Free Ringworld by Larry Niven Page B

up, were Lous Wu and the Long Shot.
    Somewhere far behind him was a bubble of stars some seventy light years in diameter. Known space was small and very far away.
    No point in searching for the fleet. Louis wouldn't know what to look for. He went to wake Nessus.
    ***
    Anchored by his teeth to an exercise rung, Nessus peered over Louis's shoulder. "I need certain stars for reference. Center that green-white giant and throw it on the scope screen ..."
    The pilot's cabin was crowded. Louis hunched over the instrument panel, protecting buttons ftm the puppeteer's careless hooves.
    "Spectroanalysis ... yes. Now the blue-and-yellow double at two o'clock ...
    "I have my bearings. Swing to 348, 72."
    "What exactly am I looking for, Nessus? A cluster of fusion flames? No, you'd be using thrusters."
    "You must use the scope. When you see it, you will know."
    On the scope screen was a sprinkling of anonymous stars. Louis ran the magnification up until ... "Five dots in a regular pentagon. Right?"
    "That is our destination."
    "Good. Let me check the distance. -- Tanj! That's wrong, Nessus. They're too far away."
    No comment.
    "Well, they couldn't be ships, even if the distance meter isn't working. The puppeteer fleet must be moving at just under lightspeed. We'd see the motion."
    Five dim stars, in a regular pentagon. They were a fifth of a light year distant and quite invisible to the naked eye. At present scope magnificatim they would have to be full sized planets. In the scope screen one was faintly less blue, faintly dimmer than the others.
    A Kemplerer rosette. How very odd.
    Take three or more equal masses. Set them at the points of an equilateral polygon and give them equal angular velocities about their center of mass.
    Then the figure has stable equilibrium. The orbits of the masses may be circular or elliptical. Another mass may occupy the center of mass of the figure, or the center of mass may be empty. It doesn't matter. The figure is stable, like a pair of Trojan points.
    The difficulty is that there are several easy ways in which a mass can be captured by a Trojan point. (Consider the Trojan asteroids in Jupiter's orbit.) But there is no easy way for five masses to fall accidentally into a Kemplerer rosette.
    "That's wild," Louis murmured. "Unique. Nobody's ever found a Kemplerer rosette ..." He let it trail off.
    Here between the stars, what could be lighting those objects?
    "Oh, no you don't," said Louis Wu. "You'll never make me believe it. What kind of an idiot do you take me for?"
    "What is it that you will not believe?"
    "You know tanj well what I won't believe!"
    "As you please. That is our destination, Louis. If you will take us within range, a ship will be sent to match our velocity."
    The rendezvous ship was a #3 hull, a cylinder with rounded ends and a flattened belly, painted shocking pink, and windowless. There were no engine apertures. The engines must be reactionless: thrusters of the human type, or something more advanced.
    On Nessus's orders Louis had let the other ship do the maneuvering. The Long Shot, on fusion drives alone, would have required months to match velocities with the puppeteer "fleet". The puppeteer ship had done it in less than an hour, blinking into existence alongside the Long Shot with her access tube already reaching like a glass snake toward the Long Shot's airlock.
    Disembarking would be a problem. There wasn't room to release all the crew from stasis at once. More important, this would be Speaker's last chance to take control of the ship.
    "Do you think he will obey my tasp, Louis?"
    "No. I think he'll risk one more, shot at stealing the ship. Tell you what we'd better do ..."
    They disconnected the instrument panel from the Long Shot's fusion motors. It was nothing that the kzin couldn't fix, given a little time and a touch of the mechanical intuition possessed by any toolmaker. But he would not have the time ...
    Louis watched the puppeteer move through the tube. Nessus was carrying