"What a macabre jest. Louis, does this represent a typically human sense of humor?"
"No, no, no. Sentiment! Unless -"
"Yes?"
"I hadn't thought of that. The first generation — they had to throw away their own worlds, but they wanted to keep something of what they were losing. Three generations later it would be funny. It's always that way."
When the kzin was sure Louis had finished, he asked somewhat diffidently, "Do you humans feel that you understand kzinti?"
Louis smiled — and shook his head.
"Good," said the kzin, and changed the subject. "I spent some time last night examining the nearest spaceport."
They stood at the hub of the miniature Ringworld, looking through a rectangular window into the past.
The past they saw was one of magnificent achievement. Speaker had focused the screen on the spaceport, a wide projecting ledge on the spaceward side of the rim wall. They watched as an enormous blunt-ended cylinder, alight with a thousand windows, was landed in electromagnetic cradling fields. The fields glowed in pastel shades, probably so that the operators could manipulate them visually.
"The tape is looped," said Speaker. "I watched it for some time last night. The passengers seem to walk directly into the rim wall, as if a kind of osmosis process were being used."
"Yeah." Louis was badly depressed. The spaceport ledge was far to spinward of them — a distance to dwarf the distance they had already traveled.
"I watched a ship take off. They did not use the linear accelerator. They use it only for landings, to match the velocity of the ship to that of the spaceport. For takeoffs they simply tumble the ship off into space.
"It was as the leaf-eater guessed, Louis. Remember the trap door arrangement? The Ringworld spins easily fast enough for a ramscoop field to operate. Louis, are you listening?"
Louis shook himself. "Sorry. All I can think about is that this adds about seven hundred thousand miles to our trip."
"It may be possible to use the main transport system, the small linear accelerator at the top of the rim wall."
"Not a chance. It's probably wrecked. Civilization tends to spread, if there's a transport system to spread it. And even if we can got it working, we aren't moving toward an elevator shaft."
"That is true," said the kzin. "I looked for one."
In the rectangular screen, the ship was down. Floating trucks ran a jointed tube to the ship's main lock. Passengers spilled into the tube.
"Shall we change our goal?"
"We can't. The spaceport is still our best chance."
"Is it?"
"Yes, tanjit! Big as it is, the Ringworld is a colony world. Civilization always centers around the spaceport on a colony world."
"Because craft come from the home world, carrying news of technological innovations. We surmise that the Ringworlders have abandoned their home world."
"But the ships can still come in," Louis said doggedly. "From the abandoned worlds! From centuries ago! Ramships are subject to relativity, to time dilation."
"You hope to find old spacemen trying to teach the old skills to savages who have forgotten them. And you may be right," said Speaker. "But I weary of this structure, and the spaceport is very far. What else can I show you on the map screen?"
Suddenly Louis asked, "How far have we come since we left the Liar?"
"I told you I could not find our impact crater. Your guess is as accurate as mine. But I know how far we must go. From the castle to the rim is approximately two hundred thousand miles."
"A long way … But you must have found the mountain."
"No."
"The big one. Fist-of-God. We crashed practically on its slope."
"No."
"I don't like that. Speaker, is there any way we could have gotten off course? You should have found Fist-of-God just by backtracking starboard from the castle."
"But I did not," Speaker said with finality. "Do you wish to see anything more? For example, there are blank areas. Probably they are due only to worn tape, but I wondered if they might not conceal places on the Ringworld whose nature is secret."
"But we'd have to go there ourselves to find out."
Speaker suddenly turned to face the double doors, his ears spread like fans. Silently he dropped to all fours, and leapt.
Louis blinked. What could have caused that? And then he heard it …
Considering its age, the castle machinery had been remarkably silent. Now there came a low-pitched hum from outside the double doors.
Speaker was out of sight. Louis drew his flashlight-laser and followed cautiously.
He found the kzin at the head of the stairs. He put the weapon away; and together they watched Teela ride up.
"They only go up," Teela told them. "Not down. The one between the sixth and seventh floors won't go at all."
Louis asked the obvious question. "How do you make them move?"
"You just grip the banister and push forward. That way it won't go unless you're hanging on. Safer. I only found out by accident."
"You would. I climbed ten flights of stairs this morning. How many did you climb before you found out?"
"None. I was going up for breakfast, and I tripped on the first step and grabbed for the banister."
"Right. it figures."
Teela looked hurt. "It's not my fault if you -"
"Sorry. Did you get your breakfast?"
"No. I've been watching people move around below us. Did you know there's a public square just under the building?"
Speakees ears opened wide. "Is there? And it is not deserted?"
"No. They've been filing in from all directions, all morning. By now there must be hundreds of them." She smiled like dawn breaking. "And they're singing."
There were wide spots along all the corridors of the castle. Each such alcove was furnished with rugs and couches and tables, apparently so that any group of strollers could take a meal whenever he fancied, wherever he might be. In one such dining-nook, near the "basement level" of the castle, was a long window bent at right angles to form half a wall, half a floor.
Louis was panting a little from having descended ten flights of stairs. He found himself fascinated by the dining table. Its top seemed — sculpted; but the contours were shaped and placed to suggest soup plates, salad or butter or dinner plates, or coasters for the bottom of a mug. Decades or centuries of use had stained the hard white material.
"You wouldn't use plates," Louis speculated. "You'd dish the food into the depressions, and hose the table off afterward."
It seemed unsanitary, but -? "They wouldn't bring flies or mosqmtoes or wolves. Why should they bring bacteria?
"Colonic bacteria," he answered himself. "For digestion. And if one bacterium mutated, turned vicious -" By then there would be no immunity to anything. Was that how the Ringworld civilization had died? Any civilization requires a minimum number to maintain it.
Teela and Speaker were paying him no attention. They knelt in the bend of the window, looking down. Louis went to join them.
"They're still at it," said Teela. And they were. Louis guessed that a thousand people were looking up at him. They were not chanting now.
"They can't know were here," he said.
Speaker suggested, "Perhaps they worship the building."
"Even so, they can't do this every day. We're too far from the edge of town. They couldn't reach the fields."
"Perhaps we happened by on a special day, the holy day."
Teela said, "Maybe something happened last night. Something special, like us, if someone spotted us after all. Or like that." She pointed.
"I wondered about that," said Speaker. "How long has it been falling?"