The Ringworld Throne by Larry Niven Page A

saving of them all. Whand had had enough of vampires, and it seemed he and Spash had gotten pregnant. They would stay to refuel Cruiser Three. That left Valavirgillin and Kaywerbrimmis, the remaining drivers, split up to command two cruisers.
    They’d chosen the teams early, then argued about it every night since.
    Raking through a mountainous Grass Giant midden for several days had not improved the Machine People’s standing with these tribes. Vala was sure of that. But Grass Giant dung had yielded many barrels of saltpeter crystals.
    The relief map outside the wall had become elaborate and wonderful. Only at halfnight and halfday was there light for Ghouls and the other species to work together on it; but they’d had a falan, seventy-five days, to do that. Dirt was replaced with colored clays. Once witnesses agreed on the shape of the land, they’d baked it hard under coals, and afterward used colored sand to mark possible routes for the cruisers. They were still moving those lines when night fell, and all retreated inside.
    The vampires didn’t come every night, but they came in swarms.
    Vampires didn’t learn, didn’t communicate. Moonwa had mounted the Marsh People’s curved window in the starboard-spin curve of the wall. The vampires attacked from starboard-spin, and warriors of four species killed them with guns and crossbows, firing around the edge of an invisible shield.
    Vala had learned crossbows that way, several nights running. She loved the false sense of invulnerability ... false, because the window would not stop vampire scent.
    The main building was a near-dome, fabric stretched over the top of a dirt wall, with a central pole. It was awesomely big, but awesomely crowded. Fifteen hundred Grass Giants—more women than men, a great many children, infants everywhere—made a stench rich enough to slice with a scythe-sword.
    Wemb was in a cluster of wives. They were feeding her by hand, feeding themselves, too, and Wemb seemed to be enjoying it. Barok waved at her, and she waved back without getting up. Recovering nicely, Vala thought, from the night she and Barok had spent down among the vampires.
    Barok would ride with Cruiser One. Vala had wondered if he would drop out of the game with Whand and Spash, or chase down the vampires who had taken his daughter.
    Grass Giants were big, but they could stand crowding. For Machine People, Vala discovered, the problem was to avoid getting stepped on.
    The Reds were prickly. Grass Giants steered clear of them.
    If Reds and Machine People were feeling overmatched, why weren’t the even smaller Gleaners intimidated? But they’d found strategies that seemed to work. Some were playing with the children, some were grooming adults. Their nearsighted eyes found insect parasites with precision.
    The Thurl pulled himself free of a ten of wives. He asked Vala, courteously and with no malice, “Do you have what you wanted of the shit pile?”
    So, it was time to reveal a secret. “Yes, we thank you. When we mix the crystals with the sulfur and charcoal the Reds are gathering, we will have what propels our bullets.”
    “Ah,” the Thurl said, hiding surprise.
    He could not make gunpowder: he still didn’t know the proportions, Vala told herself. But now he knew that this was no mere Machine People perversion.
    Into the quiet, vampire music insinuated itself, and quiet became silence.
    But now the vampires’ song had a rising instrumental accompaniment. First it matched the vampire music. Vala had learned to pick out the harp, the grieving tube, the whistling tube, the thutter. Now the Ghoulish music swirled away, jarring with the vampire song, drowning it, while the thutter in the background played faster and faster, pulling heartbeats along. And now there was no vampire song at all.
    Next down they’d been rolling. By night they camped on a bluff above a river. The vampires left them alone.
    They reached Ginjerofer’s herds early on the second day. The Reds had