Free Destroyer of Worlds by Larry Niven

had taken close to a century. Jeeves probably knew exactly, but Sigmund didn’t ask. The details could wait. Or maybe, at some level, he didn’t want to know.
    Don Quixote
was scarcely a minute out of hyperspace—and a third of a million miles deeper into the solar system. Einstein space (an attribution no one on New Terra but Sigmund understood) and hyperspace velocities were independent. When Sigmund had recalled
Don Quixote
, Kirsten came back as quickly as she could. It had meant a thirty-gee sprint out of thesystem that she had been scouting, to get where she could engage hyperdrive.
Don Quixote
still had all that Einstein-space velocity, because they hadn’t spent the time to slow down before swapping crews. Relative to this solar system,
Don Quixote
traveled at about seven percent of light speed.
    Well, they would have to slow down to meet the Gw’oth.
    â€œThrusters or gravity drag?” Kirsten had a hand poised above the thruster controls. Her preference, obviously.
    Sigmund turned toward her. “Neither, just yet. Let’s coast for a while and gather data.”
    Kirsten’s hand pulled back. She used it to give Sigmund a perfunctory salute. He read disapproval.
    Not so, Baedeker. From the corner of his eye Sigmund saw heads bobbing—high/low, low/high, high/low—in emphatic agreement.
    Kirsten changed her tune within the hour. By then Eric had localized the neutrino readings. Fusion plants existed on every major moon of the lone gas giant and on two of the three rocky planets.

11
    Â 
    Intelligence was overrated.
    Since time immemorial the Gw’oth had lived and died beneath the world-encompassing ice. In just three generations all that had changed. Now they built mighty structures in the vacuum above the ice, ringed the world with satellites and water-filled habitats, even colonized nearby worlds. Intelligence had made all that possible.
    But intelligence required you to give up
so
much.
    Er’o hovered in his meditation chamber, his tubacles rippling, seeking respite in the simple joys of motion. His hide was mostly cautious oranges and reds, shading to far red on the tips of his spines. But for an undertaste of lubricant from the pumps, he might have been below the ice. The water that endlessly circulated through this chamber was lush: rich with salts, thick with nutrients, ripe with the synthetic spoor of prey. Nothing was too good for those who made possible all the progress.
    Except free will.
    From tubacle tips curled downward, he gazed through the clear ice floor. Structures in every shape imaginable sprawled down the seamount slope and across the world’s foundation until detail faded into a distant haze. The ancient city was built mostly in stone, of course, but here, there, everywhere jutted new steel construction. Artificial lights glowed everywhere. Cargo vessels glided about, over and among the buildings. Tn’ho Nation ruled the longest, most productive hydrothermal vent in all the ocean, and Lm’Ba was its greatest city.
    But that power and wealth might vanish even more quickly than it had come.
    Er’o bent and flexed, tensed and relaxed, until the stress flowed down the length of his tubacles and out of his body, until his hide recolored to more serene hues. Succulent worms and fat scuttlebugs had been deliveredwhile he worked, and now he ate his fill. He voided his wastes. As best he could, he cleared his mind. He permitted himself a brief, timed rest period.
    Food and elimination, motion and meditation: for true intelligence, one abstained from them all.
    The timer rumbled, and Er’o roused himself. Somehow, he had managed to sleep. He jetted from his private meditation chamber, down the narrow access tunnel. His was one cylinder among many, arranged like spokes around the hub (wheeled vehicles above the ice being another small marvel of the age) that was the central work space. High above the clear dome, great Tl’ho,