"Much of their leadership was dead, killed in falling buildings when the power failed.
"Without power they could do little experimenting to find other superconductors. Stored power was generally confiscated for the personal use of men with political power, or was used to run enclaves of civilization in the hope that someone else was doing something about the emergency. The fusion drives of the ramships were unavailable, as the cziltang brones used superconductors. Men who might have accomplished something could not meet; the computer that ran the electromagnetic cannon was dead, and the cannon itself had no power."
Louis said, "For want of a nail, the kingdom fell."
"I know the story. It is not strictly applicable," said Nessus. "Something could have been done. There was power to condense liquid helium. With the power beams off, the repair of a power receiver would have been useless; but a cziltang brone could have been adapted to a metal superconductor cooled by liquid helium. A cziltang brone would have given access to spaceports. Ships might have flown to the shadow squares, reopened the power beams so that other liquid-helium-cooled superconductors could be adapted to the power beam receivers.
"But all this would have required stored power. The power was used to light street lamps, or to support the remaining floating buildings, or to cook meals and freeze foods! And so the Ringworld fell."
"And so did we," said Louis Wu.
"Yes. We were lucky to run across Halrloprillalar. She has saved us a needless journey. There is no longer any need to continue toward the rim wall."
Louis's head throbbed once, hard. He was going to have a headache.
"Lucky," said Speaker-To-Animals. "Indeed. If this is luck, why am I not joyful? We have lost our goal, our last meager hope of escape. Our vehicles are ruined. One of our party is missing in this maze of city."
"Dead," said Louis. When they looked at him without comprehension, he pointed into the dusk. Teela's flycycle was obvious enough, marked by one of four sets of headlamps.
He said, "We'll have to make our own luck from now on."
"Yes. You will remember, Louis, that Teela's luck is sporadic. It had to be. Else she would not have been aboard the Liar. Else we would not have crashed." The puppeteer paused, then added, "My sympathies, Louis."
"She will be missed," Speaker rumbled.
Louis nodded. It seemed he should be feeling more. But the incident in the Eye storm had somehow altered his feelings for Teela. She had seemed, for that time, less human than Speaker or Nessus. She was myth. The aliens were real.
"We must find a new goal," said Speaker-To-Animals. "We need a way to take the Liar back to space. I confess I have no ideas at all."
"I do," Louis said.
Speaker seemed startled. "Already?"
"I want to think about it some more. I'm not sure it's even sane, let alone workable. In any case, we're going to need a vehicle. Let's think about that."
"A sled, perhaps. We can use the remaining flycycle to tow it. A big sled, perhaps the wall of a building."
"We can better that. I am convinced that I can persuade Halrloprillalar to guide me through the machinery that lifts this building. We may find that the building itself can become our vehicle."
"Try that," said Louis.
"And you?"
"Give me time."
The core of the building was all machinery. Some was lifting machinery; some ran the air conditioning and the water condensers and the water-taps; and one insulated section was part of the electromagnetic trap generators. Nessus worked. Louis and Prill stood by, awkwardly ignoring one another.
Speaker was still in prison. Prill had refused to let him up.
"She is afraid of you," Nessus had said. "We could press the point, no doubt. We could put you aboard one of the flycycles. If I refused to board until you were on the platform, she would have to lift you."
"She might lift me halfway to the ceiling, then drop me. No."
But she had taken Louis.
He studied her while pretending to ignore her. Her mouth was narrow, virtually lipless. Her nose was small and straight and narrow. She had no eyebrows.
Small wonder if she seemed to have no expression. Her face seemed little more than markings on a wigmaker's dummy.
After two hours of work, Nessus pulled his heads out of an access panel. "I cannot give us motive power. The lift fields will do no more than lift us. But I have freed a correcting mechanism designed to keep us over one spot. The building is now at the mercy of the winds."
Louis grinned. "Or a tow. Tie a line to your flycycle and pull the building behind you."
"There is no need. The flycycle uses a reactionless thruster. We can keep it within the building."
"You thought of it first, hmm? But that thruster's awfully powerful. If the 'cycle tore itself loose in here -"
"Yesss -" The puppeteer turned to Prill and spoke slowly and at length in the language of the Ringworld gods. Presently he said to Louis, "There is a supply of electrosetting plastic. We can embed the flycycle in plastic, leaving only the controls exposed."
"Isn't that a little drastic?"
"Louis, if the flycycle tore itself loose, I could be hurt."
"Well … maybe. Can you land the building when you need to?"
"Yes, I have altitude control."
"Then we don't need a scout vehicle. Okay, we'll do it."
Louis was resting, not sleeping. He lay on his back on the big oval bed. His eyes were open, staring through the bubble window in the ceiling.
A glow of solar corona showed over the edge of the shadow square. Dawn was not far off ; but still the Arch was blue and bright in a black sky.
"I must be out of my mind," said Louis Wu.
And, "What else can we do?"
The bedroom had probably been part of the governor's suite. Now it was a control room. He and Nessus had mounted the flycycle in the walk-in closet, poured plastic over and around it, then — with Prill's help — run a current through the plastic. The closet had been just the right size.
The bed smelled of age. It crinkled when he moved.
"Fist-of-God," Louis Wu said into the dark. "I saw it. A thousand miles high. It doesn't make sense they'd build a mountain that high, not when …" He let it trail off.
And suddenly sat bolt upright in bed, shouting, "Shadow square wire!"
A shadow entered the bedroom.
Louis froze. The entrance was dark. Yet, by its fluid motion and by the distribution of subtle shadings of curvature, a naked woman was walking toward him.
Hallucination? The ghost of Teela Brown? She had reached him before he could decide. Totally self-confident, she sat beside him on the bed. She reached out and touched his face and ran her fingertips down his cheek.
She was nearly bald. Though her hair was dark and long and full-bodied, so that it bobbed as she walked, it was only an inch-wide fringe growing from the base of her skull. In the dark the features of her face virtually disappeared. But her body was lovely. He was seeing the shape of her for the first time. She was slim, muscled with wire like a professional dancer. Her breasts were high and heavy.
If her face had matched her figure …
"Go away," Louis said, not roughly. He took her wrist, interrupted what her fingertips were doing to his face. It had felt like a barber's facial massage, definitely relaxing. He stood up, pulled her gently to her feet, took her by the shoulders. If he simply turned her around and patted her on the rump-?
She ran her fingertips along the side of his neck. Now she was using both hands. She touched him on the chest, and here, and there, and suddenly Louis Wu was blind with lust. His hands closed like clamps on her shoulders.