Ringworld's Children by Larry Niven

meteor crater into black interstellar space, looping hard around and up. The Hindmost fired a laser at the Ringworld's black underside. A ruby glare lit an array of spillpipes broken by another ancient meteor.
    Have to tell Tunesmith, Louis thought. The Ringworld is wearing out. It's losing air and water. Everything needs repairs, underside, rim walls, landscape. Yah, in our copious free time.
    They were driving through a plume of ice crystals now. A block of frozen seawater was being boiled away. Acolyte suddenly demanded, "Louis, stop saying that!"
    "Sorry."
    "I know what 'It's a ride' means. Billions of your kind pay a sum for the privilege of being scared out of their wits under conditions of assured safety. A hero must risk real danger!"
    "You did that when we fought Bram. Here we go," as Needle surged upward. It's not a death trap. It's a ride.
    The foamy black sea ice was nearly boiled away. Needle rammed up through a smashed drainhole, through a last barrier of ice, and into the sea above.
    Hot Needle of Inquiry settled through black water and came to rest.
    "And here the ship may stay," the Hindmost said. He popped up the lip of a stepping disk and went to work on its controls.
    Louis asked, "How much of this were you expecting?"
    "Contingencies," the Hindmost said. "If Tunesmith ever gave me a chance to move Needle, I'd need a place to hide it. Here, Louis, this link leads to the Repair Center. The stepping disk network is open to us."
    Acolyte's ears were up. He watched them like a tennis match.
    Louis thought it through. The ocean around them would drain until an ice plug formed. Tunesmith could find them by the plume of water vapor, if he had the leisure. But Long Shot was slow in normal space, and if hyperdrive near a star was no longer sure death, it was still tanj dangerous. Tunesmith and Long Shot would be hunted across the sky for days yet.
    So Hot Needle of Inquiry was... "Hindmost, you can't hide the ship."
    "I have."
    "We need access to Needle for food, beds, showers, pressure suits. We need a stepping-disk link, and that's all Tunesmith needs too."
    "I can hide its location, Louis."
    The Hindmost was searching for the illusion of control. It seemed futile, but hey, Louis was doing the same. "Think now," Louis said. "While Tunesmith is watching Hot Needle of Inquiry, why don't we steal Long Shot?"
    "How?"
    "I have no idea. But I'm tired of being run around like a marionette by him or you, Hindmost. There has to be some way out of this box!"
    "While Tunesmith is occupied, we might yet have a day or two to accomplish something."
    They flicked to the Meteor Defense Room.
     
    Daylight had swept across the eyestorm. Louis was looking across a hundred and ninety million miles, past the rim of the sun and the black edges of shadow squares.
    Silver knots and threads still marked rivers, lakes, seas; but time and a puncture wound had desiccated this land. Three ships dodged and weaved in and out of a flattened hourglass made of storm. These must be the ships that had followed Needle down. The big ship was Kzinti, and the smallest was an ARM fighter, and the third was ARM too. They'd be able to detect each other through cloud, as anyone could given deep-radar.
    Lightning flickered sporadically in the constriction, but a sudden sputter was too bright to be lightning.
    "The trouble with an antimatter bullet," Louis surmised, "is that the crew will use any excuse to get it off the ship."
    Both ARM ships were chasing the Kzin ship. The Kzin dove back into cloud. Louis could track its deep-radar shadow through the axis of the eyestorm, one ARM ship in its wake, one darting ahead through open air. Then the Kzin ship was gone, down through the drainhole and out.
    Two ARM ships now commanded perhaps a trillion square miles of Ringworld. They spent the next several hours quartering the area, returning every so often to the eyestorm.
    "Guarding the puncture against entry," the Hindmost suggested. "You and Chmeee blurted that