A line from disconnection at infinity

A connected complete Riemannian manifold that is disconnected at infinity contains a line in a Riemannian manifold. Choose points escaping in two components outside a fixed compact set and join them by minimizing geodesics. Each segment crosses the compact set. Parametrize from a crossing point; both parameter endpoints tend to infinity in opposite directions. Compactness of the unit tangent vectors over the crossing set gives a subsequence converging to an entire geodesic. Every finite subsegment is minimizing by continuity of distance, so the limit is a line.