Ringworld

It was magnificent. One mountain, roughly conical, all alone, forming no part of a chain. It had the look of a volcano, a mock-volcano, for beneath the Ringworld there was no magma to form volcanos. Its base was lost in mist. Its higher slopes showed clear through what must be thi

There was a crystal clarity to the edges of the peak. Could it thrust clear out of the atmosphere? A real mountain that size would collapse of its own weight; but this mountain would be a mere shell of ring foundation material.

"I'm going to like the Ringworld engineers," said Louis Wu to himself. On a world built to ordered specification, there was no logical reason for such a mountain to exist. Yet every world should have at least one unclimbable mountain.

Beneath the curve of the hull, they waited for him. Their questions boiled down to one. "Did you see any sign of civilization?"

"No."

They made him describe everything he'd seen. They established directions. Spinward was back along the meteoric furrow dug by the Liar's landing. Antispinward was the opposite direction, toward the mountain. Port and starboard were to the left and right of a man facing spinward.

"Could you see any of the rim walls to port or starboard?"

"No. I don't understand why. They should have been there."

"Unfortunate," said Nessus.

"Impossible. You can see for thousands of miles up there."

"Not impossible. Unfortunate."

Again: "Could you see nothing beyond the desert?"

"No. A long way to port, I saw a trace of blue. Might have been ocean. Might have been just distance."

"No buildings?"

"Nothing."

"Contrails in the sky? Straight lines that might have been freeways?"

"Nothing."

"Did you see any sign of civilization?"

"If I had, I'd tell you. For all I know, the whole ten trillion of 'em moved to a real Dyson sphere last month."

"Louis, we must find civilization."

"I know that."

It was too obvious. They had to get off the Ringworld; and they weren't going to move the Liar by themselves. True barbarians would not be help enough, no matter how numerous or how friendly.

"There is one bright aspect to all this," said Louis Wu. "We don't have to repair the ship. If we can just get the Liar off the ring, the ring's rotation will fling it, and us, out of the star's gravity well. Out to where we can use the hyperdrive."

"But first we must find help."

"Or force help," said Speaker.

"But why do you all just stand here talking?" Teela burst out. She had been waiting silent in the circle, letting the others thrash it out. "We've got to get out of here, don't we? Why not get the flycycles out of the ship? Lets get moving! Then talk!"

"I am reluctant to leave the ship," the puppeteer stated.

"Reluctant? Are you expecting help? Is anyone the least bit interested in us? Did anyone answer our radio calls? Louis says we're in the middle of a desert. How long are we going to sit here?"

She could not reafize that Nessus had to work up his courage. And, thought Louis, she had no patience at all.

"Of course we will leave," said the puppeteer. "I merely stated my reluctance. But we must decide where we will go. Else we will not know what to take and what to leave behind."

"We head for the nearest rim wall."

"She's right," said Louis. "If there's civilization anywhere, it'll be at the rim wall. But we doin' know where it is. I should have been able to see it from up there."

"No," said the puppeteer.

"You weren't there, tanjit! You could see forever up there! Thousands of miles without a break! Wait a minute."

"The Ringworld is nearly a million UN miles across."

"I was just about to realize that," said Louis Wu. "Scale. It keeps fouling me up. I just can't visualize anything this big!"

"It will come to you," the puppeteer reassured him.

"I wonder. Maybe my brain isn't big enough to hold it. I keep remembering how narrow the ring looked from deep space. Like a thread of blue ribbon. Blue ribbon," Louis repeated, and shivered.

If each rim wall were a thousand miles high, then how far away would it need to be before Louis Wu couldn't see it at all?

Assume that Louis Wu can see through a thousand miles of dust-laden, water-vapor-laden, somewhat terrestrial air. If such air gave way to effective vacuum at forty miles …

Then the nearest rim wall must be at least twenty-five thousand miles away.

If you flew that far on Earth, you would have returned to your starting point. But the nearest rim wall might be much further than that.

"We ca

"Who said anything about dragging the ship?"

"A good warrior thin of everything. We may end by dragging the ship in any case, if we ca

"We will find help," said Nessus.

"He's probably right," said Louis. "The spaceports are at the rim. If the whole ring went back to the stone age, and civilization started to spread again, it would start with returning ramships. It would have to."

"You speculate wildly," said Speaker.

"Maybe."

"But I agree with you. I might add that if the ring has lost all of its great secrets, we might still find machinery at the spaceport. Working machinery, machinery which can be repaired."

But which rim was closer?

"Teela's right," Louis said suddenly. "Let's get to work. At night we'll be able to see further."

Hours of hard labor followed. They moved machinery, sorted it out, lowered heavy items by wire from the ship's airlock. The sudden shifts of gravity posed problems, but none of the equipment was particularly fragile.

Sometime during those hours, Louis caught Teela in the ship while the aliens were outside. "You've been looking like someone poisoned your favorite orchid-thing. Care to talk about it?"

She shook her head, avoiding his eyes. Her lips, he saw, were perfect for pouting. She was one of those rare, lucky women whom crying does not make ugly.

"Then I'll talk. When you went out the lock without a pressure suit, I dressed you down good. Fifteen minutes later you tried to climb a slope of congealing lava wearing nothing but ship-slippers."

"You wanted me to burn my feet!"

"That's right. Don't look so surprised. We need you. We don't want you killed. I want you to learn to be careful. You never learned before, so you'll have to learn now. You'll remember your sore feet longer than you remember my lectures."

"Need me! That's a laugh. You know why Nessus brought me here. I'm a good luck charm that failed."

"I'll grant you blew that one. As a good luck charm, you're fired. Come on, smile. We need you. We need you to keep me happy, so I don't rape Nessus. We need you to do all the heavy work while we lie about in the sun. We need you to make intelligent suggestions."

She forced a smile. It broke apart and she was crying. She buried her face in his shoulder and sobbed against him, wrackingly, her fingernails digging hard into his back.

It was not exactly the first time a woman had cried on Louis Wu; but Teela probably had more reason than most. Louis held her, rubbing his fingers along the muscles of her back in a half-automatic attempt at a massage, and waited it out.

She talked into the material of his pressure suit. "How was I to know the rock would burn me?"

"Remember the Finagle Laws. The perversity of the universe tends toward a maximum. The universe is hos-"

"But it hurt!"

"The rock turned on you. It attacked you. Listen," he pleaded. "You've got to learn to think paranoid. Think like Nessus."