Detta är förmodligen Larry Nifens Ringworld , och den lyckliga damen är Teela Brown , av det goda skeppet Lying Bastard .
On planet Earth in 2850 AD, Louis Gridley Wu is celebrating his 200th birthday. Despite his age, Louis is in perfect physical condition (due to the longevity drug boosterspice). He has once again become bored with human society and is thinking about taking one of his periodic sabbaticals, alone in a spaceship far away from other people. He meets Nessus, a Pierson's puppeteer, who offers him a mysterious job with almost no details. Intrigued, Louis eventually accepts. Speaker-to-Animals (Speaker), who is a Kzin, and Teela Brown, a young human woman who becomes Louis' lover, also join the crew.
The Luck of Teela Brown
According to the story in Ringworld (expanded in the Known Space novel Juggler of Worlds), the Puppeteers intervened with human reproduction beginning several generations in the past, with the intention of breeding humans for luck. This would be possible because they believed luck to be an inheritable psionic ability. They suspected such an ability was latent in humans already, having come to regard humanity as an unusually lucky species.