Ringworld

"Finagle knows how you can aim that thing," Louis wheezed. He began to climb.

It was easy going while the fabric held out. Translate: Despite the hours hed spent with blood flowing to his brain, Louis managed not to let go. But the fabric ended in the vicinity of the foot throttle; and the 'cycle had rolled half over with his weight, so that he still hung from underneath.

He pulled himself close against the 'cycle, braced himself with his knees. He began to rock.

Speaker-To-Animals was making curious sounds.

The cycle rocked back and forth, further with each swing. Louis assumed, because he had to, that most of the metal was in the belly of the 'cycle. Otherwise the 'cycle would roll, and wherever he placed himself Louis would be underneath, and therefore Nessus would not have made the suggestion.

The 'cycle rolled far. Louis, nauseated, fought the urge to vomit. If his breathing passages got clogged now, it was all over.

The 'cycle rolled back, and over, and was precisely upside down. Louis lunged across the underside and snatched at the other end of the collapsed balloon. And had it.

The 'cycle continued its roll. Louis was flattened chestdown across the belly of the machine. He waited, clinging.

The inert hulk paused, hesitated, rolled back. His vestibular canals spun, and Louis lost — what? Yesterday's late lunch? He lost it explosively, in great agonizing heaves, across the metal and across his sleeve; but he didn't shift his position more than an inch.

The flycycle continued to heave like the sea. But Louis was anchored. Presently he dared to look up.

A woman was watching him.

She seemed to be entirely bald. Her face reminded Louis of the wire-sculpture in the banquet hall of the Heaven tower. The features, and the expression. She was as calm as a goddess or a dead woman. And he wanted to blush, or hide, or disappear.

Instead he said, "Speaker, we're being watched. Relay to Nessus."

"A minute, Louis. I am discomposed. I made the mistake of watching you climb."

"Okay. She's — I thought she was bald, but she isn't. Theres a fringe of hairbearing scalp that crosses over her ears and meets at the base of her skull. She wears the hair long, more than shoulder length." He did not say that her hair was rich and dark falling past one shoulder as she bent slightly forward to watch Louis Wu, nor that her skull was finely and delicately shaped, nor that her eyes seemed to spear him like a martini olive. "I think she's an Engineer; she either belongs to the same race or follows the same customs. Have you got that?"

"Yes. How can you climb so? It seemed that you defied gravity. What are you, Louis?"

Clutching himself to his dead flycycle, Louis laughed. It seemed to take all his strength. "You're a Kdaptist," he said. "Admit it."

"I was raised so, but the teachings did not take."

"Sure they didn't. Have you got Nessus?"

"Yes. I used the siren."

"Relay this. She's about twenty feet from me. She's watching me like a snake. I don't mean she's intensely interested in me; I mean she's not interested in anything else at all. She blinks, but she never looks away.

"She's sitting in a kind of booth. There used to be glass or something in three of the walls, but that's gone, leaving not much more than some stairs and a platform. She's sitting with her legs over the edge. It must have been a way of watching the prisoners.

"She's dressed in … well, I can't say I go for the style. Knee-length and elbow-length overalls, ballooning out -" But aliens wouldn't be interested in that. "The fabric is artificial, obviously, and either it's new or it's self-cleaning and very durable. She -" Louis interrupted himself, because the girl had said something.

He waited. She repeated it, whatever it was; a short sentence.

Then she stood gracefully and went up the stairs.

"She's gone," said Louis. "Probably lost interest."

"Perhaps she went back to her listening devices."

"Probably right." If there was an eavesdropper in the building, Occam's Razor said it was her.

"Nessus asks you to focus your flashlight-laser to low and wide, and to be seen using it for lighting when next the woman appears. I am not to show the Slaver weapon. The woman could probably kill us both by turning off a switch. She must not see us with weapons."

"Then how can we get rid of the zap guns?"

A moment before Speaker relayed the answer. "We do not. Nessus says that he will try something else. He is coming here."

Louis let his head sag against the metal. The relief he felt was so great that he didn't even question it, until Speaker said, "He will only have us all in the same trap. Louis, how can I dissuade him?"

"Tell him so. No, don't even do that. If he didn't know it was safe he'd stay away."

"How can it be safe?"

"I don't know. Let me rest." The puppeteer must know what he was doing. He could trust Nessus's cowardice. Louis rubbed his cheek against the smooth, cool metal.

He dozed.

He was never less than marginally aware of where he was. If his 'cycle stirred or shifted he came wide-eyed out of sleep, clutching metal in his knees and fabric in his fists. His sleep was a ru

When light flashed through his eyelids he came awake immediately.

Daylight poured through the horizontal slit that had served them as a doorway. Within that glare Nessus's flycycle was a black silhouette. The flycycle was upside down, and so was the puppeteer, held by seat webbing rather than crash balloons.

The slit closed behind him.

"Welcome," said Speaker, slurring the words. "Can you turn me upright?"

"Not yet. Has the girl reappeared?"

"No."

"She will. Humans are curious, Speaker. She ca

"What of it? I want to be right side up," Speaker moaned.

The puppeteer did something to his dashboard. A miracle happened: his flycycle turned over.

Louis said one word. "How?"

"I turned everything off after I knew that the bandit signal had my controls. If the lifting field had not caught me, I could have turned on my motors before I struck pavement. Now," the puppeteer said briskly, "the next step should be easy. When the girl appears, act friendly. Louis, you may attempt to have sex with her if you think you might succeed. Speaker, Louis is to be our master; we are to be his servitors. The woman may be xenophobic; it would lull her to believe that a human being commands these aliens."

Louis actually laughed. Somehow the nightmarish half-sleep had rested him. "I doubt she'll be feeling friendly, let alone seductive. You didn't see her. She's as cold as the black caves of Pluto, at least where I'm concerned, and I can't really blame her." She had watched him lose his lunch across his sleeve — generally an unromantic sight.

The puppeteer said, "She will be feeling happy whenever she looks at us. She will cease to feel happy when she tries to leave us. If she brings one of us closer to her, her joy will increase -"

"Tanjit, yes!" cried Louis.

"You see? Good. In addition, I have been practicing the Ringworld language. I believe my pronunciation is correct, and my grammar. If I only knew what more of the words meant …"

Speaker had stopped complaining long ago. Inverted above a lethal drop, with burns all over him and one hand charred to the bone, he had raged at Louis and Nessus for being unable to help him. But he had been quiet for hours now.

In the dim quiet, Louis dozed.

In his sleep he heard bells, and woke.

She tinkled as she came down the steps. There were bells on her mocassins. Her garment was different too, a top-shaped, high-necked dress fitted with half a dozen big bulging pockets. Her long black hair fell forward over one shoulder.