"I can't. I don't know how he thinks. I don't understand him at all." She raised her tear-stained face. "I don't understand you."

"Yeah." He ran his thumbs hard along the edges of her shoulder blades, then down her vertebrae. "Listen," he said presently. "Suppose I said the universe is my enemy. Would you think I was nuts?"

She nodded vigorously, angrily.

"The universe is against me," said Louis Wu. "The universe hates me. The universe makes no provision for a two-hundred-year-old man.

"What is it that shapes a species? Evolution, isn't it? Evolution gives Speaker his night vision and his balance. Evolution gives Nessus the reflex that turns his back on danger. Evolution turns a man's sex off at fifty or sixty. Then evolution quits.

"Because evolution is through with any organism once that organism is too old to breed. You follow me?"

"Sure. You're too old to breed," she mocked him bitterly.

"Right. A few centuries ago some biological engineers carved up the genes of a ragweed and produced boosterspice. As a direct result, I am two hundred years old and still healthy. But not because the universe loves me.

"The universe hates me," said Louis Wit. "It's tried to kill me many times. I wish I could show you the scars. It'll keep trying, too."

"Because you're too old to breed."

"Finagle in hysterics, woman! You're the one who doesn't know how to take care of herself! We're in unknown territory; we don't know the rules, and we don't know what we might meet. If you try to walk on hot lava, you could get more than sore feet next time. Stay alert. You understand me?"

"No," said Teela. "No."

Later, after she had washed her face, they carried the fourth flycycle into the airlock. For half an hour the aliens had left them alone. Had they decided to avoid two humans dealing with strictly human problems? Maybe, maybe.

Between high walls of black lava stretched an infinite strip of ring foundation material as flat as a polished tabletop. In the foreground, a tremendous glass cathode tube lay on its side. Beneath the curving flank of the transparent cylinder, a cluster of machinery and four odd figures looking slightly lost.

"How about water?" Louis was asking. "I couldn't see any lakes. Do we have to haul our own water?"

"No." Nessus opened the aft section of his own flycycle to show them the water tank and the cooler-extractor which would condense water from the air.

The flycycles were miracles of compact design. Aside from their highly individualistic saddles, they were built all alike: a pair of four foot spheres joined by the constriction that held the saddle. Half the rear section was luggage space, and there was harness for stringing additional gear. Four flat feet, extended now for landing, would recess against the two spheres during flight.

The puppeteer's flycycle had a reclining saddle, a belly-bed with three grooves for his three legs. Nessus would he immobile on his belly, controlling the vehicle with his mouths.

The 'cycles intended for Louis and Teela held padded contour chairs with neck rests and power controls for attitude. Like Nessus's and Speaker's, these saddles rested in the constriction in the 'cycle's dumbbell shape, and were split to accommodate leg supports. Speaker's saddle was much larger and broader, and without a neck rest. There was rigging for tools on both sides of his saddle. For weapons?

"We must carry anything that could conceivably be used as a weapon," Speaker was saying, as he prowled restlessly among the scattered machinery.

"We brought no weapons," Nessus answered. "Because we wished to show ourselves as peaceful, we brought no weapons at all."

"Then what are these?" Speaker had already assembled a somewhat sparse collection of lightweight artifacts.

"All tools," said Nessus. He pointed. "These are flashlight-lasers with variable beams. At night one can see great distances with these, for one can narrow the beam indefinitely by turning this ring. Indeed, one must be careful not to burn holes in nearby objects or persons, for the beam can be made perfectly parallel and extremely intense.

"These dueling pistols are for settling arguments between ourselves. They fire a ten-second charge. One must be careful not to touch this safety button, because -"

"Because then it fires an hour's charge. That's a Jinxian model, isn't it?"

"Yes, Louis. And this item is a modified digging tool. Perhaps you know of the digging tool found in a Slaver stasis box -"

He meant the Slaver disintegrator, Louis decided. The disintegrator was indeed a digging tool. Where its narrow beam fell, the charge on the electron was temporarily suppressed. Solid matter, rendered suddenly and violently positive, tended to tear itself into a fog of monatomic dust.

"It is worthless as a weapon," the kzin rumbled. "We have studied it. It works too slowly to be used against an enemy."

"Exactly. A harmless toy. This item -" The item held in the puppeteer's mouth looked like a double-barreled shotgun, except that the handle had a characteristic puppeteer-built look, like quicksilver caught in the act of flowing from one shape to another.

"This item is exactly like the Slaver disintegrator digging tool except that one beam suppresses the positive charge on the proton. One should be careful not to use both beams at once, as the beams are parallel and separate."

"I understand," said the kzin. "If the twin beam were allowed to fall next to each other, there would be a current flow."

"Exactly."

"Do you believe thew makeshifts will be adequate? There is no guessing what we shall meet."

"That's not quite true," said Louis Wu. "This isn't a planet, after all. If there was an animal the Ringworlders didn't like, chances are they left it home. We won't meet any tigers. Or mosquitoes."

"Suppose the Ringworlders liked tigers?" Teela wondered.

It was a valid point despite its facetious sound. What did they know of Ringworld physiology? Only that they came from a water world using approximately G2 starlight. On that basis they might look like humans, puppeteers, kzinti, grogs, dolphins, killer whales, or sperm whales; but they probably wouldn't.

"We will fear the Ringworlders more than their pets," Speaker predicted. "We must take all possible weapons. I recommend that I be placed in charge of this expedition until such time as we may leave the Ring."

"I have the tasp."

"I have not forgotten that, Nessus. You may think of the tasp as an absolute veto power. I suggest that you show reluctance to use it. Think, all of you!" The kzin loomed over them, five hundred pounds of teeth and claws and orange fur. "We are all supposed to be sentient. Think of our situation! We have been attacked. Our ship is half destroyed. We must travel an unknown distance across unknown territory. The powers of the Ringworlders were once enormous. Are they still enormous, or do they now use nothing more complex than a spear made from a sharpened bone?

"They might equally well have transmutation, total conversion beams, anything that may have been required to build this -" the kzin looked around him, at the glassy floor and the black lava walls; and perhaps he shuddered. "- this incredible artifact"

"I have the tasp," said Nessus. "The expedition is mine."

"Are you pleased with its success? I mean no insult, I intend no challenge. You must place me in command. Of the four of us, I alone have had training in war."

"Let's wait," Teela suggested. "We may not find anything to fight."

"Agreed," said Louis. He didn't fancy being led by a kzin.

"Very well. But we must take the weapons."

They began to load the flycycles.

There was other equipment besides weaponry. Camping equipment, food testing and food rebuilding kits, phials of dietary additives, lightweight air filters …