too vulnerable to heat and gravity to make good warriors. And the puppeteers, powerful beyond dreams, were too cowardly.
Who had built the Ringworld? And…were they warriors?
Months later, Louis was to see Speaker’s lie as his personal turning point. He might have backed out then—on Teela’s behalf, of course. The Ringworld was terrifying enough as an abstraction in numbers. To think of approaching it in a spacecraft, of landing on it…
But Louis had seen the kzin in terror of the puppeteers’ flying worlds. Speaker’s lie was a magnificent act of courage. Could Louis show himself a coward now?
He sat down and turned to face the glowing projection; and as his eyes brushed Teela he silently cursed her for an idiot. Her face was alive with wonder and delight. She was as eager as the kzin pretended to be. Was she too stupid to be afraid?
There was an atmosphere on the ring’s inner side. Spectroanalysis showed the air to be as thick as Earth’s, and of approximately the same composition: definitely breathable to man and kzin and puppeteer. What kept it from blowing away was a thing to be guessed at. They would have to go and look.
In the system of the G2 sun there was nothing at all but the ring itself. No planets, no asteroids, no comets.
“They cleaned it out,” said Louis. “They didn’t want anything to hit the ring.”
“Naturally,” said the puppeteer with silver curls. “If something did strike the ring, it would strike at a minimum of 770 miles per second, the speed of rotation of the ring itself. No matter how strong the material of the ring, there would always be the danger of an object missing the outer surface and crossing the sun to strike the unprotected, inhabited inner surface.”
The sun itself was a yellow dwarf somewhat cooler than Sol and a touch smaller. “We will need heat suits on the ring,” said the kzin—rubbing it in, Louis thought.
“No,” said Chiron. “The temperature of the inner surface is quite tolerable, to all of our species.”
“How would you know that?”
“The frequency of the infrared radiation emitted by the outer surface—”
“You see me exposed as a fool.”
“Not at all. We have been studying the ring since its discovery, while you have had a few eights of minutes. The infrared frequency indicates an average temperature of 290 degrees absolute, which of course applies to the inner as well as the outer surface of the ring. For you this will be some ten degrees warmer than optimum, Speaker-To-Animals. For Louis and Teela it is optimum.
“Do not let our attention to details mislead or frighten you,” Chiron added. “We would not permit a landing unless the ring engineers themselves insisted. We merely wish you to be ready for any eventuality.”
“You don’t have any detail of surface formations?”
“Unfortunately, no. The resolving power of our instruments is insufficient.”
“We can do some guessing,” said Teela. “The thirty hour day-night cycle, for instance. Their original world must have turned that fast. Do you suppose that’s their original system?”
“We assume that it is, since they apparently did not have hyperdrive,” said Chiron. “But presumably they could have moved their world to another system, using our own technique.”
“And should have,” the kzin rumbled, “rather than destroy their own system in the course of building their ring. I think we will find their own system somewhere nearby, as denuded of worlds as this one. They would have used terraforming techniques to settle all of the worlds of their own system, before adapting this more desperate expedient.”
Teela said, “Desperate?”
“Then, when they had finished building their ring around the sun, they would have been forced to move all their worlds into this system to transfer their populations.”
“Maybe not,” said Louis. “They might have used big STL ships to settle their ring if it was close enough to their own system.”
“Why desperate?”
They looked at her.
“I would have thought they built the ring for—for—” Teela floundered. “Because they wanted to.”
“For kicks? For scenery? Finagles fist! Teela, think of the resources they’d have had to divert. Remember, they must have had a hell of a population problem. By the time they needed the ring for living room, they probably couldn’t afford to build it. They built it anyway, because they needed it.”
“Mmm,” said Teela, looking puzzled.
“Nessus returns,” said Chiron. Without another word the puppeteer turned and trotted away into the park.
C H A P T E R 7
Stepping Discs
“That was rude,” said Teela.
“Chiron doesn’t want to meet Nessus. Didn’t I tell you? They