Using their flycycles (similar to antigravity motorcycles), they try to reach the rim of the ring, where they hope to find some technology that will help them. It will take them months to cross the vast distance. When Teela develops "Plateau trance" (a kind of highway hypnosis), they are forced to land. On the ground, they encounter apparently primitive human natives who live in the crumbling ruins of a once-advanced city and think that the crew are the engineers who created the ring, and whom they revere as gods. The crew is attacked when they commit what the natives consider blasphemy (the misuse of certain technologies).