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story identification - Novel where a man is paid to travel to a planet inside a metallic sphere


There was a book (it actually had a second book as well) where a guy gets paid with a group of others to go to a planet that is enclosed in a metallic sphere.


There are many species in this planet. I don't recall if they actually met the races in the first or the second book but there an incident where an alien in the first book ate fruit from a tree that removed any signs of gender from it.



Answer



While not fitting your description correctly, bad memory would justify that as a loose description of some of Larry Niven's Ringworld.





  • The main protagonists were two humans (male and female), a Kzin (intelligent tiger) and a Pierson's Puppeteer (the organizer of the expedition).




  • The sphere was most likely the ship bringing the protagonists to the ringworld, a General Products hull




  • The many different species were hominids on the ringworld, which had evolved to fit all the ecological roles of animals (including disposing of corpses).





  • One of the travellers in the first novel (a human female) eat from the Tree of Life, becoming a (sexless) Pak Protector in the second novel.




If that rings a bell, they exit the ring in the first novel



through the crater of a "mountain" that actually is a hole left by a meteor strike.



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