Ringworld - Larry Niven Page 0,110

There will be no repairs for the cziltang brone. The entire Ringworld must be barbarous by now.”

“How?”

“Prill tried to explain to me what happened here, as one of her crew explained it to her. He had oversimplified, of course. It may be that the process started years before the Pioneer departed on its last circuit…”

There had been ten inhabited worlds. When the Ringworld was finished, all of these had been abandoned, left to go their way without the benefit of man.

Consider such a world:

The land is covered with cities in all stages of development. Perhaps slums were made obsolete, but somewhere there are still slums, if only preserved for history. Across the land one can find all the by-products of living: used containers, broken machines, damaged books or film tapes or scrolls, anything that cannot be reused or reprocessed at a profit, and many things which could be. The seas have been used as garbage dumps for a hundred thousand years. Somewhere in that time, they were dumping useless radioactive end products of fission.

How strange is it if the sea life evolves to fit the new conditions?

How strange, if new life evolves capable of living on the garbage?

“That happened on Earth once,” said Louis Wu. “A yeast that could eat polyethylene. It was eating the plastic bags off the supermarket shelves. It’s dead now. We had to give up polyethylene.”

Consider ten such worlds.

Bacteria evolved to eat zinc compounds, plastics, paints, wiring insulation, fresh rubbish, and rubbish thousands of years obsolete. It would not have mattered but for the ramships.

The ramships came routinely to the old worlds, seeking forms of life that had been forgotten or that had not adapted to the Ringworld. They brought back other things: souvenirs, objets d’art which had been forgotten or merely postponed. Many museums were still being transferred, one incredibly valuable piece at a time.

One of the ramships brought back a mold capable of breaking down the structure of a room-temperature superconductor much used in sophisticated machinery.

The mold worked slowly. It was young and primitive and, in the beginning, easily killed. Variations may have been brought to the Ringworld several times by several ships, until one variation finally took hold.

Because it did work slowly, it did not ruin the ramship, until long after the ramship had landed. It did not destroy the spaceport’s cziltang brone until crewmen and spaceport workmen had carried it inside. It did not get into the power beam receivers until the shuttles that traveled through the electromagnetic cannon on the rim wall had carried it everywhere on the Ringworld.

“Power beam receivers?”

“Power is generated on the shadow squares by thermoelectricity, then beamed to the Ringworld. Presumably the beam, too, is fail-safe. We did not detect it coming in. It must have shut itself down when the receivers failed.”

“Surely,” said Speaker, “one could make a different superconductor. We know of two basic molecular structures, each with many variations for different temperature ranges.”

“There are at least four basic structures,” Nessus corrected him. “You are quite right, the Ringworld should have survived the Fall of the Cities. A younger, more vigorous society would have. But consider the difficulties they faced.

“Much of their leadership was dead, killed in falling buildings when the power failed.

“Without power they could do little experimenting to find other superconductors. Stored power was generally confiscated for the personal use of men with political power, or was used to run enclaves of civilization in the hope that someone else was doing something about the emergency. The fusion drives of the ramships were unavailable, as the cziltang brones used superconductors. Men who might have accomplished something could not meet; the computer that ran the electromagnetic cannon was dead, and the cannon itself had no power.”

Louis said, “For want of a nail, the kingdom fell.”

“I know the story. It is not strictly applicable,” said Nessus. “Something could have been done. There was power to condense liquid helium. With the power beams off, the repair of a power receiver would have been useless; but a cziltang brone could have been adapted to a metal superconductor cooled by liquid helium. A cziltang brone would have given access to spaceports. Ships might have flown to the shadow squares, reopened the power beams so that other liquid-helium-cooled superconductors could be adapted to the power beam receivers.

“But all this would have required stored power. The power was used to light street lamps, or to support the remaining floating buildings, or to cook meals and freeze foods! And so the Ringworld