with Kzinti Fafnir police. Ander Smittarasheed appears in the framing story Ghost. Nick Sohl Nicholas Brewster Sohl is a Belter, born in the mid 21st century. He is First Speaker for the Belt Political Section when Phssthpok the Pak Protector arrives in the Solar System in the early 22nd century. Sohl and Lucas Garner track Phssthpok and Jack Brennan to Mars, where they find that Brennan has become a Protector himself (and has killed Phssthpok). Speaker-to-Animals Speaker-to-Animals (later known as Chmeee) is a junior diplomat who is trained to deal with other species without reflexively killing them. He is recruited by Nessus, a Pierson's Puppeteer, as a member of an expedition to explore the Ringworld. Speaker is a Kzin, a member of an extraterrestrial race of large tiger-like beings. He is a trained diplomat posted to the United Nations. His title (in place of a name he has yet to earn) is a polite reference to how Kzinti refer to non-Kzin races. Following their return to Known Space, he is given the name of "Chmeee" (the "ch" is pronounced like a guttural German "ch", as in "ach") and given breeding rights by the Kzinti Patriarch. In the sequel The Ringworld Engineers Chmeee, along with Louis Wu, is kidnapped by the Hindmost (the exiled leader of the Puppeteers), who wants Louis and Chmeee to uncover the secret behind the creation of the Ringworld. Chmeee appears briefly in The Ringworld Throne and Ringworld's Children. His son, Acolyte, is a supporting character in these novels. As a member of the Kzin species, Speaker-to-Animals is extremely dangerous and always ready to fight despite the fact that he is a diplomat. He was the one that caused the most damage to the Ringworld village of Zignamuclikclik, and were he not a part of the Docile Kzinti project, he probably would have leveled the village to the ground. He is also responsible for the expedition's safety on Ringworld and therefore is in charge most of the time. Chmeee is approximately tall and weighs . He, like all kzinti, is covered with a thick coat of long fur that comes in various combinations of orange, yellow, and black. His face has black fur across the eyes resembling a bandit's mask, or the facial markings of a raccoon. His tail is naked and similar in appearance to a rat's tail. Kzinti ears are hairless, pink, and shaped liked