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? Let’s 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 realize 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 don’t 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 cannot drag the Liar behind our skycycles,” Speaker was saying. “Were we attacked, we would have to cut the ship loose. Better to leave it here, near a prominent landmark.”
“Who said anything about dragging the ship?”
“A good warrior thinks of everything. We may end by dragging the ship in any case, if we cannot find help at the rim.”
“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