"But breeding humans for luck -"

"You think they made a mistake, making me what I am."

"Tanjit, do you think I'm trying to insult you? I'm trying to say that it's a funny idea. For puppeteers to do it is even funnier. So I laughed."

"Do you expect me to giggle?"

"That'd be going too far."

"All right."

She didn't hate him for laughing. She wanted comfort, not revenge. There was comfort in the heat of the coveralls, and comfort in the heat of two bodies pressed together.

Louis began to stroke Teeld's back. It made her relax.

"I'd like to get the expedition back together again," he said presently. He felt her stiffen. "You don't like that idea."

"No."

"Nessus?"

"I hate him. I hate him! He bred my ancestors likelike beasts!" She relaxed minutely. "But Speaker would blast him out of the sky if he tried to come back. So it's all right."

"Suppose I could talk Speaker into letting Nessus rejoin us?"

"How could you do that?"

"Suppose I could?"

"But why?"

"Nessus still owns the Long Shot. The Long Shot is the only way to get the human race to the Clouds of Magellan in less than centuries. We lose the Long Shot if we leave the Ringworld without Nessus."

"How, how crass, Louis!"

"Look. You claimed that if the puppeteers hadn't done what they did to the kzinti we'd all be kzinti slaves. True. But if the puppeteers hadn't interfered with the Fertility Laws, you wouldn't even have been born!"

She was rigid against him. Her mind showed in her face, and her face was like her eyes: tightly closed.

He kept trying. "What the puppeteers did, they did a long time ago Can't you forgive and forget?"

"No!" She rolled away from him, out from under the heated coveralls and into the icy water. Louis hesitated, then followed her. A cold, wet shock … he surfaced … Teela was back at her place beneath the waterfall.

Smiling in invitation. How could her moods change so suddenly?

He swam to her.

"That's a charming way to tell a man to shut up!" he laughed. She couln't possibly have heard him. He couldn't hear himself, with the water pounding down around him. But Teela laughed back, equally soundlessly, and reached for him.

"They were stupid arguments anyway!" he screamed.

The water was cold, cold. Teela was the only warmth. They knelt clasping each other, supported by rough, shallow underwater rock.

Love was a delicious blend of warm and cold. There was comfort in making love. It solved no problems: but one could ran away from problems.

They walked back toward the 'cycles, shivering a little within their heated cocoons. Louis didn't speak. He had realized a thing about Teela Brown.

She had never learned how to resist. She could not say no and make it stick. She could not deliver reproofs of calculated intensity, humorous or jabbing or deadly vicious, as other women could. Teela Brown had not been hurt socially, not often enough to learn these things.

Louis could browbeat her until doomsday, and she would never know how to stop him. But she could hate him for it. And so he remained silent, for that reason and for another.

He didn't want to hurt her.

They walked in silence, holding hands, making loveplay with their fingers.

"All right." she said suddenly. "If you can talk Speaker into it, you can bring Nessus back."

"Thanks," said Louis. He showed his surprise.

"It's only for the Long Shot," she said. "Besides, you can't do it."

There was time for a meal and for formal exercises: pushups and situps, and for informal exercises: tree climbing.

Presently Speaker returned to the 'cycles. His mouth was not bloody. At his 'cycle he dialed, not for an allergy pill, but for a wet brick-shaped slab of warm liver. The mighty hunter returns, Louis thought, keeping his mouth firmly shut.

The sky had been overcast when they landed. It was still overcast, a uniform leaden gray, as they took off. And Louis resumed his argument by intercom.

"But it was so long ago!"

"A point of honor is not affected by time, Louis, though of course you would not know that. Further, the consequences of the act are very much with us. Why did Nessus select a kzin to travel with him?"

"He told us that."

"Why did he select Teela Brown? The Hindmost must have instructed Nessus to learn if humans have inherited psychic luck. He was also to learn if kzinti have become docile. He chose me because as ambassador to a characteristically arrogant species, I am likely to demonstrate the docility his people seek."

"I'd thought of that too." Louis had carried the idea even further. Had Nessus been instructed to mention starseed lures, in order to gauge Speaker's reactions?

"It matters not. I say that I am not docile."

"Will you stop using that word? It warps your thinking."

"Louis, why do you intercede for the puppeteer? Why do you wish his company?"

Good questions, Louis thought. Certainly the puppeteer deserved to sweat a little. And if what Louis suspected was true, Nessus was in no danger at all.

Was it only that Louis Wu liked aliens?

Or was it more general than that? A puppeteer was different. Difference was important. A man of Louis Wu's age would get bored with life itself, without variety. To Louis the company of aliens was a vital necessity.

The 'cycles rose, following the slope of the mountains.

"Viewpoints," said Louis Wu. "We're in a strange environnient, stranger than any world of men or kzinti. We may need all the insights we can bring to bear, just to figure out what's going on."

Teela applauded without sound. Nicely argued! Louis winked back. A very human conversation; Speaker couldn't possibly read its meaning.

The kzin was saying, "I do not need a puppeteer to explain the, world to me. My own eyes, nose, ears are sufficient."

"That's moot. But you do need the Long Shot. We all need the techniques that ship represents."

"For profit? An unworthy motive."

"Tanjit, that's not fair! The Long Shot is for the entire human race, and the kzinti too!"

"A quibble. Though the profit is not to you alone, still you sell your honor for profit."

"My honor is not in danger," Louis grated.

"I think it is," said Speaker. And he switched off.

"That's a handy little gadget, that switch," Teela observed, with malice. "I knew he'd do that."

"So did I. But, Lord Finagle! He's hard to convince."

Beyond the mountains was an endless expanse of fleecy cloud, graying out at the infinity-horizon. The flycycles seemed to float above white cloud, beneath a bright blue sky in which the Arch was an outline at the threshold of visibility.

The mountains fell behind. Louis felt a twinge of regret for the forest pool with the waterfall. They would never see it again.

A wake followed the 'cycles, a roiling wavefront where three sonic booms touched the cloud cover ahead. Only one detail broke the infinity-horizon. Louis decided that it was either a mountain or a storm, very distant, very large. It was the size of a pinhead held at arms length.

Speaker broke the silence. "A rift in the cloud cover, Louis. Ahead and to spinward."

"I see it."

"Do you see how the light shines through? Much light is being reflected from the landscape."

True, the edges of the cloud break glowed brightly. Hmmm … "Could we be flying over Ringworld foundation material? It would be the biggest break yet in the landscaping."

"I want to look more closely."

"Good," said Louis.

He watched the speck that was Speaker's flycycle curve frantically away to spinward. At Mach 2 Speaker would get no more than a glimpse of the ground.