Louis dropped the fleet toward gently rounded foothills. If his target was the mouth of a silver stream that poured out of the mountains and disappeared into a forest, itself seemingly endless, that covered the foothills like green fur.

Teela called. "What are you doing?" she demanded.

"I'm landing. I'm tired of flying. But don't hang up. I'd like to apologize."

She switched off.

Best I could hope for, Louis told himself without conviction. But she would be more willing to listen now that she knew an apology was coming.

"I got the idea from all our talk about 'playing god'," said Louis. Unfortunately he was talking only to Speaker. Teela had dismounted her 'cycle, thrown him one smoking glare and stalked off into the woods.

Speaker nodded his shaggy orange head. His ears twitched like small Chinese fans held in nervous fingers.

"We're reasonably safe on this world," Louis told him, "as long as were in the air. There's no question but that we can get where we're going. We could probably reach the rim wall without ever landing, if it came to that; or we could land only where the ring foundation pokes through. No predatory life could survive on that stuff.

"But we can't learn much without landing. We want to get off this oversized toy, and to do that we're going to need native help. It still looks as though someone is going to have to haul the Liar across four hundred thousand miles of landscape."

"Get to the point, Louis. I need exercise."

"By the time we reach the rim wall we'll want to know a lot more about the Ringworld than we do now."

"Unquestionably."

"Why not play god?"

Speaker hesitated. "You speak with literal precision?"

"Right. We're naturals for Ringworld engineers. We don't have the powers they had, but what we do have must look godlike enough to the natives. You can be the god -"

"Thank you."

"- Teela and I the acolytes. Nessus would make a good captive demon."

Speaker's claws came out. He said, "But Nessus is not with us, and will not be."

"That's the hitch. In -"

"This is not open to argument, Louis."

"Too bad. We need him to make this work."

"Then you must forget it."

Louis was still in doubt about those claws. Were they or were they not under voluntary control? In any case, they were still showing. Had he been speaking over intercom Speaker would certainly have switched off by now.

Which was why Louis had insisted on landing.

"Look at the sheer intellectual beauty of it. You'd make a great god. From a human viewpoint you're impressive as all hell — though I suppose you'd have to take my word for that."

"Why would we need Nessus?"

"For the tasp, for reward and punishment. As a god, you tear a doubter to shreds and gobbets, then eat the gobbets. That's punishment. For reward, you use the puppeteer's tasp."

"Can we not do without the tasp?"

"But it's such a great way to reward the faithful! A blast of pure pleasure, straight to the brain. No side effects. No hangover. A tasp is supposed to be better than sex!"

"I do not like the ethics. Though the natives are only human, I would not like to addict them to a tasp. It would be more merciful to kill them" said Speaker. "In any case, the puppeteer's tasp works apinst kzinti, not human."

"I think you're wrong."

"Louis, we know that the tasp was designed for use against a kzinti brain structure. I felt it. In this you are right: it was a religious experience, a diabolical experience."

"But we don't know the tasp doesn't work on a human being. I think it does. I know Nessus. Either his tasp works on both of us, or he's carrying two tasps. I wouldn't be here unless he had a way to control humans."

"You speculate wildly."

"Shall we call him and ask him?"

"No."

"What's the harm in asking him?"

"There would be no purpose in it."

"I forgot. No curiosity," said Louis. Monkey curiosity was not powerful in most sentient species.

"Were you playing on my curiosity? I see. You tried to commit me to a course of action. Louis, the puppeteer may find his own way to the rim wall. Until then, he travels alone."

And before Louis could answer, the kzin turned and bounded into a thicket of elbow root. It ended the discussion as effectively as if he had switched off an intercom.

The world had caved in on Teela Brown. She sobbed miserably, wrackingly, in an orgy of self-pity.

She had found a wonderful place for her mourning.

Dark green was the motif. The vegetation was lush overhead, too thick to permit the direct passage of sunlight. But it thinned out near the ground, to make walking easy. It was a somber paradise for nature lovers.

Flat, vertical rock walls, kept constantly wet by a waterfall, surrounded a deep, clear pool. Teela was in the pool. The falling water nearly drowned out her sobbing, but the rock walls amplified the sound like a shower stall. It was as if Nature wept with her.

She had not noticed Louis Wu.

Stranded on an alien world, even Teela Brown would not have gone far without her first aid kit. It was a small, flat box on her belt, and it had a finding circuit built into it. Louis had followed its signal to Teelas clothes, which were piled on a natural granite tabletop at the poors edge.

Dark green illumination, the roar of a waterfall, and the echoed sound of sobbing. Teela was almost under the falling water. She must be sitting on something, for her arms and shoulders were out of the pool. Her head was bent, and her dark hair streamed forward to cover her face.

There was no point in waiting for her to come to him. Louis took off his clothes, piled them beside Teela's. He frowned at the chill in the air, shrugged, and dove in.

He saw his mistake instantly.

On sabbatical, Louis did not commonly ran across Earthlike worlds. Those he did land on were generally as civilized as Earth itself. Louis was not stupid. If it had occurred to him to wonder about the temperature of the water …

But it didn't.

The water was runoff water from snow-capped mountains. Louis tried to scream with the cold, but his head was already underwater. He did have sense enough not to inhale.

His head broke water. He splashed and gasped with the cold and the need for air.

Then he began to enjoy it.

He knew how to tread water; though he had learned in warmer waters than these! He stayed afloat, kicking rhythmically, feeling the currents from the plunging waterfall eddy over his skin.

Teela had seen him. She sat beneath the waterfall, waiting. He swam to her.

He would have had to scream into her face to tell her anything. Apologies and words of love would have been misplaced. But he could touch her.

She did not flinch away. But she bent her head, and her hair hid her again. Her rejection was almost telepathically intense.

Louis respected it.

He swam about, stretching muscles cramped by eighteen hours in a flycycle seat. The water felt wonderful. But at some point the numbness of the cold became an ache, and Louis decided he was courting pneumonia.

He touched Teela on the arm and pointed toward shore. This time she nodded and followed.

They lay beside the pool, shivering, wrapped in each other's arms, with the thermocontrolled coveralls open and spread around them like blankets. Gradually their chilled bodies soaked up the heat.

"I'm sorry I laughed," Louis said.

She nodded, accepting the fact of his apology, without forgiveness.

"It was funny, you know. The puppeteers, the cowards of the universe, having the gall to breed humans and kzinti like two strains of cattle! They must have known what a chance they were taking." He knew he was talking too much, but he had to explain, to justify himself. "And then look what they did with it! Breeding for a reasonable kzin, that wasn't a bad idea. I know a little about the Man-Kzin wars; I know the kzinti used to be pretty fierce. Speaker's ancestors would have blasted Zignamuclickclick down to the Ring floor. Speaker stopped.