he could identify most of these. The damage listed wasnt great. Wounds; fatigue; torn ligaments and extensive bruises; two ribs cracked; all relics of the battle with Bram. All healed now, rebuilt cell by cell.

Hed felt dead and cooling when he climbed in, eighty-four days ago, the display said. Sixty-seven Ringworld days, about nine falans.

Hed been under repair for twice that long the first time he lay in this box. Then, his internal plumbing systems had been leaking into each other, and hed been eleven years without the longevity drug called boosterspice. Hed been old.

Testosterone was high, adrenalin high and rising.

Louis pushed steadily up against the lid. The lid wouldnt move faster, but his body craved action. He slid out and dropped to a stone floor, cold beneath his bare feet.

He was naked. He stood in a vast cavern. Where was Needle?

The spacecraft Hot Needle of Inquiry had been embedded in stone, last he looked, and Carlos Wus experimental nanotech repair system had been in the crew quarters. Now its components sat within, a nest of instruments and cables on a floor of cooled lava. The doc had been partly pulled apart. Everything was still running.

Tunesmith must have been studying its workings while it healed Louis Wu.

Nearby, Hot Needle of Inquiry had been filleted like a finless fish. A slice of hull running almost nose to tail had been cut away, exposing housing, cargo, docking for a lander now destroyed, thruster plates, and the hyperdrive motor housing. More than half of the ships volume was tanks. The rim of the cut had been lined with copper or bronze, and cables in the metal led to instruments and a generator.

The cut section had been pulled aside by massive machinery. It too was rimmed in bronze laced with cables.

The hyperdrive motor had run the length of the ship. Now it was laid out on the lava, in a nest of instruments. Tunesmith again. The Hindmost wouldnt have needed to study that.

Louis wandered over to look.

It had been repaired.

Louis had stranded the Hindmost in Ringworld space by chopping the hyperdrive nearly in half, long years ago. Dismounted, it looked otherwise ready to take Needle between the stars and the design looked altered.

I could go home, Louis thought, tasting the notion. He liked it.

Where was everybody? Louis looked around him, feeling the adrenaline surge. He was starting to shiver with cold.