Ringworld

And there were two good reasons why he should.

Speaker-To-Animals would almost certainly make some last-ditch attempt to take the Long Shot from Louis Wu, to reserve the second quantum hyperdrive for kzinti alone. A puppeteer could get hurt in the resulting battle. Safer to leave Speaker now — and to leave Louis Wu, because he probably wouldn't stand for such a betrayal.

Besides, they knew too much. With Teela dead, only Speaker and Louis knew about the puppeteer experiments in guided evolution. The starseed lure, the Fertility Laws — if Nessus had been ordered to divulge such information, to gauge his crewmates' reactions, probably he had also been ordered to abandon them sometime during the trip.

These were not even new thoughts. Louis had been alert for some such action ever since Nessus had admitted to guiding an Outsider ship to Procyon via starseed lure. His paranoia was justified in a way. But there wasn't a tanj thing he could do about it.

To save his mind, Louis broke into another cell. He cut across suspected locks with his flashlight-laser turned to high and narrow, and on the fourth try the door came up.

A terrible stench came up too. Louis held his breath, stuck his head and his flashlight-laser in long enough to find out why. Someone had died in there, after the ventilation had quit. The corpse was hunched up against the picture window with a heavy pitcher in his hand. The pitcher was broken. The window was intact.

The cell next door proved to be empty. Louis took possession.

He had crossed the pit to get a cell with a starboard view. He could see the rolling hurricane directly before him. Its size was respectable, considering that they had left it twenty-five hundred miles behind. A big, brooding blue eye.

To spinward was a tall, narrow floating building as big as a passenger starship. Briefly Louis daydreamed that it was a starship, hidden here in superb misdirection, and that all they had to do to get off the world was …

It was thin entertainment

Louis schooled himself to memorize the pattern of the city. It might be important. This was the first place they had found with any sign of a still-active civilization.

He was taking a break, maybe an hour later. He was sitting on the duty oval bunk, staring back at the Eye, and … beyond the Eye, well to the side, was a tiny vivid gray-brown triangle,

"Mph," Louis said softly. The triangle was only just big enough to be visible as such. It was set squarely in the gray-white chaos of the infinity horizon. Which meant that it was still day there … although he was looking almost directly to starboard …

Louis went for his binoculars.

The binoculars made every detail as clear and sharp as the craters of the Moon. An irregular triangle, red-brown near the base, bright as dirty snow near the apex … Fist-of-God. Vastly larger than they had thought. To be visible this far away, most of the mountain must project above the atmosphere.

The flycycle fleet had flown around a hundred and fifty thousand miles since the crash. Fist-of-God had to be at least a thousand miles high.

Louis whistled. Again he raised the binoculars.

Sitting there in the near-darkaess, Louis gradually became aware of noises overhead.

He stuck his head up out of the cell.

Speaker-To-Animals roared, "Welcome, Louis!" He waved at him with the raw, red, half-eaten carcass of something approximately goat-sized. He took a bite the size of a steak, immediately took another, and another. His teeth were for tearing, not for chewing.

He reached out to pick up a bloody-ended hind leg with the hoof and skin still on. "We saved some for you, Louis! It has been hours dead, but no matter. We should hurry. The leaf-eater prefers not to watch us eat. He is sampling the view from my cell."

"Wait'll he sees mine," said Louis. "We were wrong about Fist-of-God. Speaker. It's at least a thousand miles high. The peak isn!t snow-covered, it -"

"Louis! Eat!"

Louis found his mouth watering. "There has to be some way to cook that thing …"

There was. He got Speaker to tear the skin off for him, then wedged the hoof of the beast into a broken stair, stood back and roasted the meat with the flashlight-laser turned to high intensity, wide aperture.

"The meat is not fresh," Speaker said dubiously, "but cremation is not the answer."

"How's Nessus? Is he a prisoner, or is he in control?"

"In partial control, I think. Look up."

The spacer-girl was a tiny doll-figure on the observation platform, her feet trailing in space, her face and scalp showing white as she looked down.

"You see? She will not let him out of her sight."

Louis decided the meat was ready. As he ate, he was aware that Speaker watched him without patience, watched as Louis Wu slowly masticated each small bite. But to Louis it seemed that he ate like a ravening beast. He was hungry.

For the puppeteer's sake they pushed the bones through the broken window, to fall on the city. They reconvened around the puppeteer's flycycle.

"She is partially conditioned," said Nessus. He was having trouble with his breathing … or with the smells of raw and burnt animal. "I have learned a good deal from her."

"Did you learn why she mousetrapped us?"

"Yes, and more. We have been lucky. She is a spacer, a ramship crewman."

"Jackpot!" said Louis Wu.

CHAPTER 21 — The Girl From Beyond The Edge

Her name was Halrloprillalar Hotrufan. She had been riding the ramship … Pioneer, Nessus called it after slight hesitation … for two hundred years.

The Pioneer ran a twenty-four-year cycle that covered four suns and their systems: five oxygen-atmosphere worlds and the Ringworld. The "year" used was a traditional measurement which had nothing to do with the Ringworld. It may have matched the solar orbit for one of the abandoned worlds.

Two of the Pioneer's five worlds had been thick with humanity before the Ringworld was built. Now they were abandoned like the others, covered with random vegetation and the debris of crumbling cities.

Halrloprillalar had run the cycle eight times. She knew that on these worlds grew plants or animals which had not adapted to the Ringworld because of the lack of a winter-summer cycle. Some plants were spices. Some animals were meat. Otherwise — Halrloprillalar neither knew nor cared.

Her job had nothing to do with cargos.

"Nor was she concerned with propulsion or life support. I was unable to learn just what she did," said Nessus. "The Pioneer carried a crew of thirty-six. Doubtless some were superfluous. Certainly she could have done nothing complex nor crucial to the well-being of ship or crew. She is not very intelligent, Louis."

"Did you think to ask about the ratio of sexes aboard ship? How many of the thirty-six were women?"

"She told me that. Three."

"You might as well forget about her profession."

Two hundred years of travel, security, adventure. Then at the end of Halrloprillalar's eighth run, the Ringworld refused to answer the Pioneer's call.

The electromagnetic ca

As far as telescopes could determine, there was no sign of activity at any spaceport.

The five worlds of the Pioneer's circuit were not equipped with electromagnetic ca

Not on the Ringworld. The meteor defenses would blow them apart.

They had not received permission to land on the spaceport ledge. And something was wrong there.

Back to one of the abandoned home worlds? In effect they would be starting a new colony world, with thirty-three men and three women.