I recall mainly the jury-rigged pipes that a character based on one of Niven/Pournelle's friends kept working at the cost of his own heroic death. Apparently they asked him what the fate of his character should be, and he picked death.

Based on physical appearance, he surely was also the prototype for the question-asker in "What Can You Say About Chocolate-Covered Manhole Covers?" That basically obscure story was big in my life because it's one of the things that introduced me to Roger Zelazny (it referenced his Agnostic's Prayer).