Winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards for best novelFour travelers come to the ringworld. . . Louis Wu: human and old; bored with having lived too fully for far too many years. Seeking a challenge, and all too capable of handling it.Nessus: a trembling coward, a puppeteer with a built-in survival pattern of nonviolence. Except that this particular puppeteer is insane.Teela Brown: human; a wide-eyed youngster with no allegiances, no experience, no abilities. And all the luck in the world.Speaker-To-Animals: kzin; large, orange-furred, and carnivorous. And one of the most savage life-forms known in the galaxy.Why did these disparate individuals come together? How could they possibly function together? And where, in the name of anything sane, were they headed?
