Limits by Larry Niven (books to read for 13 year olds txt) 📕

“At least she wouldn’t close her eyes. She’s a dedicated tourist. Can you picture that? But she might not get involved either.” Bronze Legs thought hard before he added, “I tried one of those memory tapes.”

“What? You?”

“History of the Fission Period in Eurasia, 1945-2010, from Morven’s library. Education, not entertainment.”

“Why that?”

“Whim.”

“Well, what’s it like?”

“It’s…it’s like I did a lot of research, and formed conclusions and checked them out and sometimes changed my mind, and it gave me a lot of satisfaction. There are still some open questions, like how the Soviets actually got the fission bomb, and the Vietnam War, and the Arab Takeover. But I know who’s working on that, and…It’s like that, but it doesn’t connect to anything. It sits in my head in a clump. But it’s kind of fun, Windstorm, and I got it all in ten minutes. You want to hear a libelous song about President Peanut?”

“No.”

Through the drizzle they could see the restless stirring of the Ring Ocean. A band of fuxes waited on the sand. Windstorm turned her howler in a graceful curve, back toward the blur of the crawlers’ headlights, to lead them. Bronze Legs dowsed his lights and glided toward the fuxes.

They had chosen a good resting place, far from the dangerous shore, in a broad stretch of “black man’s hair” that any marauder would have to cross. Most of the fuxes were lying down. The four-legged female had been impregnated six Medean days ago. Her time must be near. She scratched with sharp claws at her itching hindquarters.

Harvester came to meet Bronze Legs. The post-male biped was slow with age, but not clumsy. That tremendous length of black tail was good for his balance. It was tipped with a bronze spearhead. Harvester asked, “Will we follow the shoreline? If we may choose, we will keep your vessels between us and the shore.”

“We plan to go straight across,” Bronze Legs told him. “You’ll ride the raft behind the bigger vessel.”

“In the water are things dangerous to us,” said Harvester. He glanced shoreward and added, “Things small, things large. A large one comes.”

Bronze Legs took one look and reached for his intercom. “Lightning, Hairy, Jill! Turn your searchlights on that thing, fast!”

The fuxes were up and reaching for their spears.

“So it’s the fuxes who give you your nicknames,” Rachel said. “Why did they call you Lightning?”

“I tend the machines that make lightning and move it through metal wires. At least, that’s how we explained it to the fuxes. And Windstorm—you saw the big redhead girl on the other howler? She was on guard one earthnight when a troop of fuxes took a short cut through the wheat crop. She really gave them hell. Half of Touchdown City must have heard her.”

“And you? Grace.”

“They named me when I was a lot younger.” Grace glared at Lightning, who was very busy driving and clearly not listening, and by no means was he smiling. “But they didn’t call me Grace. The way we have children, the fuxes think that’s hilarious.”

Rachel didn’t ask.

“They called me Boobs.”

Rachel felt the need for a change of subject. “Lightning, are you getting tired? Would you like me to take over?”

“I’m okay. Can you drive a crawler?”

“Actually, I’ve never done it. I can run a howler, though. In any terrain.”

“Maybe we’ll give you one after—”

Then Bronze Legs’ voice bellowed from the intercom.

Something came out of the ocean: a great swollen myriapod with tiny jointed arms moving around a funnel-shaped mouth. Teeth churned in the gullet.

The fuxes cast their spears and fled. Bronze Legs tucked Harvester under one arm and sped shoreward; the howler listed to port. Deadeye fell behind; two fuxes turned back and took her arms and pulled her along.

The monster flowed up the beach, faster than any of them, ignoring the spears stuck in its flesh.

One, two, three searchlights flashed from the vehicles and played over the myriapod. The beams were bluish, unlike the headlights. Flare sunlight.

The myriapod stopped. Turned, clumsily, and began to retreat down the beach. It had nearly reached the water when it lost coordination. The legs thrashed frantically and without effect. As Rachel watched in horrible fascination, things were born from the beast.

They crawled from its back and sides. Hundreds of them. They were dark red and dog-sized. They did not leave the myriapod; they stayed on it, feeding. Its legs were quiet now.

Three of the fuxes darted down the beach, snatched up their fallen spears and retreated just as fast. The myriapod was little more than a skeleton now, and the dog-sized feeders were beginning to spread across the sand.

The fuxes climbed aboard the air-cushioned raft that trailed behind the mobile power plant. They arranged their packs and settled themselves. The paired vehicles lifted and glided toward the water. Lightning lifted the crawler and followed.

Rachel said, “But—”

“We’ll be okay,” Lightning assured her. “We’ll stay high and cross fast, and there are always the searchlights.”

“Grace, tell him! There are animals that like the searchlights!”

Grace patted her hand. The expedition set off across the water.

The colony around Touchdown City occupied part of a fat peninsula projecting deep into the Ring Sea. It took the expedition twelve hours to cross a bay just smaller than the Gulf of Mexico.

Vermilion scum patches covered the water. Schools of flying non-fish veered and dived at sight of the wrong-colored headlights. The fuxes stayed flat on their platform…but the water was smooth, the ride was smooth, and nothing attacked them.

The rain stopped, and left Phrixus and Helle far up the morning sky. The cloud-highway of the Jet Stream showed through a broken cloud deck. Lightning and the other drivers left their headlights on, since the sea life seemed to avoid them.

Somewhere in there, Rachel reclined her chair and went to sleep.

She woke when the crawler settled and tilted under her. Her brain was muzzy…and she had slept with the recorder on. That disturbed her. Usually she switched it off to sleep. Dreams were private.

The crawler’s