（外文电子版资料）Larry Niven - Protector.doc

PROTECTOR by Larry Niven (c) 1973 by Larry Niven v1.0 (Jan-24-1999) If you find and correct errors in the text, please update the version number by 0.1 and redistribute. PHSSTHPOK Genesis, Chapter 3, King James version: 22 And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever: 23 Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. 24 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the Garden of Eden Cher-u-bims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life. *** He sat before an eight-foot circle of clear twing, looking endlessly out on a view that was less than exciting. Even a decade ago those stars had been a sprinkling of dull red dots in his wake. When he cleared the forward view, they would shine a hellish blue, bright enough to read by. To the side, the biggest had been visibly flattened. But now there were only stars, white points sparsely scattered across a sky that was mostly black. This was a lonely sky. Dust clouds hid the blazing glory of home. The light in the center of the view was not a star. It was big as a sun, dark at the center, and bright enough to have burned holes in a mans retinae. It was the light of a Bussard ramjet, burning a bare eight miles away. Every few years Phssthpok spent some time watching the drive, just to be sure it was burning evenly. A long time ago he had caught a slow, periodic wavering in time to prevent his ship from becoming a tiny nova. But the blue-white light had not changed at all in the weeks hed been watching it. For most of a long, slow lifetime the heavens had been crawling past Phssthpoks porthole. Yet he remembered little of that voyage. The time of waiting had been too devoid of events to interest his memory. It