The void mist is white and featureless and uniform. It stretches without change from the mountain's fluted flank to the world's horizon. The emptiness can snatch at a man's mind and hold it, so that he stands frozen and rapt at the edge of eternity until someone comes to lead him away. They call it Plateau trance.
Then there is the Ringworld horizon …
"But it's all self-hypnosis," said Louis. He looked into the girl's eyes. She stirred restlessly. "I could probably bring her out of it, but why risk it? Let her sleep."
"I do not understand hypnosis," said Speaker-To-Animals. "I know of it, but I do not understand it."
Louis nodded. "I'm not surprised. Kzinti wouldn't make good hypnotic subjects. Neither would puppeteers, for that matter." For Nessus had given over his collecting of samples of alien life and quietly joined them.
"We can study what we cannot understand," said the puppeteer. "We know that there is something in a man that does not want to make decisions. A part of him wants someone else to tell him what to do. A good hypnotic subject is a trusting person with a good ability to concentrate. His act of surrender to the hypnotist is the beginning of his hypnosis."
"But what is hypnosis?"
"An induced state of monomania."
"But why would a subject go into monomania?"
Nessus apparently had no answer.
Louis said, "Because he trusts the hypnotist."
Speaker shook his great head and turned away.
"Such trust in another is insane. I confess I do not understand hypnosis," said Nessus. "Do you, Louis?"
"Not entirely."
"I am relieved," said the puppeteer, and he looked for a moment into his own eyes, a pair of pythons inspecting each other. "I could not trust one who could understand nonsense."
"What have you found out about Ringworld plants?"
"They seem very like the life of Earth, as I told you. However, some of the forms seem more specialized than one would expect."
"More evolved, you mean?"
"Perhaps. Again, perhaps a specialized form has more room to grow, even within its limited environment, here on the Ringworld. The important point is that the plants and insects are similar enough to attack us."
"And vice versa?"
"Oh, yes. A few forms are edible for me, a few others will fit your own belly. You will have to test them individually, first for poisons and then for taste. But any plant we find can safely be used by the kitchen on your 'cycle."
"We won't starve, then."
"This single advantage hardly compensates for the danger. If only our engineers had thought to pack a starseed lure aboard the Liar! This entire trek would have been unnecessary."
"A starseed lure?"
"A simple device, invented thousands of years ago. It causes the local sun to emit electromagnetic signals that attract starseeds. Had we such a device, we could lure a starseed to this star, then communicate our problem to any Outsider ship that followed it inward."
"But starseeds travel at a lot less than lightspeed. It might take years!"
"But think, Louis. However long we waited, we would not have had to leave the safety of the ship!"
"To you this is a full life?" Louis snorted. And he glanced at Speaker, fixed on Speaker, locked eyes with Speaker.
Speaker-To-Animals, curled on the ground some distance away, was staring back at him and grinning like an Alice-in-Wonderland Cheshire Cat. For a long moment they locked eyes; and then the kzin stood up with seeming leisure, sprang, and vanished into the alien bushes.
Louis turned back. Somehow he knew that something important had happened. But what? And why? He shrugged it away.
Straddling the contoured saddle of her 'cycle, Teela seemed braced for acceleration … as if she were still flying. Louis remembered the few times he had been hypnotized by a therapist. It had felt a lot like play-acting. Cushioned in a rosy absence of responsibility, he had known that it was all a game he was playing with the hypnotist. He could break free at any time. But somehow one never did.
Teela's eyes cleared suddenly. She shook her head, turned and saw them. "Louis! How did we get down?"
"The usual way."
"Help me down." She put her arms out like a child on a wall. Louis put his hands on her waist and lifted her from the 'cycle. The touch of her was a thrill along his back and an opening warmth in his groin and solar plexus. He left his hands where they were.
"The last I remember, we were a mile in the air," Teela said.
"From now on, keep your eyes off the horizon."
"What did I do, fall asleep at the wheel?" She laughed and tossed her head, so that her hair became a great soft black cloud. "And you all panicked. I'm sorry, Louis. Where's Speaker?"
"Chasing a rabbit," said Louis. "Hey, why don't we get some exercise ourselves, now we've got the chance?"
"How about a walk in the woods?"
"Good idea." He met her eyes and saw that they had read each other's thoughts. He reached into his 'cycles luggage bin and produced a blanket. "Ready."
"You amaze me," said Nessus. "No known sentient species copulates as often as you do. Go, then. Use caution where you sit. Remember that unfamiliar life-forms are about."
"Did you know," said Louis, "that naked once meant the same thing as unprotected?"
For it seemed to him that he was removing his safety with his clothes. The Ringworld had a functioning biosphere, ripe, no doubt, with bugs and bacteria and toothy things built to eat protoplasmic meat.
"No," said Teela. She stood naked on the blanket and stretched her arms to the noon sun. "It feels good. Do you know that I've never seen you naked in daylight?"
"Likewise. I might add that you look tanj good that way. Here, let me show you something." He half-raised a hand to his hairless chest. "Tanjit -"
"I don't see anything."
"It's gone. That's the trouble with boosterspice. No memories. The scars disappear, and after a while …" He traced a line across his chest; but there was nothing under his fingertip.
"A Gummidgy reacher tore a strip off me from shoulder to navel, four inches wide and half an inch deep. His next pass would have split me in two. He decided to swallow what he had of me first. I must have been deadly poison to him, because he curled up in a shrieking ball and died.
"Now there's nothing. Not a mark on me anywhere."
"Poor Louis. But I don't have any marks either."
"But you're a statistical anomaly, and furthermore you're only twenty years old."
"Oh."
"Mmm. You are smooth."
"Any other missing memories?"
"I made a mistake with a mining beam once …" He guided her hand.
Presently Louis rolled onto his back, and Teela impaled herself as she straddled his hips. They looked at each other for a long, brilliant, unbearable moment before they began to move.
Seen through the glow of a building orgasm, a woman seems to blaze with angelic glory …
… Something the size of a rabbit shot out of the trees, scampered across Louis's chest and was gone into the undergrowth. An instant later, Speaker-To-Animals bounded into view. "Excuse me," the kzin called, and was gone, hot on the scent.
When they reconvened at the 'cycles, the fur around Speaker's mouth was stained red. "For the first time in my life," he proclaimed with quiet satisfaction, "I have hunted for my food, using no more weapons than my own teeth and claws."
But he followed Nessus's advice and took a broad-spectrum allergy pill.
"It is time we discussed the natives," said Nessus.
Toola looked startled. "Natives?"
Louis explained.
"But why did we run? How could they have hurt us? Were they really human?"
Louis answered the last question, because it had been bothering him. "I don't see how they could have been. What would human beings be doing this far from human space?"