Chapter 21, The Girl from Beyond the Edge Summary

The woman who has the adventurers captive is Halrloprillalar Hotrufan, a member of the crew of the Pioneer, a supply ship running between five worlds and the Ringworld for supplies. She was a ship's prostitute. Because of time dilation, her twenty-four year tours were several hundred years on the Ringworld, and on her last journey, Prill returned to a destroyed world. Her ship was able to land, but the crew killed the captain for endangering them. They were trapped outside the Ringworld, but were able to build technology to get in.

The society was in shambles. A mold which attacked superconductors used in the Ringworld technology destroyed the society. The members of Prill's crew set off to explore but found nothing. Prill journeyed to her home city, walking 200,000 miles from the...