The Mote in God's Eye

13. Look Around You

She was the first to find the intruders.

She had been exploring a shapeless mass of stony asteroid that turned out to be mostly empty space. Some earlier culture had carved out rooms and nooks and tankages and storage chambers, then fused the detritus into more rooms and chambers, until the mass was a stone beehive. It had all happened very long ago, but that was of no interest to her.

In later ages meteoroids had made dozens of holes through the construct. Thick walls had been gradually thinned so that air might be chemically extracted from the stone. There was no air now. There was no metal anywhere. Dry mummies, and stone, stone, little else and nothing at all for an Engineer.

She left via a meteoroid puncture; for all the air locks had been fused shut by vacuum welding. A long time after that someone had removed their metal working parts.

After she was outside, she saw them, very far away, a tiny glimmer of golden light against the Coal Sack. It was worth a look. Anything was worth a look.

The Engineer returned to her ship.

Telescope and spectrometer failed her at first. There were two of the golden slivers, and some bulk inside each of them, but something was shutting out her view of the masses inside. Patiently the Engineer went to work on her instruments, redesigning, recalibrating, rebuilding, her hands working at blinding speed guided by a thousand Cycles of instincts.

There were force fields to be penetrated. Presently she had something that would do that. Not well, but she could see large objects.

She looked again.

Metal. Endless, endless metal.

She took off immediately. The call of treasure was not to be ignored. There was little of free will in an Engineer.

Blaine watched a flurry of activity through a red fog as he fought to regain control of his traitor body after return to normal space. An all-clear signal flashed from Lenin, and Rod breathed more easily. Nothing threatened, and he could enjoy the view.

It was the Eye he saw first. Murcheson’s Eye was a tremendous ruby, brighter than a hundred full moons, all alone on the black velvet of the Coal Sack.

On the other side of the sky, the Mote was the brightest of a sea of stars. All systems looked this way at breakout: a lot of stars, and one distant sun. To starboard was a splinter of light, Lenin, her Langston Field radiating the overload picked up in the Eye.

Admiral Kutuzov made one final check and signaled Blaine again. Until something threatened, the scientists aboard MacArthur were in charge. Rod ordered coffee and waited for information.

At first there was maddeningly little that he hadn’t already known. The Mote was only thirty-five light years from New Scotland, and there had been a number of observations, some dating back to Jasper Murcheson himself. A G2 star, less energetic than Sol, cooler, smaller and a bit less massive. It showed almost no sunspot activity at the moment, and the astrophysicists found it dull.

Rod had known about the gas giant before they started. Early astronomers had deduced it from perturbations in the Mote’s orbit around the Eye. They knew the gas giant planet’s mass and they found it almost where they expected, seventy degrees around from them. Heavier than Jupiter, but smaller, much denser, with a degenerate matter core. While the scientists worked, the Navy men plotted courses to the gas giant, in case one or the other warship should need to refuel. Scooping up hydrogen by ramming through a gas giant’s atmosphere on a hyperbolic orbit was hard on ships and crew but a lot better than being stranded in an alien system.

“We’re searching out the Trojan points now, Captain,” Buckman told Rod two hours after breakout.

“Any sign of the Mote planet?”

“Not yet.” Buckman hung up.

Why was Buckman concerned with Trojan points? Sixty degrees ahead of the giant planet in its orbit, and sixty degrees behind, would be two points of stable equilibrium, called Trojan points after the Trojan asteroids that occupy similar points in Jupiter’s orbit. Over millions of years they ought to have collected dust clouds and clusters of asteroids. But why would Buckman bother with these?

Buckman called again when he found the Trojans. “They’re packed!” Buckman gloated. “Either this whole system is cluttered with asteroids from edge to edge or there’s a new principle at work. There’s more junk in Mote Beta’s Trojans than has ever been reported in another system. It’s a wonder they haven’t all collected to form a pair of moons—”

“Have you found the habitable planet yet?”

“Not yet,” said Buckman, and faded off the screen. That was three hours after breakout.

He called back half an hour later. “Those Trojan point asteroids have very high albedos, Captain. They must be thick with dust. That might explain how so many of the larger particles were captured. The dust clouds slow them down, then polish them smooth—”

“Dr. Buckman! There is an inhabited world in this system and it is vital that we find it. These are the first intelligent aliens—”

“Dammit Captain, we’re looking! We’re looking!” Buckman glanced to one side, then withdrew. The screen was blank for a moment, showing only a badly focused shot of a technician in the background.

Blaine found himself confronting Science Minister Horvath, who said, “Please excuse the interruption, Captain. Do I understand you are not satisfied with our search methods?”

“Dr. Horvath, I have no wish to intrude on your prerogatives. But you’ve taken over all my instruments, and I keep hearing about asteroids. I wonder if we’re all looking for the same thing?”

Horvath’s reply was mild. “This is not a space battle, Captain.” He paused. “In a war operation, you would know your target. You would probably know the ephemeris of the planets in any system of interest—”

“Hell, survey teams find planets.”

“Ever been on one, Captain?”

“No.”

“Well, think about the problem we face. Until we located the gas giant and the Trojan asteroids we weren’t precise about the plane of the system. From the probe’s instruments we have deduced the temperature the Moties find comfortable, and from that we deduce how far from their sun their planet should be—and we still must search out a toroid a hundred and twenty million kilometers in radius. Do you follow me?”

Blaine nodded.

“We’re going to have to search that entire region. We know the planet isn’t hidden behind the sun because we’re above the plane of the system. But when we finish photographing the system we have to examine this enormous star field for the one dot of light we want.”

“Perhaps I was expecting too much.”

“Perhaps. We’re all waiting as fast as we can.” He smiled—a spasm that lifted his whole face for a split second—and vanished.

Six hours after breakout Horvath reported again. There was no sign of Buckman. “No, Captain, we haven’t found the inhabited planet. But Dr. Buckman’s time-wasting observations have identified a Motie civilization. In the Trojan points.”

“They’re inhabited?”

“Definitely. Both Trojan points are seething with microwave frequencies. We should have guessed from the high albedos of the larger bodies. Polished surfaces are a natural product of civilization—I’m afraid Dr. Buckman’s people think too much in terms of a dead universe.”

“Thank you, Doctor. Is any of that message traffic for us?”

“I don’t think so, Captain. But the nearest Trojan point is below us in this system’s plane—about three million kilometers away. I suggest we go there. From the apparent density of civilization in the Trojan points it may be that the inhabited planet is not the real nexus of Motie civilization. Perhaps it is like Earth. Or worse.”

Rod was shocked. He had found Earth herself shocking, not all that many years ago. New Annapolis was kept on Manhome so that Imperial officers would know just how vital was the great task of the Empire.

And if men had not had the Alderson Drive before Earth’s last battles, and the nearest star had been thirty-five light years away instead of four— “That’s a horrible thought.”

“I agree. It’s also only a guess, Captain. But in any event there is a viable civilization nearby, and I think we should go to it.”

“I—just a moment.” Chief Yeoman Lud Shattuck was at the bridge companionway gesturing frantically at Rod’s number-four screen.

“We used the message-sending locator scopes, Skipper,” Shattuck shouted across the bridge. “Look, sir.”

The screen showed black space with pinhole dots of stars and a blue-green point circled by an indicator lightring. As Rod watched, the point blinked, twice.

“We’ve found the inhabited planet,” Rod said with satisfaction. He couldn’t resist. “We beat you to it, Doctor.”

After all the waiting, it was as if everything broke at once.The light was first. There might have been an Earthlike world behind it; there probably was, for it was in the doughnut locus Horvath was searching. But the light hid whatever was behind it, and it wasn’t surprising that the communications people had found it first. Watching for signals was their job.

Cargill and Horvath’s team worked together to answer the pulses. One, two, three, four blinked the light, and Cargill used the forward batteries to send five, six, seven. Twenty minutes later the light sent three one eight four eleven, repeated, and the ship’s brain ground out: Pi, base twelve. Cargill used the computer to find e to the same base and replied with that.

But the true message was, We want to talk to you. And MacArthur’s answer was, Fine. Elaborations would have to wait.

And the second development was already in.

“Fusion light,” said Sailing Master Renner. He bent close over his screen. His fingers played strange, silent music on his control board. “No Langston Field. Naturally. They’re just enclosing the hydrogen, fusing it and blasting it out. A plasma bottle. It’s not as hot as our drives, which means lower efficiency. Red shift, if I’m reading the impurities right… it must be aimed away from us.”

“You think it’s a ship coming to meet us?”

“Yessir. A small one. Give us a few minutes and I’ll tell you its acceleration. Meanwhile, we assume an acceleration of one gee…” Renner’s fingers had been tapping all the while “…and get a mass of thirty tons. Later we’ll readjust that.”

“Too big to be a missile,” Blaine said thoughtfully. “Should we meet him halfway, Mr. Renner?”

Renner frowned. “There’s a problem. He’s aiming at where we are now. We don’t know how much fuel he’s got, or how bright he is.”

“Let’s ask, anyway. Eyes! Get me Admiral Kutuzov.”

The Admiral was on his bridge. Blurs out of focus behind him showed activity aboard Lenin. “I’ve seen it, Captain,” Kutuzov said. “What do you want to do about it?”

“I want to go meet that ship. But in case it can’t change course or we can’t catch it, it will come here, sir. Lenin could wait for it.”

“And do what, Captain? My instructions are clear, Lenin is to have nothing to do with aliens.”

“But you could send out a boat, sir. A gig, which we’ll pick up with your men. Sir.”

“How many boats do you think I have, Blaine? Let me repeat my instructions. Lenin is here to protect secret of Alderson Drive and Langston Field. To accomplish task we will not only not communicate with aliens, we will not communicate with you when message might be intercepted.”

“Yes, sir.” Blaine stared at the burly man on the screen. Didn’t he have a shred of curiosity? Nobody could be that much of a machine… or could he? “We’ll go to the alien ship, sir. Dr. Horvath wants to anyway.”

“Very good, Captain. Carry on.”

“Yes, sir.” Rod cut off the screen with relief, then tuned to Renner. “Let’s go make first contact with an alien, Mr. Renner.”

“I think you just did that,” said Renner. He glanced nervously at the screens to be sure the Admiral was gone.

Horace Bury was just leaving his cabin—on the theory that he might be less bored somewhere else—when Buckman’s head popped out of a companionway.

Bury changed his mind at once. “Dr. Buckman! May I offer you coffee?”

Protuberant eyes turned, blinked, focused. “What? Oh. Yes, thank you, Bury. It might wake me. There’s been so much to do—I can only stay a moment—”

Buckman dropped into Bury’s guest chair, limp as a physician’s display skeleton. His eyes were red; his eyelids drooped at half-mast. His breathing was too loud. The stringy muscle tissue along his bare arm drooped. Bury wondered what an autopsy would show if Buckman were to die at this moment: exhaustion, malnutrition, or both?

Bury made a difficult decision. “Nabil, some coffee. With cream, sugar, and brandy for Dr. Buckman.”

“Now, Bury, I’m afraid that during working hours— Oh, well. Thank you, Nabil.” Buckman sipped, then gulped. “Ah! That’s good. Thank you, Bury, that ought to wake me.”

“You seemed to need it. Normally I would never adulterate good coffee with distilled spirits. Dr. Buckman, have you been eating?”

“I don’t remember.”

“You haven’t. Nabil, food for our guest. Quickly.”

“Bury, we’re so busy, I really haven’t time. There’s a whole solar system to explore, not to mention the jobs for the Navy—tracing neutrino emissions, tracking that damned light—”

“Doctor, if you were to die at this moment, many of your notes would never be written down, would they?”

Buckman smiled. “So theatrical, Bury. But I suppose I can spare a few minutes. All we’re doing now is waiting for that signal light to go off.”

“A signal from the Mote planet?”

“From Mote Prime, yes, at least it came from the right place. But we can’t see the planet until they turn off the laser, and they won’t. They talk and talk, and for what? What can they tell us if we don’t speak a common language?”

“After all, Doctor, how can they tell us anything until they teach us their language? I presume that’s what they’re trying to do now. Isn’t anyone working on that?”

Buckman gave a feral snarl. “Horvath has all the instruments feeding information to Hardy and the linguists. Can’t get any decent observations of the Coal Sack—and no one’s ever been this close to it before!” His look softened. “But we can study the Trojan asteroids.”

Buckman’s eye took on that look, the focus on infinity. “There are too many of them. And not enough dust. I was wrong, Bury; there’s not enough dust to capture so many rocks, or to polish them either. The Moties probably did the polishing, they must be all through those rocks, the neutrino emissions are fantastic. But how did so many rocks get captured?”

“Neutrino emissions. That means a fusion technology.”

Buckman smiled. “One of a high order. Thinking of trade possibilities?”

“Of course. Why else would I be here?” And I would be here even if the Navy had not made it clear that the alternative was a formal arrest… but Buckman wouldn’t know that. Only Blaine did. “The higher their civilization, the more they’ll have to trade.” And the harder they’d be to cheat; but Buckman wouldn’t be interested in such things.

Buckman complained, “We could move so much faster if the Navy didn’t use our telescopes. And Horvath lets them! Ah, good.” Nabil entered, pushing a tray.

Buckman ate like a starved rat. Between mouthfuls he said, “Not that all the Navy’s projects are totally without interest. The alien ship—”

“Ship?”

“There’s a ship coming to meet us. Didn’t you know?”

“No.”

“Well, its point of departure is a large, stony asteroid well outside the main cluster. The point is, it’s very light. It must have a very odd shape, unless there are gas bubbles all through the rock, which would mean—”

Bury laughed outright. “Doctor, surely an alien space craft is more interesting than a stony meteorite!”

Buckman looked startled. “Why?”

The slivers turned red, then black. Clearly the things were cooling; but how had they become hot in the first place?

The Engineer had stopped wondering about that when one of the slivers came toward her. There were power sources inside the metal bulks.

And they were self-motivated. What were they? Engineers, or Masters, or senseless machinery? A Mediator on some incomprehensible task? She resented the Mediators, who could so easily and so unreasonably interfere with important work.

Perhaps the slivers were Watchmakers; but more likely they contained a Master. The Engineer considered running, but the approaching bulk was too powerful. It accelerated at 1.14 gravities, nearly the limit of her ship. There was nothing for an Engineer to do but meet it.

Besides… all that metal! In useful form, as far as she could tell. The Clusters were full of metal artifacts, but in alloys too tough to convert.

All that metal.

But it must meet her, not the other way around. She had not the fuel or the acceleration. She worked out turnover points in her head. The other would do the same, of course. Luckily the solution was unique, assuming constant acceleration. There would be no need for communication.

Engineers were not good at communication.

14. The Engineer

The alien ship was a compact bulk, irregular of shape and dull gray in color, like modeling clay molded in cupped hands. Extrusions sprouted at seeming random: a ring of hooks around what Whitbread took for the aft end; a thread of bright silver girdling its waist; transparent bulges fore and aft; antennae in highly imaginative curves; and dead aft, a kind of stinger: a spine many times the length of the hull, very long and straight and narrow.

Whitbread coasted slowly inward. He rode a space-to-space taxi, the cabin a polarized plastic bubble, the short hull studded with “thruster clusters”—arrays of attitude jets. Whitbread had trained for space in such a vehicle. Its field of view was enormous; it was childishly easy to steer; it was cheap, weaponless, and expendable.

And the alien could see him inside. We come in peace, with nothing hidden—assuming its alien eyes could see through clear battle plastic.

“That spine generates the plasma fields for the drive,” his communicator was saying. There was no screen, but the voice was Cargill’s. “We watched it during deceleration. That spiggot device beneath the spine probably feeds hydrogen into the fields.”

“I’d better stay out of its way,” said Mr. Whitbread.

“Right. The field intensity would probably wreck your instruments. It might affect your nervous systems too.”

The alien ship was very close now. Whitbread fired bursts to slow himself. The attitude jets sounded like popcorn popping.

“See any signs of an air lock?”

“No, sir.”

“Open your own air lock. Maybe that will get the idea across.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Whitbread could see the alien through the forward bubble. It was motionless, watching him, and it looked very like the photographs he had seen of the dead one in the probe. Jonathon Whitbread saw a neckless, lopsided head, smooth brown fur, a heavy left arm gripping something, two slender right arms moving frantically fast, doing things out of his field of vision.

Whitbread opened his air lock. And waited.

At least the Motie hadn’t started shooting yet.

The Engineer was captivated. She hardly noticed the tiny vehicle nearby. There were no new principles embodied there. But the big ship!

It had a strange field around it, something the Engineer had never believed possible. It registered on half a dozen of the Engineer’s instruments. To others the force envelope was partly transparent. The Engineer knew enough about the warship already to scare the wits out of Captain Blaine if he’d known. But it was not enough to satisfy an Engineer.

All that gadgetry! And metal!

The small vehicle’s curved door was opening and closing now. It flashed lights on and off. Patterns of elect electromagnetic force radiated from both vehicles. The signals meant nothing to an Engineer.

It was the ship’s gadgetry that held her attention. The Field itself, its properties intriguing and puzzling, its underlying principles a matter of guesswork. The Engineer was ready to spend the rest of her life trying. For one look at the generator she would have died. The big ship’s motive force was different from any fusion plant the Engineer had ever heard of; and its workings seemed to use the properties of that mysterious force envelope.

How to get aboard? How to get through that envelope? The intuition that came was rare for an Engineer. The small craft… was it trying to talk to her? It had come from the large craft. Then…

The small craft was a link to the larger ship, to the force envelope and its technology and the mystery of its sudden appearance.

She had forgotten danger. She had forgotten everything in the burning urge to know more about that field. The Engineer opened her air-lock door and waited to see what would happen.

“Mister Whitbread, your alien is trying to use probes on MacArthur,” Captain Blaine was saying, “Commander Cargill says he has them blocked. If that makes the alien suspicious, it can’t be helped. Has he tried any kind of probe on you?”

“No, sir.”

Rod frowned and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “You’re sure?”

“I’ve been watching the instruments, sir.”

“That’s funny. You’re smaller, but you’re close. You’d think he—”

“The air lock!” Whitbread snapped. “Sir, the Motie’s opened his air lock.”

“I see it. A mouth opened in the hull. Is that what you mean?”

“Yessir. Nothing coming out. I can see the whole cabin through that opening. The Motie’s in his control cabin—permission to enter, sir?”

“Hmm. OK. Watch yourself. Stay in communication. And good luck, Whitbread.”

Jonathon sat a moment, nerving himself. He had half hoped the Captain would forbid it as too dangerous. But of course midshipmen are expendable… Whitbread braced himself in the open air lock. The alien ship was very close. With the entire ship watching him, he launched himself into space.

Part of the alien’s hull had stretched like skin, to open into a kind of funnel. A strange way to build an air lock, thought Whitbread. He used backpack jets to slow himself as he drifted straight into the funnel, straight toward the Motie, who stood waiting to receive him.

The alien wore only its soft brown fur and four thick pads of black hair, one in each armpit and one at the groin. “No sign of what’s holding the air in, but there’s got to be air in there,” Whitbread told the mike. A moment later he knew. He had run into invisible honey.

The air lock closed against his back.

He almost panicked. Caught like a fly in amber, no forward, no retreat. He was in a cell 130 cm high, the height of the alien. It stood before him on the other side of the invisible wall, blank-faced, looking him over.

The Motie. It was shorter than the other, the dead one in the probe. Its color was different: there were no white markings through the brown fur. There was another, subtler, more elusive difference… perhaps the difference between the quick and the dead, perhaps something else.

The Motie was not frightening. Its smooth fur was like one of the Doberman pinschers Whitbread’s mother used to raise, but there was nothing vicious or powerful looking about the alien. Whitbread would have liked to stroke its fur.

The face was no more than a sketch, without expression, except for a gentle upward curve of the lipless mouth, a sardonic half-smile. Small, flat-footed, smooth-furred, almost featureless— It looks like a cartoon, Whitbread thought. How could he be afraid of a cartoon?

But Jonathon Whitbread was crouched in a space much too small for him, and the alien was doing nothing about it.

The cabin was a crowded patchwork of panels and dark crevasses, and tiny faces peered at him from the shadows.

Vermin! The ship was infested with vermin. Rats? Foodsupply? The Motie did not seem disturbed as one flashed into the open, then another, more dancing from cover to cover, crowding close to see the intruder.

They were big things. Much bigger than rats, much smaller than men. They peered from the corners, curious but timid. One dodged close and Whitbread got a good look. What he saw made him gasp. It was a tiny Motie!

It was a difficult time for the Engineer. The intruder’s entry should have answered questions, but it only raised more.

What was it? Big, big-headed, symmetrical as an animal, but equipped with its own vehicle like an Engineer or a Master. There had never been a class like this. Would it obey or command? Could the hands be as clumsy as they looked? Mutation, monster, sport? What was it for?

Its mouth was moving now. It must be speaking into a communications device. That was no help. Even Messengers used Language.

Engineers were not equipped to make such decisions; but one could always wait for more data.

Engineers had endless patience.

“There’s air,” Whitbread reported. He watched the telltales that showed in a mirror just above his eye level. “Did I mention that? I wouldn’t want to try breathing it. Normal pressure, oxygen around 18 percent, CO₂ about 2 percent, enough helium to register, and—”

“Helium? That’s odd. Just how much?”

Whitbread switched over to a more sensitive scale and waited for the analyzer to work. “Around 1 percent. Just under.”

“Anything else?”

“Poisons. SO₂, carbon monoxide, nitrous oxides, ketones, alcohols, and some other stuff that doesn’t read out with this suit. The light blinks yellow.”

“Wouldn’t kill you fast, then. You could breathe it a while and still get help in time to save your lungs.”

“That’s what I thought,” Whitbread said uneasily. He began loosening the dogs holding down his faceplate.

“What does that mean, Whitbread?”

“Nothing, sir.” Jonathon had been doubled over far too long. Every joint and muscle screamed for surcease. He had run out of things to describe in the alien cabin. And the thrice-damned Motie just stood there in its sandals and its faint smile, watching, watching…

“Whitbread?”

Whitbread took a deep breath and held it. He lifted the faceplate against slight pressure, looked the alien in the eye, and screamed all in one breath, “Will you for God’s sake turn off that damned force field!” and snapped the faceplate down.

The alien turned to his control board and moved something. The soft barrier in front of Whitbread vanished.

Whitbread took two steps forward. He straightened up a half-inch at a time, feeling the pain and hearing the cracking of unused joints. He had been crouched in that cramped space for an hour and a half, examined by half a dozen twisted Brownies and one bland, patient alien. He hurt!

He had trapped cabin air under his faceplate. The stink caught at his throat, so that he stopped breathing; then self-consciously he sniffed at it in case anyone wanted to know what it was.

He smelled animais and machines, ozone, gasoline, hot oil, halitosis, old sweat socks, burning, glue, and things he had never smelled before. It was unbelievably rich—and his suit was removing it, thank God.

He asked, “Did you hear me yell?”

“Yes, and so did everyone in this ship,” said Cargill’s voice. “I don’t think there’s a man aboard who isn’t following you, unless it’s Buckman. Any result?”

“He turned off the force field. Right away. He was just waiting for me to remind him.

“And I’m in the cabin now. I told you about the repairs? It’s all repairs, all hand made, even the control panels. But it’s all well done, nothing actually in the way, for a Motie, that is. Me, I’m too big. I don’t dare move.

“The little ones have all disappeared. No, there’s one peeping out of a corner… the big one is waiting to see what I do. I wish he’d stop that.”

“See if he’ll come back to the ship with you—”

“I’ll try, sir.”

The alien had understood him before, or seemed to, but it did not understand him now. Whitbread thought furiously. Sign language? His eye fell on something that had to be a Motie pressure suit.

He pulled it from its rack, noting its lightness: no weaponry, no armor. He handed it to the alien, then pointed to MacArthur beyond the bubble.

The alien began dressing at once. In literally seconds it was in full gear, in a suit that, inflated, looked like ten beach balls glued together. Only the gauntlets were more than simple inflated spheres.

It took a transparent plastic sack from the wall and reached suddenly to capture one of the 1/2-meter-high miniatures. He stuffed it into the sack headfirst while the miniature wriggled, then turned to Whitbread and rushed at the middie with lightning speed. It had reached behind Whitbread with two right hands and was already moving away when Whitbread reacted: a violent and involuntary yip!

“Whitbread? What’s happening? Answer me!” Another voice in the background of Whitbread’s suit said crisply, “Marines, stand by.”

“Nothing, Commander Cargill. It’s all right. No attack, I mean, I think the alien’s ready to go—no, it isn’t. It’s got two of the parasites in a plastic sack, and it’s inflating the sack from an air spiggot. One of the little beasts was on my back. I never felt it.

“Now the alien’s making something. I don’t understand what’s keeping it. It knows we want to go to MacArthur—it put on a pressure suit.”

“What’s it doing?”

“It’s got the cover off the control panel. It’s rewiring things. A moment ago it was squeezing sliver toothpaste in a ribbon along the printed circuitry. I’m only telling you what it looks like, of course. YIPE!”

“Whitbread?”

The midshipman was caught in a hurricane. Arms and legs flailing, he snatched frantically for something, anything solid. He was scraped along the side of the air lock, reached and found nothing to grasp. Then night and stars whirled past him.

“The Motie opened the air lock,” he reported. “No warning. I’m outside, in space.” His hands used attitude jets to stop his tumbling. “I think he let all the breathing air out. There’s a great fog of ice crystals around me, and— Oh, Lord, it’s the Motie! No, it isn’t, it’s not wearing a pressure suit. There goes another one.

“They must be the little ones,” Cargill said.

“Right. He’s killed all the parasites. He probably has to do it every so often, to clear them out. He doesn’t know how long he’ll be aboard MacArthur and he doesn’t want them running wild. So he’s evacuated the ship.”

“He should have warned you.”

“Damn right he should! Excuse me, sir.”

“Are you all right, Whitbread?” A new voice. The Captain’s.

“Yessir. I’m approaching the alien’s ship. Ah, here he comes now. He’s jumping for the taxi.” Whitbread stopped his approach and turned to watch the Motie. The alien sailed through space like a cluster of beach balls, but graceful, graceful. Within a transparent balloon fixed to its torso, two small, spidery figures gestured wildly. The alien paid them no attention.

“A perfect jump,” Whithread muttered. “Unless—he’s cutting it a bit fine. Jesus!” The alien was still decelerating as it flew through the taxi door, dead centered, so that it never touched the edges. “He must be awfully sure of his balance.”

“Whitbread, is that alien inside your vehicle? Without you?”

Whitbread winced at the bite in the Captain’s voice. “Yes, sir. I’m going after him.”

“See you do, Mister.”

The alien was at the pilot’s station, studying the controls intensely. Suddenly it reached out and began to turn the quick fasteners at the panel’s edge. Whitbread yelped and rushed up to grab the alien’s shoulder. It paid no attention. Whitbread put his helmet against the alien’s. “Leave that to hell alone!” he shouted. Then he gestured to the passenger’s saddle. The alien rose slowly, turned, and straddled the saddle. It didn’t fit there. Whitbread took the controls gratefully and began to maneuver the taxi toward MacArthur.

He brought the taxi to a stop just beyond the neat hole Sinclair had opened in MacArthur’s Field. The alien ship was out of sight around the bulk of the warship. Hangar deck was below, and the midshipman yearned to take the gig through under her own power, to demonstrate his ability to the watching alien, but he knew better. They waited.

Suited spacers came up from the hangar deck. Cables trailed behind them. The spacers waved. Whitbread waved back, and seconds later Sinclair started the winches to tug the gig down into MacArthur. As they passed the hangar doors more cables were made fast to the top side of the gig. These pulled taut, slowing the taxi, as the great hangar doors began to close.

The Motie was watching, its entire body swiveling from side to side, reminding Whitbread of an owl he had once seen in a zoo on Sparta. Amazingly, the tiny creatures in the alien’s bag were also watching; they aped the larger alien. Finally they were at rest, and Whitbread gestured toward tha air lock. Through the thick glass he could see Gunner Kelley and a dozen armed Marines.

There were twenty screens in a curved array in front of Rod Blaine and consequently every scientist aboard MacArthur wanted to sit near him. As the only possible way to settle the squabbling Rod ordered the ship to battle stations and the bridge cleared of all civilian personnel. Now he watched as Whitbread climbed aboard the gig.

Through the camera eye mounted on Whitbread’s helmet Blaine could see the alien seated in the pilot’s chair, its image seemng to grow as the middie rushed toward it. Blaine turned to Renner. “Did you see what it did?”

“Yah. Sir. The alien was— Captain, I’d swear it was trying to take the gig’s controls apart.”

“So would I.” They watched in frustration as Whitbread piloted the gig toward MacArthur. Blaine couldn’t blame the boy for not looking around at his passenger while trying to steer the boat, but… best leave him alone. They waited while the cables were made fast to the gig and it was winched down into MacArthur.

“Captain!” It was Staley, midshipman of the watch, but Rod could see it too. Several screens and a couple of minor batteries were trained on the gig, but the heavy stuff was all aimed at the alien ship; and it had come to life.

A streamer of blue light glowed at the stem of the alien craft. The color of Cherenkov radiation, it flowed parallel to the slender silver spine at the tail. Suddenly there was a line of intense white light beside it.

“Yon ship’s under way, Captain,” Sinclair reported.

“God damn it to hell!” His own screens showed the same thing, also that the ship’s batteries were tracking the alien craft.

“Permission to fire?” the gunnery officer asked.

“No!” But what was the thing up to? Rod wondered. Time enough when Whitbread got aboard, he supposed. The alien ship couldn’t escape. And neither would the alien.

“Kelley!”

“Sir!”

“Squad to the air lock. Escort Whitbread and that thing to the reception room. Politely, Gunner. Politely, but make sure it doesn’t go anywhere else.”

“Aye aye, Captain.”

“Number One?” Blaine called.

“Yes, sir,” Cargill answered.

“You were monitoring Whitbread’s helmet camera the entire time he was in that ship?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Any chance there was another alien aboard?”

“No, sir. There wasn’t room. Right, Sandy?”

“Aye, Captain,” Sinclair answered. Blaine had activated a com circuit to both the after bridge and the engine room. “Not if that beastie were to carry fuel too. And we saw nae doors.”

“There wasn’t any air-lock door either, until it opened,” Rod reminded him. “Was there anything that might have been a bathroom?”

“Captain, did we nae see the w.c.? I took the object on port side near the air lock to be such.”

“Yeah. Then that thing’s on autopilot, would you both agree? But we didn’t see him program it.”

“We saw him practically rebuild the controls, Captain,” Cargill said. “My Lord! Do you think that’s how they control…”

“Seems verra inefficient, but the beastie did nae else that could hae been the programming of an autopilot,” Sinclair mused. “And ‘twas bloody quick about it, sir. Captain, do ye think it built an autopilot?”

There was a glare on one of Rod’s screens. “Catch that? A blue flare in the alien ship’s air lock. Now what was that for?”

“To kill yon vermin?” Sinclair asked.

“Hardly. The vacuum would have done,” Cargill answered.

Whitbread came onto the bridge and stood stiffly in front of Blaine’s command chair. “Reporting to Captain, sir.”

“Well done, Mr. Whitbread,” Rod said. “Uh—have you any ideas about those two vermin he brought abroad? Such as why they’re here?”

“No, sir—courtesy? We might want to dissect one?”

“Possibly. If we knew what they were. Now take a look at that.” Blaine pointed at his screens.

The alien ship was turning, the white light of its drive drawing an arc on the sky. It seemed to be heading back to the Trojan points.

And Jonathon Whitbread was the only man alive who had ever been inside. As Blaine released the crew from action stations, the red-haired midshipman was probably thinking that the ordeal was over.

15. Work

The Engineer’s mouth was wide and lipless, turned up at the corners. It looked like a half-smile of gentle happiness, but it was not. It was a permanent fixture of her cartoon face.

Nonetheless, the Engineer was happy.

Her joy had grown and grown. Coming through the Langston Field had been a new experience, like penetrating a black bubble of retarded time. Even without instruments, that told her something about the Field. She was more eager than ever to see that generator.

The ship within the bubble seemed unnecessarily crude, and it was rich, rich! There were parts in the hangar deck that seemed unattached to anything else, mechanisms so plentiful that they didn’t have to be used! And many things she could not understand at a glance.

Some would be structural adaptations to the Field, or to the mysterious drive that worked from the Field. Others must be genuinely new inventions to do familiar things, new circuits, at least new to an unsophisticated Engineer miner. She recognized weapons, weapons on the big ship, weapons on the boats in the hangar space, personal weapons carried by the aliens clustered around the other side of the air lock.

This did not surprise her. She had known this new class were givers of orders, not takers of orders. Naturally they would have weapons. They might even have Warriors.

The double-door air lock was too complex, too easy to jam, primitive, and wasteful of metals and materials. She was needed here, she could see that. The new class must have come here to get her, there couldn’t be any Engineers aboard the ship if they used things like this. She started to take the mechanism apart, but the stranger pulled at her arm and she abandoned the idea. She didn’t have the tools anyway, and she didn’t know what it would be lawful to use to make the tools. There would be time for all that…

A lot of others, much like the first one, clustered around her. They wore strange coverings, most of it alike, and carried weapons, but they didn’t give orders. The stranger kept trying to talk to her.

Couldn’t they see she wasn’t a Mediator? They were not too bright, this primitive new class. But they were givers of orders. The first one had shouted a clear command.

And they couldn’t speak Language.

The situation was remarkably free of decisions. An Engineer need only go where she was led, repair and redesign where the opportunity arose, and wait for a Mediator. Or a Master. And there was so much to do, so much to do…

The petty officers’ lounge had been converted into a reception room for alien visitors. The petty officers had to take over one of the Marine messes, doubling the joeys into the other. All over the ship adjustments had to be made to accommodate the swarms of civilians and their needs.

As a laboratory the lounge might lack something, but it was secure, and had plenty of running water, wall plugs, hot plates, and refreshment facilities. At least there was nothing to smack of the dissection table.

After some argument it had been decided not to attempt to build furniture to fit the aliens. Anything they built would only accommodate the passenger aboard the probe, and that seemed absurd.

There were plenty of tv pickups, so that although only a few key personnel were allowed in the lounge, nearly everyone aboard the ship could watch. Sally Fowler waited with the scientists, and she was determined to win the Motie’s trust. She didn’t care who was watching or what it would take to do that.

As it turned out, the Motie’s trust was easy to come by. She was as trustful as a child. Her first move on coming out of the air lock was to tear open the plastic sack containing the miniatures, and give it to the first hand that reached for it. She never bothered about them again.

She went where she was led, walking between the Marines until Sally took her by the hand at the reception room door, and everywhere she went she looked about, her body swiveling like an owl’s head. When Sally let go, the Motie simply stood and waited for further instructions, watching everyone with that same gentle smile.

She did not seem to understand gestures. Sally and Horvath and others tried to talk to the Motie, with no result. Dr. Hardy, the Chaplain linguist, drew mathematical diagrams and nothing happened. The Motie did not understand and was not interested.

She was interested in tools, though. As soon as she was inside she reached for Gunner Kelley’s sidearm. At a command from Dr. Horvath the Marine reluctantly unloaded the weapon and let her handle one of the cartridges before surrendering the gun. The Motie took it completely apart, to Kelley’s annoyance and everyone else’s amusement, then put it back together again, correctly, to Kelly’s amazement. She examined the Marine’s hand, bending the fingers to the limit and working them in their joints, using her own fingers to probe the muscles and the complex bones of the wrist. She examined Sally Fowler’s hand in the same way for comparison.

The Motie took tools from her belt and began to work on the grip of the pistol, building it up with plastic squeezed from a tube.

“The little ones are female,” one of the biologists announced. “Like the big one.”

“A female asteroid miner,” Sally said. Her eyes took on a faraway look. “If they use females in a hazardous job like that, they’re going to have a culture a lot different from the Empire’s.” She regarded the Motie speculatively. The alien smiled back.

“We would be better occupied in learning what it eats,” Horvath mused. “It doesn’t seem to have brought a food supply, and Captain Blaine informs me that its ship has departed for parts unknown.” He glanced at the miniature Moties, who were moving about on the big table originally used for spatball. “Unless those are a food supply.”

“We’d best not try cooking them just yet,” Renner announced from near the door. “They could be children. Immature Moties.”

Sally turned suddenly and half gasped before regaining her scientific detachment. Not that she’d be part of cooking anything before she knew what it was.

Horvath spoke. “Mr. Renner, why is MacArthur’s Sailing Master concerning himself with an investigation of extraterrestrial anatomy?”

“The ship’s at rest, the Captain secured from general quarters, and I’m off duty,” Renner said. He conveniently neglected to mention the Captain’s standing orders about crew getting in the scientists’ way. “Are you ordering me out?”

Horvath thought about it. On the bridge, so did Rod Blaine, but he didn’t like Horvath much anyway. The Science Minister shook his head. “No. But I think your suggestion about the small aliens was frivolous.”

“Not at all. They could lose the second left arm the way we lose our baby teeth.” One of the biologists nodded agreement. “What other differences are there? Size?”

“Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny,” someone said. Someone else said, “Oh, shut up.”

The alien gave Kelley back his sidearm and looked around. Renner was the only naval officer in the room, and the alien went up to him and reached for his pistol. Renner unloaded the weapon and handed it over, then submitted to the same ridiculous examination of his hand. This time the Motie worked much faster, its hands moving with almost blinding speed.

“Me, I think they’re monkeys,” Renner said. “Ancestors to the intelligent Moties. Which could mean you were right, too. There are people who eat monkey meat on a dozen planets. But we can hardly risk it yet.”

The Motie worked on Renner’s weapon, then laid it on the table. Renner picked it up. He frowned, for the flat butt had been built up into curving ridges which were now as hard as the original plastic. Even the trigger had been built up. Renner shifted the piece in his hand, and suddenly it was perfect. Like part of his hand, and it aimed itself.

He savored it for a moment, and noted that Kelley had already reloaded and holstered his own sidearm after a puzzled look. The pistol was perfect, and Renner would hate to lose it; no wonder the Marine hadn’t spoken. The Sailing Master handed the piece to Horvath.

The elderly Science Minister took the pistol. “Our visitor seems to know tools,” he said. “I don’t know guns, of course, but the weapon seems well tailored to the human hand.”

Renner took it back. Something nagged him about Horvath’s comment. It lacked enthusiasm. Could the gun have fit his own hand better than Horvath’s?

The Motie looked around the lounge, swiveling at the torso, staring at each of the scientists, then at other equipment, looking and waiting, waiting.

One of the miniatures sat cross-legged in front of Renner, also watching and waiting. It seemed totally unafraid. Renner reached to scratch it behind the ear, the right ear. Like the big Motie, it had no left ear; shoulder muscles for the upper left arm depended from the top of the head. But it seemed to enjoy the scratching. Renner carefully avoided the ear itself, which was large and fragile.

Sally watched, wondering what to do next, and wondering also what bothered her about Renner’s performance. Not the incongruity of a ship’s officer scratching the ear of what seemed to be an alien monkey, but something else, something about the ear itself…

16. Idiot Savant

Dr. Buckman was on duty in the observation room when the blinding laser signal from the inner system went out.

There was a planet there all right, about the size of Earth, with a distorting fringe of transparent atmosphere. He nodded in satisfaction; that was a lot of detail to see at this distance. The Navy had good equipment and they used it well. Some of the petty officers would make good astronomical assistants; pity they were wasted here.

What was left of his astronomy section went to work analyzing data from observations of the planet, and Buckman called Captain Blaine.

“I wish you’d get me back some of my men,” he complained. “They’re all standing around the lounge watching the Motie.”

Blaine shrugged. He could hardly order the scientists around. Buckman’s management of his department was his own affair. “Do the best you can, Doctor. Everyone’s curious about the alien. Even my Sailing Master, who’s got no business down there at all. What have you got so far? Is it a terrestrial planet?”

“In a manner of speaking. A touch smaller than Earth, with a water-oxygen atmosphere. But there are traces in the spectrum that have me intrigued. The helium line is very strong, far too strong. I suspect the data.”

“A strong helium line? One percent or thereabouts?”

“It would be if the reading were correct, but frankly— Why did you say that?”

“The breathing air in the Motie ship was 1 percent helium, with some rather odd components; I think your reading is accurate.”

“But, Captain, there’s no way a terrestrial planet could hold that much helium! It has to be spurious. Some of the other lines are even worse.”

“Ketones? Hydrocarbon complexes?”

“Yes!”

“Dr. Buckman, I think you’d better have a look at Mr. Whitbread’s report on the atmosphere in the Mote ship. You’ll find it in the computer. And take a neutrino reading, please.”

“That won’t be convenient, Captain.”

“Take it anyway,” Rod told the stubborn, bony face on the intercom screen. “We need to know the state of their industry.”

Buckman snapped, “Are you trying to make war on them?”

“Not yet,” Blaine answered; and let it go at that. “While you’ve got the instrumention set up, take a neutrino reading on the asteroid the Motie ship came from. It’s quite a way outside the Trojan point cluster, so you won’t have a problem with background emissions.”

“Captain, this will interfere with my work!”

“I’ll send you an officer to help out.” Rod thought rapidly. “Potter. I’ll give you Mr. Potter as an assistant.” Potter should like that. “This work is necessary, Dr. Buckman. The more we know about them, the more easily we can talk to them. The sooner we can talk to them, the sooner we can interpret their own astronomical observations.” That ought to get him.

Buckman frowned. “Why, that’s true. I hadn’t thought of that at all.”

“Fine, Doctor.” Rod clicked off before Buckman could voice a further protest. Then he turned to Midshipman Whitbread in the doorway. “Come in and sit down, Mr. Whitbread.”

“Thank you, sir.” Whitbread sat. The chairs in the Captain’s watch cabin were netting on a steel frame, lightweight but comfortable. Whitbread perched on the very edge of one. Cargill handed him a coffee cup, which he held in both hands. He looked painfully alert.

Cargill said, “Relax, boy.”

Nothing happened.

Rod said, “Whitbread, let me tell you something. Everyone on this ship wants to pick your brain, not later, but now. I get first crack because I’m Captain. When we’re finished, I’ll turn you over to Horvath and his people. When they’re finished with you, if ever, you’ll go off watch. You’ll think then that you’re about to get some sleep, but no. The gun room will want the whole story. They’ll be coming off watch at staggered intervals, so you’ll have to repeat everything half a dozen times. Are you getting the picture?”

Whitbread was dismayed—as he ought to have been.

“Right, then. Set your coffee down on the niche. Good. Now slide back until your spine touches the chair back. Now relax, dammit! Close your eyes.”

For a wonder, Whitbread did. After a moment he smiled blissfully.

“I’ve got the recorder off,” Blaine told him—which wasn’t true. “We’ll get your formal report later. What I want now is facts, impressions, anything you want to say. My immediate problem is whether to stop that Mote ship.”

“Can we? Still? Sir?”

Blaine glanced at Cargill. The First Lieutenant nodded. “It’s only half an hour away. We could stop it any time in the next couple of days. No protective Field, remember? And the hull looked to be flimsy enough through your helmet camera. Two minutes from the forward batteries would vaporize the whole ship, no sweat.”

“Or,” Blaine said, “we could catch up with it, knock out its drive, and take it in tow. The Chief Engineer would give a year’s salary to take that electromagnetic fusion system apart. So would the Imperial Traders’ Association; that thing’s perfect for asteroid mining.”

“I’d vote against that,” Whitbread said with his eyes closed. “If this were a democracy. Sir.”

“It isn’t, and the Admiral’s inclined to grab that Mote ship. So are some of the scientists, but Horvath’s against it. Why are you?”

“It would be the first hostile act, sir. I’d avoid that right up until the Moties tried to destroy MacArthur.” Whitbread opened his eyes. “Even then, wouldn’t the Field scare them off? We’re in their home system, Captain, and we did come to see if we could get along with them—at least I think we did, sir.”

Cargill chuckled. “Sounds just like Dr. Horvath, doesn’t he, Skipper?”

“Besides, sir, what is the Motie ship doing that might interfere with us?”

“Going home alone, probably with a message.”

“I don’t think there was a message, sir, He didn’t do anything that might have been writing, and he didn’t talk at all.”

“She,” Blaine told him. “The biologists say the Motie is female. Both of the little ones are too, and one is pregnant.”

“Pregnant. Should I have noticed that, sir?”

Blaine grinned. “What would you have looked for? And where? You didn’t even notice that all the little ones have four arms each.”

“Four—?”

“Never mind that, Mr. Whitbread. You saw no messages, but then you didn’t know the Motie was programming—or building—an autopilot until the ship took off. And an empty ship is a message all by itself. We ready for visitors, Jack?”

Cargill nodded. “And if we’re not, you can bet Lenin is.”

“Don’t count on too much help from Lenin, Number One. Kutuzov thinks it might be interesting to see what kind of account of herself MacArthur could give against the Moties. He might not do anything but watch, then run for home.”

“Is that—that doesn’t sound much like the Admiral, sir,” Cargill protested.

“It sounds like him if you’d overheard the fight he had with Dr. Horvath. Our Minister of Science keeps telling the Admiral to keep out of the way, and Kutuzov is about to take him at his word.” Blaine turned to his midshipman. “You don’t have to spread this around the gun room either, Whitbread.”

“No, sir.”

“Now, while we’ve got the time, let’s see what you can remember about that Motie ship.” Blaine touched controls and several views of the alien craft appeared on his wall screens. “This is what the computer knows so far,” Rod explained. “We’ve mapped some of the interior already. There was no shielding from our probes, nothing to hide, but that doesn’t make it all that easy to understand.”

Blaine took up a light pointer. “These areas held liquid hydrogen. Now there was heavy machinery here; did you see any of it?”

“No, sir, but that back panel looked as if it would roll up.”

“Good.” Blake nodded and Cargill sketched it in with the screen stylus.

“Like that?” the First Lieutenant asked. “Fine.” He touched the record button. “Now, we know there was quite a lot of hydrogen fuel hidden away. And that drive of theirs ionizes, heats, and enriches the hydrogen with hot carbon vapor. It takes a lot of machinery to do that. Where was it?”

“Sir, shouldn’t the Chief Engineer be here?”

“He should be here, Mr. Whitbread. Unfortunately there are about ten things happening at once on this ship, and Commander Sinclair is needed elsewhere. He’ll get his chance at you soon enough— Jack, let’s not forget the Mote design philosophy. We keep looking for separate mechanisms to do each job, but on that probe, everything did four or five overlapping things at once, so to speak. It could be we’re looking for too much machinery.”

“Yes, sir—but, Captain, no matter how you slice it, that ship had to perform a minimum number of functions. Had to. And we can’t find equipment enough for half of them.”

“Not with our technology, anyway,” Blaine said thoughtfully. Then he grinned, a young man’s broad and impertinent grin. “We may be looking for a combination microwave oven, fuel ionizer, and sauna. OK, now the alien herself. Your impressions, Whitbread. Is it that intelligent?”

“She didn’t understand anything I said. Except that one time, when I screamed ‘Turn off the force field!’ She understood that right away. Otherwise nothing.”

“You’ve edited that a bit, lad,” Cargill said. “But never mind. What do you think, boy? Does the alien understand Anglic? Is she faking?”

“I don’t know. She didn’t even understand my gestures, except once. That was when I handed her her own suit—and that’s a pretty pointed hint, sir.”

“She may simply be stupid,” Rod said.

“She’s an asteroid miner, Captain,” Cargill said slowly. “That’s fairly certain. At least that’s an asteroid miner’s ship. The hooks and clamps at the stern have to be for hanging on durable cargo, like ore and air-bearing rock.”

“So?” Blaine prompted.

“I’ve known some asteroid miners, Skipper. They tend to be stubborn, independent, self-reliant to the point of eccentricity, and close-mouthed. They’ll trust each other with their lives, but not with their women or property. And they forget how to talk out there; at least it seems that way.”

They both looked hopefully at Whitbread, who said, “I don’t know, sir. I just don’t know. She’s not stupid. You should have seen her hands moving around in the guts of the instrument panel, rewiring, making new circuits, recalibrating half a dozen things at once, it looked like. Maybe—maybe our sign language just doesn’t work. I don’t know why.”

Rod pushed a finger along the knot in his nose. “It might be surprising if it did work,” he said thoughtfully. “And this is one example of a completely alien race. If we were aliens and picked up an asteroid miner, what conclusions would we draw about the Empire?” Blaine filled his coffee cup, then Whitbread’s. “Well, Horvath’s team is more likely to come up with something than we are, they have the Motie to work with.”

Sally Fowler watched the Motie with a feeling of deep frustration. “I can’t decide whether she’s stupid or I am. Did you see what happened when I drew her a diagram of the Pythagorean Theorem?”

“Uh huh.” Renner’s grin was no help at all. “She took your pocket computer apart and put it back together again. She didn’t draw anything. She’s stupid in some ways, though,” he said more seriously. “Meaning no insult to our eminently trustworthy selves, she’s too damned trusting. Maybe she’s low on survival instincts.”

Sally nodded and watched the Motie at work.

“She’s a genius at building things,” Renner said. “But she doesn’t understand language, gestures, or pictures. Could the bloody alien be a genius and a moron at the same time?”

“Idiot savant,” Sally murmured. “It happens with humans, but it’s quite rare. Imbecile children with the ability to extract cube roots and do logarithms in their heads. Mathematical whizzes who can’t buckle their shoes.”

“It’s a difference in perceptions.” Horvath had been engaged in a more thorough study of the small Moties. “One has to learn that a picture is a picture. Your drawings— Good God, what’s it doing now?”

Someone screamed in the companionway.

Ostensibly Cargill was delivering Whitbread to the scientists. Actually, he had no doubt that Whitbread could have found his way to the wardroom where they had brought the Moties while artificers built a cage for the miniatures in the petty officers’ lounge. But Jack Cargill was curious.

Halfway through the companionway he caught his first sight of the alien. It was disassembling the wardroom coffee maker—an act of malice made all the more diabolical by the innocence of her smile.

She cringed away at Cargill’s yell—and the First Lieutenant saw that it was too late. Tiny screws and parts were scattered across the table. The alien had broken the percolator tube, possibly to analyze the soldering technique. Bits of the timing mechanism were neatly arrayed. The Motie had pulled the cylindrical shell open along its welded seam.

Cargill found that the Science Minister had him by the arm. “You’re frightening the alien,” Horvath said in a low voice. “Go away, please.”

“Doctor, have the goodness to tell me—”

“Elsewhere.” Horvath propelled him to the other end of the room. Cargill glimpsed the miniature aliens squatting on the games table, surrounded by members of the life sciences group and by samples from the galley: grain, bread, carrots and celery, defrosted raw and cooked meat. “Now,” said Horvath. “What do you mean by barging into—”

“That monster ruined the wardroom coffee maker!”

“We’re lucky,” Midshipman Whitbread said irreverently. “She was trying to take apart the number-four air lock mechanism until I stopped her.”

“All she’s interested in is tools.” Horvath was pointedly ignoring Cargill’s agitation. “For once I even agree with Admiral Kutuzov. The alien must not be allowed to see the Alderson Drive or the Field generators. She seems able to deduce what a thing is for and how it works almost without touching it.”

“Never mind that!” Cargill said. “Couldn’t you have given the Motie something else to play with? That coffee maker is half repairs anyway. Nobody could figure out how it’s made since Sandy Sinclair finished with it. And the Motie’s broken some of the parts.”

“If they were that easy to break, they can probably be fixed,” Horvath said soothingly. “Look, we can give you one of the urns from the labs, or have one of our techs— Ah, Miss Fowler, has the alien calmed down? Now, Mr Whitbread? We’re glad you’re here; we’ve been waiting for you, as the only man to have actually communicated with the alien. Here, Commander Cargill, please stay away from the Motie—”

But Cargill was halfway across the room. The alien cringed a bit, but Cargill stayed well out of her reach. He glowered at her as he considered his coffee maker. It had been reassembled.

The Motie pulled away from Sally Fowler. She found a conical plastic container, filled it with tap water, and used it to fill the coffee maker. One of the wardroom stewards sniggered.

The Motie poured in two containers of water, inserted the grounds basket, and waited.

The amused steward looked to Cargill, who nodded. The messboy dug out the tin of ground coffee, used the measuring spoon, and started the urn. The alien watched closely all the while. So did one of the miniatures, despite the distraction of a biologist waving a carrot in her face. “It did that before, watched me make the coffee, sir,” the steward said. “Thought it might want some, but the scientists didn’t offer it none.”

“We may have a godawful mess here in a minute, Ernie. Stand by to clean up.” Cargill turned to Sally. “How good is that monster at putting things together again?”

“Quite good,” Sally told him. “She fixed my pocket computer.”

The percolator bubbled, and the water in the indicator tube turned brown. Cargill hesitantly poured a cup and tasted. “Why, that’s all right,” he said. He handed the cup to the Motie.

She tasted the black, bitter brew, squawled, and threw the cup at the bulkhead.

Sally led Whitbread into the wardroom pantry. “You made the Motie understand you. How?”

“It was only that once,” Whitbread said. “I’ve been wondering if I made a mistake. Could she have decided to let me loose about the time I opened my helmet and screamed?”

Sally scowled. “She just stands there. She doesn’t even seem to know we’re trying to talk to her. And she never tries to talk back…” She dropped her voice, muttering mostly to herself. “It is a basic characteristic of intelligent species that they attempt to communicate. Whitbread, what’s your first name?”

Whitbread was startled. “Jonathon, my lady.”

“All right, Jonathon, I’m Sally. As man to woman, Jonathon, what in blazes am I doing wrong? Why won’t she try to talk to me?”

“Well, Sally,” Whitbread said tentatively. He liked the taste of the name. And she wasn’t more than a couple of years older than he was— “Sally, I could think of half a dozen reasons. Maybe she reads minds.”

“What would that have to do with—”

“She wouldn’t know about language, would she? What you’re trying to teach wouldn’t make sense. Maybe she can only read our minds when we’re screaming mad, like I was.”

“Or Commander Cargill was—” Sally said thoughtfully. “She did move away from the coffee maker. But not for long. No, I don’t believe it.”

“Neither do I. I think she’s lying.”

“Lying?”

“Playing dumb. She doesn’t know what to tell us, so she tells us nothing. Plays for time. She is interested in our machinery. This gives her time to learn about it.”

Sally nodded slowly. “One of the biologists had the same idea. That she’s waiting for instructions, and learning as much as she can until they come— Jonathon, how would we catch her at it?”

“I don’t think we do,” Whitbread said slowly. “How would you catch an intelligent mouse playing dumb, if you’d never seen a mouse and neither had anyone else?”

“Blazes. Well, we’ll just have to keep on trying.” She frowned, thinking of the Motie’s performance with the coffee maker, then gave Whitbread a long, thoughtful look. “You’re exhausted. Go get some sleep, there’s nothing you need to tell us right away, is there?”

“No.” Whitbread yawned. There was a scampering sound behind him and they both turned quickly, but there was nothing there. “Speaking of mice,” Whitbread said.

“How can they live on a steel ship?” Sally asked.

Whitbread shrugged. “They come aboard with the food supplies, even in personal gear. Once in a while we evacuate portions of the ship, move the crew around, and open up to space, to control them, but we never get them all. This trip, with all the extra personnel aboard, we haven’t even been able to do that.”

“Interesting.” Sally nodded. “Mice can live almost anywhere humans can—you know, there are probably as many mice in the galaxy as people? We’ve carried them to nearly every planet. Jonathon, are the miniatures mice?”

Whitbread shrugged. “She certainly didn’t care about them. Killed all but two—but why bring two aboard? And a randomly selected two at that.”

Sally nodded again. “We watched her catch them.” She laughed suddenly. “And Mr. Renner was wondering if they were baby Moties! Get to sleep, Jonathon. We’ll see you in ten hours or so.”

17. Mr. Crawford’s Eviction

Midshipman Jonathon Whitbread reached his hammock much sooner than he had expected. He sagged blissfully into the netting and closed his eyes… and opened one, feeling other eyes upon him.

“Yes, Mr. Potter,” he sighed.

“Mr. Whitbread, I would be obliged if you would talk to Mr. Staley.”

It was not what he expected. Whitbread opened his other eye. “Uh?”

“Something’s upset him. You know how he is, he won’t complain, he’d rather die. But he walks around like a robot, hardly speaks to anyone except politely. He eats alone… you’ve known him longer than I have, I thought you might find out why.”

“All right, Potter. I’ll try. When I wake up.” He closed his eyes. Potter was still there. “In eight hours, Potter. It can’t be that urgent.”

In another part of MacArthur Sailing Master Renner tossed fitfully in a stateroom not much larger than his bunk. It was the Third Lieutenant’s berth, but two scientists had Renner’s cabin, and the Third had moved in with a Marine officer.

Renner sat up suddenly in the darkness, his mind hunting for something that might have been a dream. Then he turned on the light and fumbled with the unfamiliar intercom panel. The rating who answered showed remarkable self-control: he didn’t scream or anything. “Get me Miss Sally Fowler,” Renner said.

The rating did, without comment. Must be a robot, Renner thought. He knew how he looked.

Sally was not asleep. She and Dr. Horvath had just finished installing the Motie in the Gunnery Officer’s cabin. Her face and voice as she said “Yes, Mr. Renner?” somehow informed Renner that he looked like a cross between a man and a mole—a remarkable feat of nonverbal communication.

Renner skipped it. “I remembered something. Have you got your pocket computer?”

“Certainly.” She took it out to show him.

“Please test it for me.”

Her face a puzzled mask, Sally drew letters on the face of the flat box, wiped them, scrawled a simple problem, then a complex one that would require the ship’s computer to help. Then she called up an arbitrary personal data file from ship’s memory. “It works all right.”

Renner’s voice was thick with sleep. “Am I crazy, or did we watch the Motie take that thing apart and put it back together again?”

“Certainly. She did the same with your gun.”

“But a pocket computer?” Renner stared. “You know that’s impossible, don’t you?”

She thought it was a joke. “No, I didn’t.”

“Well, it is. Ask Dr. Horvath.” Renner hung up and went back to sleep.

Sally caught up with Dr. Horvath as he was turning into his cabin. She told him about the computer.

“But those things are one big integrated circuit. We don’t even try to repair them…” Horvath muttered other things to himself.

While Renner slept, Horvath and Sally woke the physical sciences staff. None of them got much sleep that night.

“Morning” on a warship is a relative thing. The morning watch is from 0400 to 0800, a time when the human species would normally sleep; but space knows nothing of this. A full crew is needed on the bridge and in the engine rooms no matter what the time. As a watchkeeping officer, Whitbread stood one watch in three, but MacArthur’s orderly quarter bill was confused beyond repair. He had both the morning and forenoon watches off, eight glorious hours of sleep; yet, somehow, he found himself awake and in the warrant officers’ mess at 0900.

“There’s nothing wrong with me,” Horst Staley protested. “I don’t know where you got that idea. Forget it.”

“OK, Whitbread said easily. He chose juice and cereal and put them on his tray. He was just behind Staley in the cafeteria line, which was natural enough since he had followed Staley in.

“Though I appreciate your concern,” Staley told him. There was no trace of emotion in the voice.

Whitbread nodded agreeably. He picked up his tray and followed Staley’s unnaturally straight back. Predictably, Staley chose an empty table. Whitbread joined him.

In the Empire were numerous worlds where the dominant races were white caucasian. On such worlds the pictures on Navy enlistment posters always looked like Horst Staley. His jaw was square, his eyes icy blue. His face was all planes and angles, bilaterally symmetrical, and without expression. His back was straight, his shoulders broad, his belly was flat and hard and ridged with muscle. He contrasted sharply with Whitbread, who would fight a weight problem all his life, and was at least slightly rounded everywhere.

They ate in silence, a long breakfast. Finally, too casually, Staley asked, as if he had to ask, “How went your mission?”

Whitbread was ready. “Rugged. The worst hour and a half the Motie spent staring at me. Look.” Whitbread stood. He twisted his head sideways and let his knees sag and shoulders slump, to fit him into an invisible coffin 130 cm high. “Like this, for an hour and a half.” He sat down again. “Torture, I tell you. I kept wishing they’d picked you.”

Staley flushed. “I did volunteer.”

Bull’s-eye. “It was my turn. You were the one who accepted Defiant’s surrender, back off New Chicago.”

“And let that maniac steal my bomb!”

Whitbread put his fork down. “Oh?”

“You didn’t know?”

“Of course not. Think Blaine would spread it all over the ship? You did come back a bit shaken after that mission. We wondered why.”

“Now you know. Some jackass tried to renege. Defiant’s captain wouldn’t let him, but he might have.” Staley rubbed his hands together, painfully hard. “He snatched the bomb away from me. And I let him! I’d have given anything for the chance to—” Staley stood up suddenly, but Whitbread was quick enough to catch him by the arm.

“Sit down,” he said. “I can tell you why you weren’t picked.”

“I suppose you can read the Captain’s mind?” They kept their voices low by tacit consent. MacArthur’s interior partitions were all sound-absorbent anyway, and their voices were very clear, if soft.

“Second-guessing officers is good practice for a middie,” said Whitbread.

“Why, then? Was it because of the bomb?”

“Indirectly. You’d have been tempted to prove yourself. But even without that, you’re too much the hero, Horst. Perfect physical shape, good lungs—ever meet an admiral with a soft voice?—utter dedication, and no sense of humor.”

“I do too have a sense of humor.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I don’t?”

“Not a trace. The situation didn’t call for a hero, Horst. It called for someone who didn’t mind being made ridiculous in a good cause.”

“You’re kidding. Damn, I never know when you’re kidding’

“Now would be a poor time. I’m not making fun of you, Horst. Listen, I shouldn’t have to explain this. You watched it all, didn’t you? Sally told me I was on all the intercom screens, live, in color and 3D.”

“You were.” Staley smiled briefly. “We should have had a view of your face. Especially when you started swearing. We got no warning at all. The view jumped a bit, then you screamed at the alien, and everybody cracked up.”

“What would you have done?”

“Not that. I don’t know. Followed orders, I guess.” The icy eyes narrowed. “I wouldn’t have tried to shoot my way out, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Maybe a second of cutting laser into the control panel? To kill the force field?”

“Not without orders.”

“What about the sign language? I spent some time making gestures, hoping the alien would understand me, but it never did.”

“We couldn’t see that. What about it?”

“I told you,” Whitbread said. “The mission took someone willing to make a fool of himself in a good cause. Think about how often you heard people laugh at me while I was bringing back the Motie.”

Staley nodded.

“Now forget them and think about the Motie. What about her sense of humor? Would you like a Motie laughing at you, Horst? You might never be sure if she was or wasn’t; you don’t know what it looks like or sounds like—”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

“All anyone knew was that the situation called for someone to find out whether the aliens were willing to talk to us. It didn’t need someone to uphold the Imperial honor. Plenty of time for that after we know what we’re facing. There’ll be room for heroes, Horst. There always is.”

“That’s reassuring,” said Staley. He had finished breakfast. Now he stood and walked out fast, with his back very straight, leaving Whitbread wondering.

Oh, well, Whitbread thought. I tried. And just maybe…

Luxury in a warship is relative.

Gunnery Officer Crawford’s stateroom was the size of his bed. When the bed was up, he had room to change clothes and a small sink to brush his teeth. To lower the bed for sleeping he had first to step into the corridor; and being tall for a Navy man, Crawford had learned to sleep curled up.

A bed and a door with a lock on it, instead of a hammock or one tier of many bunks: luxury. He would have fought to keep it; but he had lost the toss. Now he bunked in MacArthur’s cutter while an alien monster occupied his quarters.

“She’s only a little more than a meter tall, of course she fits,” Sally Fowler said judiciously. “Still, it’s only a tiny room. Do you think she can stand it? Otherwise we’ll have to keep her in the lounge.”

“I saw the cabin of her ship. It wasn’t any bigger. She can stand it,” Whitbread said. It was too late to try sleeping in the gun room, and he was supposed to tell the scientists everything he knew: at least that ought to work if Cargill asked why he’d been pestering Sally. “I suppose you’ve got someone watching her through the intercom?”

She nodded. Whitbread followed her into the scientists’ lounge. Part of the room had been screened off with wire netting and the two miniatures were in there. One was nibbling at a head of cabbage, using four arms to hold it to her chest. The other, her abdomen swollen with pregnancy, was playing with a flashlight.

Just like a monkey, Whitbread thought. It was the first chance he’d had to look at the miniatures. Their fur was thicker, and mottled brown and yellow where the large one was uniformly soft brown. The four arms were nearly alike, five fingers on the left hands and six on the rights; but the arms and fingers were identically slender, identically jointed. Yet the muscles of the upper left shoulder were anchored to the top of the skull. Why, if not for greater strength and leverage?

He was delighted when Sally led him to a small corner table away from where the biosciences people were scratching their heads and arguing loudly. He got coffee for both of them and asked her about the strange musculature of the miniatures; it wasn’t what he’d really like to talk to her about, but it was a start…

“We think it’s vestigial,” she said. “They obviously don’t need it; the left arms aren’t sized for heavy work anyway.”

“Then the little ones aren’t monkeys! They’re an offshoot of the big ones.”

“Or they’re both an offshoot of something else. Jonathon, we’ve got more than two classifications already. Look.” She turned to the intercom screen and a view of the Motie’s room appeared.

“She seems happy enough,” said Whitbread. He grinned at what the Motie had been doing. “Mr. Crawford isn’t going to like what she’s done to his bunk.”

“Dr. Horvath didn’t want to stop her. She can fiddle with anything she likes as long as it isn’t the intercom.

Crawford’s bunk had been shortened and contoured. The contours were exceedingly strange, not only because of the complex joints in the Motie’s back, but also because she apparently slept on her side. The mattress had been cut and sewn, the underlying steel bent and twisted. Now there were grooves for two right arms and a pit for a projecting hipbone and a high ridge to serve as a pillow— “Why would she sleep only on her right side?” Whitbread asked.

“Maybe she’d rather defend herself with her left, if she happened to be surprised in her sleep. The left is so much stronger.”

“Could be. Poor Crawford. Maybe she’s expecting him to try and cut her throat some night.” He watched the alien at work on the overhead lamp. “She does have one-track mind, doesn’t she? We could get some good out of this. She might improve something.”

“Perhaps. Jonathon, did you study sketches of the dissected alien?”

She sounded like a schoolmistress. She was old enough to be one, too; but much too pretty, Whitbread thought. He said, “Yes, ma’am.”

“Do you see any differences?”

“The color of the fur is different. But that’s nothing. The other one was in suspended animation for hundred of years.”

“Anything else?”

“The other one was taller, I think. I wouldn’t swear.”

“Look at her head.”

Whitbread frowned. “I don’t see it.”

Sally used her pocket computer. It hummed slightly, indicating that it was in communication with the main ship’s memory. Somewhere in MacArthur a laser moved across holographic lines. The ship’s memory held everything humanity knew of Moties—such as it was. It found the information Sally asked for and sent it to her pocket computer; a sketch appeared on the face of the flat box.

Whitbread studied the sketch, then looked to the screen and the Motie. “Her forehead. It slopes!”

“That’s what we thought, Dr. Horvath and I.”

“It’s not easy to see. The Motie’s head is so flunking lopsided anyway!’

“I know. But it’s there. We think there’s a difference in the hands, too, but it’s very small.” Sally frowned and three short grooves appeared between brown eyes. She’d cut her hair short for space, and the frown and short hair made her look very efficient. Whitbread didn’t like it. “That gives us three different kinds of Motie,” she said. “And only four Moties. That’s a high mutation rate, wouldn’t you say?”

“I… wouldn’t be surprised.” Whitbread remembered the history lessons Chaplain Hardy had held for the midshipmen during the trip out. “They’re trapped in this system. Bottled up. If they had an atomic war, they’d have to live with it afterwards, wouldn’t they?” He thought of Earth and shuddered.

“We haven’t seen any evidence of atomic wars.”

“Except the mutation rate.”

Sally laughed. “You’re arguing in circles. Anyway, it doesn’t hold up. None of these three types is a cripple, Jonathon. They’re all very well adapted, all healthy—except the dead one, of course, and she hardly counts. They wouldn’t choose a cripple to pilot the probe.”

“No. So what’s the answer?”

“You saw them first, Jonathon. Call the one in the probe Type A. What was the relationship between Types B and C?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you saw them together.”

“It didn’t make sense. The little ones stayed out of the big one’s way, at first, and the big one let them alone. Then I signaled the big one that I wanted her to go with me to MacArthur. She forthwith picked the first two little ones that came to hand, made sure they were safe, and killed the rest without warning!”

Whitbread paused, thinking of the whirlwind that had blown him out the Motie ship air lock. “So you tell me. What are the little ones? Pets? Children? But she killed them. Vermin? Why save two of them? Food animals? Have you tried that?”

Sally grimaced. It was almost a snarl, remarkable on her pretty face, an expression she would never have worn any social occasion. “Tried what? Fricassee one of the little beasts and offer it to the big one? Be reasonable.”

The alien in Crawford’s room poured a handful of some kind of seed—and ate it. “Popcorn,” said Sally. “We tried it on the little ones first. Maybe that’s what they were for, food testers.”

“Maybe.”

“She eats cabbage too. Well, she won’t starve, but she may die of vitamin deficiencies. All we can do is watch and wait— I suppose we’ll go to the alien’s home planet pretty soon. In the meantime, Jonathon, you’re the only man who’s seen the Motie ship. Was the pilot’s seat contoured? I only got a glimpse of it through your helmet camera.”

“It was contoured. In fact, it fitted her like a glove. I noticed something else. The control board ran along the right side of the seat. For right hands only…”

He remembered a great deal about the mining ship, it turned out. It kept him in Lady Sally’s enjoyable company until he had to go on watch. But none of it was particularly useful.

Whitbread had no sooner taken his station on the bridge than Dr. Buckman called for the Captain.

“A ship, Blaine,” Buckman said. “From the inhabited world, Mote Prime. We didn’t find it because it was hidden by that damned laser signal.”

Blaine nodded. His own screens had shown the Motie ship nine minutes before; Chief Shattuck’s crew wasn’t about to let civilians keep a better watch than the Navy.

“It will reach us in about eighty-one hours,” Buckman said. “It’s accelerating at point eight seven gees, which is the surface gravity of Mote Prime by some odd coincidence. It’s spitting neutrinos. In general it behaves like the first ship, except that it’s far more massive. I’ll let you know if we get anything else.”

“Fine. Keep an eye on it, Doctor.” Blaine nodded and Whitbread cut the circuit. The Captain turned to his exec. “Let’s compare what we know with Buckman’s file, Number One.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Cargill toyed with the computer controls for a few minutes. “Captain?”

“Yes?”

“Look at the starting time. That alien ship got under way in not much more than an hour after we broke out.”

Blaine whistled to himself. “Are you sure? That gives ten minutes to detect us, another ten for us to dee them, and forty minutes to get ready and launch. Jack, what kind of ship launches in forty minutes?”

Cargill frowned. “None I ever heard of. The Navy could do it, keep a ship with a full crew on ready alert…”

“Precisely. I think that’s a warship coming at us, Number One. You’d better tell the Admiral, then Horvath. Whitbread, get me Buckman.”

“Yes?” The astrophysicist looked harried.

“Doctor, I need everything your people can get about that Motie ship. Now. And would you give some thought to their rather strange acceleration?”

Buckman studied the numbers Blaine sent down to his screen. “This seems straightforward enough. They launched from Mote Prime or a closely orbiting moon forty minutes after we arrived. What’s the problem?”

“If they launched that fast, it’s almost certainly a warship. We’d like to believe otherwise.”

Buckman was annoyed. “Believe what you like, but you’ll ruin the math, Captain. Either they launched in forty minutes, or… well, you could start the Motie vehicle something over two million kilometers this side of Mote Prime; that would give them more time… but I don’t believe it.”

“No more do I. I want you to satisfy yourself about this, Dr. Buckman. What could we assume that would give them more time to launch?”

“Let me see… I’m not used to thinking in terms of rocketry, you know. Gravitational accelerations are more my field, if you’ll pardon the pun. Hmmm.” Buckman’s eyes went curiously blank. For a moment he looked like an idiot. “You’d have to assume a period of coasting. And a much higher acceleration in the launching mechanism. Much higher.”

“How long to coast?”

“Several hours for every hour you want to give them make up their minds. Captain, I don’t understand your problem. Why can’t they have launched a scientific survey ship in forty minutes? Why assume a warship? After all, MacArthur is both, and it took you an unreasonably long time to launch. I was ready days early.”

Blaine turned him off. I’ll break his scrawny neck, he told himself. They’ll court-martial me, but I’ll claim justifiable homicide. I’ll subpoena everyone who knew him. They’re bound to let me off. He touched keys. “Number One, what have you got?”

“They launched that ship in forty minutes.”

“Which makes it a warship.”

“So the Admiral thinks, sir. Dr. Horvath wasn’t convinced.”

“Neither am I, but we’ll want to be ready for them. And we’ll want to know more about Moties than Horvath’s people are learning from our passenger. Number One, I want you to take the cutter and get over to that asteroid the Motie came from. There’s no sign of activity there, it should be safe enough—and I want to know just what the Motie was doing there. It might give us a clue.”

18. The Stone Beehive

Horace Bury watched the foot-high Moties playing behind the wire screen. “Do they bite?” he asked.

“They haven’t yet,” Horvath answered. “Not even when the biotechs took blood samples.” Bury puzzled him. Science Minister Horvath considered himself a good judge of people—once he’d left science and gone into politics he’d had to learn fast—but he couldn’t fathom Bury’s thought processes. The Trader’s easy smile was only a public face; behind it, remote and emotionless, he watched the Moties like God judging a dubious creation.

Bury was thinking, My but they’re ugly. What a shame. They’d be useless as house pets, unless— He checked himself and stepped forward to reach through a gap in the netting large enough for an arm but not a Motie.

“Behind the ear,” Horvath suggested.

“Thank you.” Bury wondered if one would come to investigate his hand. The thin one came, and Bury scratched her behind the ear, carefully, for the ear looked fragile and delicate. But she seemed to enjoy it.

They’d make terrible pets, Bury thought, but they’d sell for thousands each. For a while. Before the novelty wore off. Best to hit every planet simultaneously. If they breed in captivity, and if we can keep them fed, and if I sell out before people stop buying— “Allah be—! She took my watch!”

“They love tools. You may have noticed that flashlight we gave them?”

“Never mind that, Horvath. How do I get my watch back? In Allah’s— How did the catch come unfastened?”

“Reach in and take it. Or let me.” Horvath tried. The enclosure was too big, and the Motie didn’t want to give up the watch. Horvath dithered. “I don’t want to disturb them too much.”

“Horvath, that watch is worth eight hundred crowns! It not only tells the time and the date, but—” Bury paused. “Come to that, it’s also shockproof. We advertise that a shock that will stop a Chronos will also kill the owner. She probably can’t hurt it much.”

The Motie was examining the wrist watch in a sober, studious manner. Bury wondered if others would find the manner captivating. No house pet behaved like that, even cats.

“You have cameras on them?”

“Of course,” said Horvath.

“My firm may want to buy this sequence. For advertising purposes.” That’s one thing, Bury thought. Now there was a Motie ship coming here, and Cargill taking the cutter somewhere. He’d never get anywhere pumping Cargill, but Buckman was going. There might be returns from the coffee the astrophysicist drank after all.

The thought saddened him obscurely.

The cutter was the largest of the vehicles in hanger deck. She was a lifting body, with a flat upper surface that fitted flat against one wall of hangar deck. She had her own access hatches, to join the cutter’s air locks to the habitable regions of MacArthur because hangar deck was usually in vacuum.

There was no Langston Field generator aboard the cutter, and no Alderson Drive. But her drive was efficient and powerful, and her fuel capacity was considerable even without strap-on tanks. The ablative shielding along her nose was good for one (1) reentry into a terrestrial atmosphere at up to 20 km/sec, or many reentries if things could be taken more slowly. She was designed for a crew of six, but would carry more. She could go from planet to planet, but not between stars. History had been made again and again by spacecraft smaller than MacArthur’s cutter.

There were half a dozen men bunking in her now. One had been kicked out to make room for Crawford when Crawford was kicked out of his own stateroom by a three armed alien.

Cargill smiled when he saw that. “I’ll take Crawford,” he decided. “Be a shame to move him again. Lafferty coxswain. Three Marines…” He bent over his crew list. “Staley as midshipman.” He’d welcome a chance to prove himself, and was steady enough under orders.

The cutter’s interior was clean and polished, but there was evidence of Sinclair’s oddball repairs along the port wall where Defiant’s lasers had flashed through the ablative shielding; even at the long distances from which the cutter engaged, the damage had been severe.

Cargill spread his things out in the only enclosed cabin space and reviewed his flight plan options. Over that distance they could go at three gees all the way. In practice, it might be one gee over and five back. Just because the rock didn’t have a fusion plant didn’t mean it was uninhabited.

Jack Cargill remembered the speed with which the Motie had rebuilt his big percolator. Without even knowing what coffee was supposed to taste like! Could they be beyond fusion? He left his gear and put on a pressure suit, a skintight woven garment that was just porous enough to allow sweat to pass; it was a self-regulating temperature control, and with the tightly woven fabric to assist, his own skin was able to stand up to space. The helmet attached to a seal at the collar. In combat heavy armor would go over the whole mess, but this was good enough for inspections.

From the outside there was no evidence of damage or repair. Part of the heat shield hung below the cutter’s nose like a great shovel blade, exposing the control room blister, windows, and the snout of the cutter’s main armament: a laser cannon.

In battle the cutter’s first duty was to make observations and reports. Sometimes she’d try to sneak in on a torpedo run on a blinded enemy warship. Against Motie ships with no Field, that cannon would be more than enough.

Cargill inspected the cutter’s weapons with more than usual thoroughness. Already he feared the Moties. In this he was almost alone; but he would not be so forever.

The second alien ship was larger than the first, but estimates of its mass had a high finagle factor, depending on the acceleration (known), fuel consumption (deduced from drive temperature), operating temperature (deduced from the radiation spectrum, whose peak was in the soft x-ray region) and efficiency (pure guesswork). When it was all folded together the mass seemed much too small: about right for a three-man ship.

“But they aren’t men,” Renner pointed out. “Four Moties weigh as much as two men, but they don’t need as much room. We don’t know what they’re carrying for equipment, or armament, or shielding. Thin walls don’t seem to scare them, and that lets them build bigger cabins—”

“All right.” Rod cut him off. “If you don’t know, just say so.”

“I don’t know.”

“Thank you,” Rod said patiently. “Is there anything you are sure of?”

“Oddly enough, there is, sir. Acceleration. It’s been constant to three significant figures since we spotted the ship. Now that’s odd,” Renner said. “Normally you fool with the drive to keep it running at peak, you correct minor errors in course… and if you leave it alone, there’s still variation. To keep the acceleration that constant they must be constantly fiddling with it.”

Rod rubbed the bridge of his nose. “It’s a signal. They’re telling us exactly where they’re going.”

“Yes, sir. Right here. They’re saying to wait for them.” Renner wore that strange, fierce grin. “Oh, we know something else, Captain. The ship’s cross-sectional profile has decreased since we sighted it. Probably they’ve ditched some fuel tanks.”

“How did you get that? Don’t you have to have the target transit the sun?”

“Usually, yes. Here it blocks the Coal Sack. There’s enough light bouncing off the Coal Sack to give us a good estimate of that ship’s cross-sectional area. Haven’t you noticed the colors in the Coal Sack, Captain?”

“No.” Blaine rubbed at his nose again. “Throwaway fuel tanks doesn’t make them sound like a warship, does it? But it’s no guarantee. All it really tells us is that they’re in a hurry.”

Staley and Buckman occupied the rear seats in the cutter’s triangular control cabin. As the cutter pulled away at one gee, Staley watched MacArthur’s Field close behind them. Against the black of the Coal Sack the battle cruiser seemed to go invisible. There was nothing to look at but the sky.

Half that sky was Coal Sack, starless except for a hot pink point several degrees in from the edge. It was as if the universe ended here. Like a wall, Horst thought.

“Look at it,” said Buckman, and Horst jumped. “There are people on New Scotland who call it the Face of God. Superstitious idiots!”

“Right,” said Horst. Superstitions were silly.

“From here it doesn’t look at all like a man, and it’s ten times as magnificent! I wish my sister’s husband could see it. He belongs to the Church of Him.”

Horst nodded in the semidarkness.

From any of the known human worlds, the Coal Sack was a black hole in the sky. One would expect it to be black here. But now that Horst’s eyes were adjusting, he saw traces of red glowing within the Coal Sack. Now the nebular material showed like layer after layer of gauzy curtains, or like blood spreading in water. The longer he looked, the deeper he could see into it. Eddies and whorls and flow patterns showed light years deep in the vacuum-thin dust and gas.

“Imagine, me stuck with a Himmist for a brother-in-law! I’ve tried to educate the fool,” Buckman said energetically, “but he just won’t listen.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more beautiful sky. Dr. Buckman, is all that light coming from Murcheson’s Eye?”

“Doesn’t seem possible, does it? We’ve tried to find other sources, fluorescence, UV stars deep in the dust, like that. If there were masses in there we’d have found them with mass indicators. Staley, it’s not that unlikely. The Eye isn’t that far from the Coal Sack.”

“A couple of light years.”

“Well, what of it? Light travels farther than that, giver a free path!” Buckman’s teeth glowed in the faint multi-colored light of the control panel. “Murcheson lost a golden opportunity by not studying the Coal Sack when he had the chance. Of course he was on the wrong side of the Eye, and he probably didn’t venture very far from the breakout point… and it’s our luck, Staley! There’s never been an opportunity like this! A thick interstellar mass, and a red supergiant right at the edge for illumination! Look, look along my arm, Staley, to where the currents flow toward that eddy. Like a whirlpool, isn’t it? If your captain would stop twiddling his thumbs and give me access to the ship’s computer, I could prove that that eddy is a protostar in the process of condensation! Or that it isn’t.”

Buckman had a temporary rank higher than Staley’s, but he was a civilian. In any case, he shouldn’t be talking about the Captain that way. “We do use the computer for other things, Dr. Buckman.”

Buckman let go of Staley’s arm. “Too damned many.’ His eyes seemed lost; his soul was lost in that enormous veil of red-lit darkness. “We may not need it, though. The Moties must have been observing the Coal Sack for at their history; hundreds of years, maybe thousands. Especially if they’ve developed some such pseudoscience as astrology. If we can talk to them…” He trailed off.

Staley said, “We wondered why you were so eager to come along.”

“What? Do you mean jaunting off with you to see that rock? Staley, I don’t care what the Motie was using it for, I want to know why the Trojan points are so crowded.”

“You think there’ll be clues?”

“Maybe, in the composition of the rock. We can hope so.”

“I may be able to help you there,” Staley said slowly. “Sauron—my home—has an asteroid belt and mining industries. I learned something about rock mining from my uncles. Thought I might be a miner myself, once.” He stopped abruptly, expecting Buckman to bring up an unpleasant subject.

Buckman said, “I wonder what the Captain expects to find there?”

“He told me that. We know just one thing about that rock,” said Staley. “A Motie was interested in it. When we know why, we’ll know something about Moties.”

“Not very much,” Buckman growled.

Staley relaxed. Either Buckman didn’t know why Sauron was infamous, or… no. Tactful? Buckman? Not hardly.

The Motie pup was born five hours after MacArthur’s cutter left for the asteroid. The birth was remarkably doglike, considering the mother’s distant relationship to dogs; and there was only the one pup, about the size of a rat.

The lounge was very popular that day, as crew and officers and scientists and even the Chaplain found an excuse to drop by.

“Look how much smaller the lower left arm is,” said Sally. “We were right, Jonathan. The little ones are derived from the big Moties.”

Someone thought of leading the large Motie down to the lounge. She did not seem the least interested in the new miniature Motie; but she did make sounds at the others. One of them dug Horace Bury’s watch out from under a pillow and gave it to her.

Rod watched the activities around the Motie pup when. he could. It seemed very highly developed for a newborn; within hours of its birth it was nibbling at cabbages, and it seemed able to walk, although the mother usually carried it with one set of arms. She moved rapidly and was hardly hampered by it at all.

Meanwhile, the Motie ship drew nearer; and if there was any change in its acceleration, it was too small for MacArthur to detect.

“They’ll be here in seventy hours,” Rod told Cargill via laser message. “I want you back in sixty. Don’t let Buckman start anything he can’t finish within the time limit. If you contact aliens, tell me fast—and don’t try to talk them unless there’s no way out.”

“Aye aye, Skipper.”

“Not my orders, Jack. Kutuzov’s. He’s not happy about this excursion. Just look that rock over and get back.”

The rock was thirty million kilometers distant from MacArthur, about a twenty-five-hour trip each way at one gee. Four gravities would cut that in half. Not enough, Staley thought, to make it worthwhile putting up with four gees.

“But we could go at 1.5 gee, sir,” he suggested to Cargill. “Not only would the trip be faster, but we’d get there faster. We wouldn’t move around so much. The cutter wouldn’t seem so crowded.”

“That’s brilliant,” Cargill said warmly. “A brilliant suggestion, Mr. Staley.”

“Then we’ll do it?”

“We will not.”

“But—why not, sir?”

“Because I don’t like plus gees. Because it uses fuel and if we use too much MacArthur may have to dive into the gas giant to get us home. Never waste fuel, Mr. Staley. You may want it someday. And besides, it’s nitwit idea.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Nitwit ideas are for emergencies. You use them when you’ve got nothing else to try. If they work, they go in the Book. Otherwise you follow the Book, which is largely a collection of nitwit ideas that worked.” Cargill smiled at Staley’s puzzled look. “Let me tell you about the one I got in the Book…”

For a midshipman it was always school time. Staley would hold higher ranks than this one, if he had the ability, and if he lived.

Cargill finished his story and looked at the time. “Get some sleep, Staley. You’ll have the con after turnover.”

From a distance the asteroid looked dark, rough, and porous. It rotated once in thirty-one hours; oddly slow, according to Buckman. There was no sign of activity: no motion, no radiation, no anomalous neutrino flux. Horst Staley searched for temperature variations but there were none.

“I think that confirms it,” he reported. “The place must be empty. A life form that evolved on Mote Prime would need heat, wouldn’t it, sir?”

“Yes.”

The cutter moved in. Stippling which had made the rock look porous at a distance became pocks, then gaping holes of random size. Meteors, obviously. But so many?

“I told you the Trojan points were crowded,” Buckman said happily. “Probably the asteroid passes through the thick of the Trojan cluster regularly… only, give me a close-up of that big pock there, Cargill.”

Two powers higher, and the screen was half filled by a black pit. Smaller pits showed around it.

“No sign of a crater rim,” Cargill said.

“Noticed that, did you? Damn thing’s hollow. That’s why the density is so low. Well, it’s not inhabited now, but it must have been once. They even went to the trouble of giving it a comfortable rotation.” Buckman turned. “Cargill, we’ll want to search through that thing.”

“Yes, but not you. A Navy crew will board the rock.”

“This is my field of competence, damn it!”

“Your safety’s mine, Doctor. Lafferty, take us around the rock.”

The back of the asteroid was one enormous cup-shaped crater.

“Pocked with little craters… but they are craters. Not holes,” said Cargill. “Doctor, what do you make of that?”

“I can’t imagine. Not if it’s a natural formation—”

“It was moved!” Staley exclaimed.

“Oddly enough, just what I was thinking,” Cargill said. “The asteroid was moved using thermonuclear devices, exploding the bombs progressively in the same crater to channel the blast. It’s been done before. Get me a radiation reading, Midshipman.”

“Aye aye, sir.” He left, and returned in a minute. “Nothing, sir. It’s cold.”

“Really?” Cargill went to check that for himself. When he finished he looked at his instruments and frowned. “Cold as a pirate’s heart. If they used bombs, they must have been goddamn clean. That shouldn’t surprise me.”

The cutter circled farther around the flying mountain.

“That could be an air lock. There.” Staley pointed at a raised cap of stone surrounded by an archery target in faded orange paint.

“Right, but I doubt if we’d get it open. We’ll go in through one of the meteor holes. Still… we’ll look it over. Lafferty, take us in.”

In their reports they called it Beehive Asteroid. The rock was all many-sided chambers without floors linked by channels too small for men, all choked with dried asymmetrical mummies. Whatever miracles the builders had made, artificial gravity was not one of them. The corridors went in all directions; the larger chambers and storage rooms were studded everywhere with knobs for hand holds, anchor points for lines, storage niches.

The mummies floated everywhere, thin and dried, with gaping mouths. They varied from a meter to a meter and a half in height. Staley chose several and sent them back to the cutter.

There was machinery too, all incomprehensible to Staley and his men, all frozen fast by vacuum cementing. Staley had one of the smaller machines torn from the wall. He chose it for strangeness, not potential use; none of the machines was complete. “No metal,” Staley reported. “Stone flywheels and things that look like they might be integrated circuits—ceramics with impurities, that kind of thing. But very little metal, sir.”

They moved on at random. Eventually they reached a central chamber. It was gigantic, and so was the machine that dominated it. Cables that might have been power superconductors led from the wreck, convincing Staley that this was the asteroid’s power source; but it showed no trace of radiation.

They worked through narrow passages between incomprehensible blocks of stone, and found a large metallic box.

“Cut into that,” Staley ordered.

Lafferty used his cutting laser. They stool around watching the narrow green beam do nothing to the silvery casing. Staley wondered: where was the energy going? Could they be pumping power into it, somehow? Warmth on his face hinted at the answer.

He took a thermometer reading. The casing was just less than red-hot, all over. When Lafferty turned off the laser the casing cooled rapidly; but it maintained the same temperature at every point.

A superconductor of heat. Staley whistled into his suit mike and wondered if he could find a smaller sample. Then he tried using pliers on the casing—and it bent like tin. A strip came away in the pliers. They tore sheets off with their gauntleted hands.

It was impossible to map the Beehive with its tight, curving corridors. It was hard to tell where they were; but they marked their paths as they went, and used proton beam instruments to measure distances through walls.

The corridor walls were eggshell thin throughout the interior. They were not much thicker outside. Beehive Asteroid could not have been a safe place to live.

But the wall beneath the crater was many meters thick. Radiation, Staley thought. There must have been residual radiation. Otherwise they would have carved this wall out the way they did all the others, to make room for themselves.

There must have been a wild population explosion here.

And then something killed them all off.

And now there was no radiation at all. How long ago did it all happen? The place was covered with small meteor holes; scores of holes in the walls. How long?

Staley looked speculatively at the small, heavy Motie artifact Lafferty and Sohl were manhandling through the corridor. Vacuum cementing—and the wandering of elementary particles across an interface. That might tell MacArthur’s civilian scientists just how long Beehive Asteroid had been abandoned; but already he knew one thing. It was old.

19. Channel Two’s Popularity

Chaplain David Hardy watched the miniatures only through the intercom because that way he wasn’t involved in the endless speculations on what Moties were. It was a question of scientific interest to Horvath and his people; but to Chaplain Hardy there was more than intellectual curiosity at stake. It was his job to determine if Moties were human. Horvath’s scientists only wondered if they were intelligent.

The one question preceded the other, of course. It was unlikely that God had created beings with souls and no intelligence; but it was quite possible that He had created intelligent beings with no souls, or beings whose salvation was brought about by ways entirely different from those of mankind. They might even be a form of angel, although an unlikelier-looking set of angels would be hard to imagine. Hardy grinned at the thought and went back to his study of the miniatures. The big Motie was asleep.

The miniatures weren’t doing anything interesting at the moment either. It wasn’t necessary for Hardy to watch them continuously. Everything was holographed anyway, and as MacArthur’s linguist, Hardy would be informed if anything happened. He was already certain the miniatures were neither intelligent nor human.

He sighed deeply. What is man that Thou art mindful of him, O Lord? And why is it my problem to know what place Moties have in Thy plan? Well, that at least was straightforward. Second-guessing God is an old, old game. On paper he was the best man for the job, certainly the best man in Trans-Coalsack Sector.

Hardy had been fifteen years a priest and twelve years a Navy chaplain, but he was only beginning to think of it as his profession. At age thirty-five he had been a full professor at the Imperial University on Sparta, an expert in ancient and modern human languages and the esoteric art called linguistic archeology. Dr. David Hardy had been happy enough tracing the origins of recently discovered colonies lost for centuries. By studying their languages and their words for common objects he could tell what part of space the original colonists had come from. Usually he could pinpoint the planet and even the city.

He liked everything about the university except the students. He had not been particularly religious until his wife was killed in a landing boat crash; then, and he was not sure even yet how it happened, the Bishop had come to see him, and Hardy had looked long and searchingly at his life—and entered a seminary. His first assignment after ordination had been a disastrous tour as chaplain to students. It hadn’t worked, and he could see that he was not cut out for a parish priest. The Navy needed chaplains, and could always use linguists…

Now, at age fifty-two, he sat in front of an intercom screen watching four-armed monsters playing with cabbages. A Latin crossword puzzle lay on the desk at his left hand, and Hardy played idly with it. Domine, non sum…

“Dignis, of course.” Hardy chuckled to himself. Precisely what he had said when the Cardinal gave him the assignment of accompanying the Mote expedition. “Lord, I am not worthy…”

“None of us is, Hardy,” the Cardinal had said. “But then we’re not worthy of the priesthood either, and that’s more presumption than going out to look at aliens.”

“Yes, my lord.” He looked at the crossword puzzle again. It was more interesting than the aliens at the moment.

Rod Blaine would not have agreed, but then the Captain didn’t get as many chances to watch the playful little creatures as the Chaplain did. There was work to do but for now it could be neglected. His cabin intercom buzzed insistently, and the miniatures vanished to be replaced by the smooth round face of his clerk. “Dr. Horvath insists on speaking with you.”

“Put him on,” said Rod.

As usual, Horvath’s manner was a study in formal cordiality. Horvath must be getting used to getting along with men he could not allow himself to dislike. “Good morning, Captain. We have our first pictures of the alien ship. I thought you’d like to know.”

“Thank you, Doctor. What coding?”

“They’re not filed yet. I have them right here.” The image split, Horvath’s face on one half, and a blurred shadow on the other. It was long and narrow, with one end wider than the other, and it seemed to be translucent. The narrow end terminated in a needle spine.

“We caught this picture when the alien made mid-course turnover. Enlargement and noise eliminators gave us this and we won’t have better until it’s alongside.” Naturally, Rod thought. The alien ship would now have its drive pointed toward MacArthur.

“The spine is probably the Motie fusion drive.” An arrow of light sprang into the picture. “And these formations at the front end— Well, let me show you a density pattern.”

The density pattern showed a pencil-shaped shadow circled by a row of much wider, almost invisible toroids. “See? An inner core, rigid, used for launching. We can guess what’s in there: the fusion motor, the air and water regeneration chamber for the crew. We’ve assumed that this section was launched via linear accelerator at high thrust.”

“And the rings?”

“Inflatable fuel tanks, we think. Some, of them are empty now, as you can see. They may have been kept as living space. Others were undoubtedly ditched.”

“Uh huh.” Rod studied the silhouette while Horvath watched him from the other side of the screen. Finally Rod said, “Doctor, these tanks couldn’t have been on the ship when it was launched.”

“No. They may have been launched to meet the core section. Without passengers, they could have been given a much higher thrust.”

“In a linear accelerator? The tanks don’t look metallic.”

“Er—no. They don’t seem to be metallic.”

“The fuel has to be hydrogen, right? So how could those have been launched?”

“We… don’t know.” Horvath hesitated again. “There may have been a metal core. Also ditched.”

“Um. All right. Thank you.”

After some thought, Rod put the pictures on the intercom. Nearly everything went on the intercom, which served as library, amusement center, and communications for MacArthur. In intervals between alerts, or during a battle, one channel of the intercom might show anything. Canned entertainments. Chess tournaments. Spatball games between the champions of each watch. A play, if the crew had that much time on their hands—and they did, sometimes, on blockade duty.

The alien ship was naturally the main topic of conversation in the wardroom.

“There are shadows in yon hollow doughnuts,” Sinclair stated. “And they move.”

“Passengers. Or furniture,” Renner said. “Which means that at least these first four sections are being used as living space. That could be a lot of Moties.”

“Especially,” Rod said as he entered, “if they’re as crowded as that mining ship was. Sit down, gentlemen. Carry on.” He signaled to a steward for coffee.

“One for every man aboard MacArthur,” Renner said. “Good thing we’ve got all this extra room, isn’t it?”

Blaine winced. Sinclair looked as if the next intercom event might star the Chief Engineer and the Sailing Master, fifteen rounds…

“Sandy, what do you think of Horvath’s idea?” Renner asked. “I don’t care much for his theory of launching the fuel balloons with a metal core. Wouldn’t metal shells around the tanks be better? More structural support. Unless…”

“Aye?” Sinclair prompted. Renner said nothing.

“What is it, Renner?’ Blaine demanded.

“Never mind, sir. It was a real blue-sky thought. I should learn to discipline my mind.”

“Spill it, Mr. Renner.”

Renner was new to the Navy, but he was learning to recognize that tone. “Yessir. It occurred to me that hydrogen is metallic at the right temperature and pressure. If those tanks were really pressurized, the hydrogen would carry a current—but it would take the kind of pressures you find at the core of a gas giant planet.”

“Renner, you don’t really think—”

“No, of course not, Captain. It was just a thought.”

Renner’s oddball idea bothered Sandy Sinclair well into the next watch. Engineer officers normally stand no watches on the bridge, but Sinclair’s artificers had just finished an overhaul of the bridge life-support systems and Sinclair wanted to test them. Rather than keep another watch officer in armor while the bridge was exposed to vacuum, Sandy took the watch himself.

His repairs worked perfectly, as they always did. Now, his armor stripped off, Sinclair relaxed in the command chair watching the Moties. The Motie program had tremendous popularity throughout the ship, with attention divided between the big Motie in Crawford’s stateroom and the miniatures. The big Motie had just finished rebuilding the lamp in her quarters. Now it gave a redder, more diffused light, and she was cutting away at the length of Crawford’s bunk to give herself nearly a square meter of working space. Sinclair admired the Motie’s work; she was deft, as sure of herself as anyone Sinclair had ever seen. Let the scientists debate, Sandy thought; that beastie was intelligent.

On Channel Two, the miniatures played. People watched them even more than the big Motie; and Bury, watching everyone watch the little Moties, smiled to himself.

Channel Two caught Sinclair’s eye and he looked away from the big Motie, then suddenly sat bolt upright. The miniatures were having sexual intercourse. “Get that off the intercom!” Sinclair ordered. The signal rating looked pained, but switched the screen so that Channel Two went blank. Moments later, Renner came onto the bridge.

“What’s the matter with the intercom, Sandy?” he asked.

“There is nothing wrong with the intercom,” Sinclair said stiffly.

“There is too. Channel Two is blank.”

“Aye, Mr. Renner. ’Tis blank at my orders.” Sinclair looked uncomfortable.

Renner grinned. “And who did you think would object to the—ah, program?” he asked.

“Mon, we will nae show dirty pictures aboard this ship—and with a chaplain aboard! Not to mention the lady.”

The lady in question had been watching Channel Two also, and when it faded Sally Fowler put down her fork and left the mess room. Beyond that point she practically ran, ignoring the looks of those she passed. She was puffing when she reached the lounge,where the miniature Moties were still in flagrante delicto. She stood beside the cage and watched them for almost a minute. Then she said, not to anyone in particular, “The last time anyone looked, those two were both female.”

Nobody said anything.

“They change sex!” she exclaimed. “I’ll bet it’s pregnancy that triggers it. Dr. Horvath, what do you think?”

“It seems likely enough,” Horvath said slowly. “In fact I’m almost sure the one on top was the mother of the little one.” He seemed to be fighting off a stutter. Definitely he was blushing.

“Oh, good heavens,” said Sally.

It had only just occurred to her what she must have looked like. Hurrying out of the mess room the moment the scene went off the intercom. Arriving out of breath. The Trans-Coalsack cultures had almost universally developed intense prudery within their cultures.

And she was an Imperial lady, hurrying to see two aliens make love, so to speak.

She wanted to shout, to explain. It’s important! This change of sex, it must hold for all the Moties. It will affect their life styles, their personalities, their history. It shows that young Moties become nearly independent at fantastically low ages… Was the pup weaned already, or did the “mother,” now male, secrete milk even after the sex change? This will affect everything about Moties, everything. It’s crucial. That’s why I hurried—

Instead, she left. Abruptly.

20. Night Watch

For a wonder the gun room was quiet. With three junior lieutenants crammed in among six middies, it was usually a scene of chaos. Potter sighed thankfully to see that everyone was asleep except Jonathon Whitbread. Despite his banter, Whitbread was one of Potter’s friends aboard MacArthur.

“How’s astronomy?” Whitbread asked softly. The older midshipman was sprawled in his hammock. “Hand me a bulb of beer, will you, Gavin?”

Potter got one for himself too. “It’s a madhouse down there, Jonathon. I thought it would be better once they found Mote Prime, but it isn’t.”

“Hm. Mapping a planet’s no more than routine for the Navy,” Whitbread told him.

“It might be routine for the Navy, but this is my first deep space cruise. They have me doing most of the work while they discuss new theories I can’t understand. I suppose you’d say it’s good training?”

“It’s good training.”

“Thank you.” Potter gulped beer.

“It doesn’t get any more fun, either. What have you got so far?”

“Quite a bit. There is one moon, you know, so getting the mass was straightforward. Surface gravity about 870 cm/sec square.”

“Point 87 standard. Just what the Motie probe’s accelerating. No surprises there.”

“But they are in the atmosphere,” Potter said eagerly. “And we’ve mapped the civilization centers. Neutrinos, roiled air columns above fusion plants, electromagnetics—they’re everywhere, on every continent and even out into the seas. That planet’s crowded.” Potter said it in awe. He was used to the sparseness of New Scotland. “We’ve got a map, too. They were just finishing the globe when I left. Would you like to see it?”

“Sure.” Whitbread unstraped from his web hammock. They climbed down two decks to scientist country. Most of the civilians worked in the relatively high gravity areas near the outer surface of MacArthur, but bunked nearer the ship’s core.

The 120-cm globe was set up in a small lounge used by the astronomy section. During action stations the compartment would be occupied by damage-control parties and used for emergency-repair assemblies. Now it was empty. A chime announced three bells in the last watch.

The planet was mapped completely except for the south pole, and the globe indicated the planet’s axial tilt. MacArthur’s light-amplifying telescopes had given a picture much like any Earth-type planet: deep and varied blues smeared with white frosting, red deserts, and white tips of mountains. The films had been taken at various times and many wave lengths so that the cloud covers didn’t obscure too much of the surface. Industrial centers marked in gold dotted the planet.

Whitbread studied it carefully while Potter poured coffee from Dr. Buckman’s Dewar flask. Buckman, for some reason, always had the best coffee in the ship—at least the best that middies had access to.

“Mr. Potter, why do I get the feeling that it looks like Mars?”

“I wouldn’t know, Mr. Whitbread. What’s a Mars?”

“Sol Four. Haven’t you ever been to New Annapolis?”

“I’m Trans-Coalsack, remember.”

Whitbread nodded. “You’ll get there, though. But I guess they skip part of the training for colonial recruits. It’s a pity. Maybe the Captain can arrange it for you. The fun thing is that last training mission, when they make you calculate an emergency minimum fuel landing on Mars, and then do it with sealed tanks. You have to use the atmosphere to brake, and since there isn’t very damned much of it, you almost have to graze the ground to get any benefit.”

“That sounds like fun, Mr. Whitbread. A pity I have dentist appointment that day—”

Whitbread continued to stare at the globe while he sipped coffee. “It bothers me, Gavin. It really does. Let’s go ask somebody.”

“Commander Cargill’s still out at the Beehive.” As First Lieutenant, Cargill was officially in charge of midshipman training. He was also patient with the youngsters, when many other officers were not.

“Maybe somebody will still be up,” Whitbread suggested. They went forward toward the bridge, and saw Renner with flecks of soap on his chin. They did not hear him cursing because he now had to share a head with nine other officers.

Whitbread explained his problem. “And it looks like Mars, Mr. Renner. But I don’t know why.”

“Beats me,” Renner said. “I’ve never been anywhere near Sol.” There was no reason for merchant ships to go closer to Sol than the orbit of Neptune, although as the original home of humanity Sol was centrally located as transfer point to other and more valuable systems. “Never heard anything good about Mars, either. Why is it important?”

“I don’t know. It probably isn’t.”

“But you seem to think it is.”

Whithread didn’t answer.

“There’s something peculiar about Mote Prime, though. It looks like any random world in the Empire, except— Or is it just because I know it’s covered with alien monsters? Tell you what, I’m due for a glass of wine with the Captain in five minutes. Just let me get my tunic and you come along. We’ll ask him.”

Renner darted into his stateroom before Whitbread and Potter could protest. Potter looked at his companion accusingly. Now what kind of trouble had he got them into?

Renner led them down the ladders into the high-gravity tower where the Captain’s patrol cabin was. A bored Marine sat at the desk outside Blaine’s quarters. Whitbread recognized him—reputedly, Sergeant Maloney’s vacuum still, located somewhere forward of the port torpedo room, made the best Irish Mist in the fleet. Maloney strove for quality, not quantity.

“Sure, bring the middies in,” Blaine said. “There’s not much to do until the cutter gets back. Come in, gentlemen. Wine, coffee, or something stronger?”

Whitbread and Potter settled for sherry, although Potter would have preferred Scotch. He had been drinking it since he was eleven. They sat in small folding chairs which fitted into dogs scattered around the deck of Blaine’s patrol cabin. The observation ports were open and the ship’s Field off, so MacArthur’s bulk hovered above them. Blaine noted the middies’ nervous glances and smiled. It got to everybody at first.

“What’s the problem?” Blaine asked. Whitbtead explained.

“I see. Mr. Potter, would you get that globe on my intercom? Thank you.” Rod studied the image on the screen. “Hm. Normal-looking world. The colors are off, somehow. Clouds look—well, dirty. Not surprising. There’s all kinds of crud in the atmosphere. You’d know that, Mr. Whitbread.”

“Yes, sir.” Whitbread wrinkled his nose. “Filthy stuff.”

“Right. But it’s the helium that’s driving Buckman up the bulkhead. I wonder if he’s figured it out yet? He’s had several days… Dammit, Whitbread, it does look like Mars. But why?”

Whitbread shrugged. By now he was sorry he’d raised the subject.

“It’s hard to see the contours. It always is.” Absently Rod carried his coffee and Irish Mist over to the intercom screen. Officially he didn’t know where the Irish Mist came from. Kelley and his Marines always saw that the Captain had plenty, though. Cziller had liked slivovitz, and that had strained Maloney’s ingenuity to the breaking point.

Blaine traced the outline of a small sea. “You can’t tell land from sea, but the clouds always look like permanent formations…” He traced it again. “That sea’s almost a circle.”

“Yah. So’s this one.” Renner traced a faint ring of islands, much larger than the sea Blaine had studied. “And this—you can only see part of the arc.” This was on land, an arc of low hills.

“They’re all circles,” Blaine announced. “Just like Mars. That’s it. Mars has been circling through Sol’s asteroid belt for four billion years. But there aren’t that many asteroids in this system, and they’re all in the Trojan points.”

“Sir, aren’t most of the circles a bit small for that?” Potter asked.

“So they are, Mr. Potter. So they are.”

“But what would it mean?” Whitbread said aloud. He meant it mostly for himself.

“Another mystery for Buckman,” Blaine said. “He’ll love it. Now, let’s use the time more constructively. I’m glad you brought the young gentlemen, Mr. Renner. I don’t suppose you both play bridge?”

They did, as it happened, but Whitbread had a string of bad luck. He lost nearly a full day’s pay.

The game was ended by the return of the cutter. Cargill came immediately to the Captain’s quarters to tell about the expedition. He had brought information, a pair of incomprehensible Motie mechanisms now being offloaded in hangar deck, and a torn sheet of gold-metallic stuff which he carried himself with thick gloves. Blaine thanked Renner and the middies for the game and they took the thinly veiled hint, although Whitbread would have liked to stay.

“I’m for my bunk,” Potter announced. “Unless—”

“Yes?” Whitbread prompted.

“Would it nae be a bonny sight if Mr. Crawford were to see his stateroom now?” Potter asked mischievously.

A slow grin spread across Jonathon Whitbread’s plump features. “It would indeed, Mr. Potter. It would indeed. Let’s hurry!”

It was worth it. The midshipmen weren’t alone in the debriefing rooms off hangar deck when a signal rating, prompted by Whitbread, tuned in the stateroom.

Crawford didn’t disappoint them. He would have committed xenocide, the first such crime in human history, if he hadn’t been restrained by his friends. He raved so much that the Captain heard about it, and as a result Crawford went directly from patrol to standing the next watch.

Buckman collected Potter and scurried to the astronomy lab, sure that the young middie had created chaos. He was pleasantly surprised at the work accomplished. He was also pleased with the coffee waiting for him. That flask was always full, and Buckman had come to expect it. He knew that it was somehow the work of Horace Bury.

Within half an hour of the cutter’s arrival, Bury knew of the sheet of golden metal. Now that was something odd—and potentially quite valuable. The ancient-looking Motie machines might be equally so— If he could only get access to the cutter’s computer! But Nabil’s skills didn’t include that one.

Ultimately there would be coffee and conversation with Buckman, but that could wait, that could wait. And tomorrow the Motie ship would arrive. No question about it, this was going to be a very valuable expedition—and the Navy thought they were punishing him by keeping him away from his business! True, there would be no growth without Bury to supervise it and drive his underlings on, but it wouldn’t suffer much either; and now, with what he would learn here, Imperial Autonetics might become the most powerful firm in the Imperial Traders’ Association. If the Navy thought the ITA made trouble for them now, wait until it was controlled by Horace Bury! He smiled slyly to himself. Nabil, seeing his master’s smile, hunched nervously and tried to be inconspicuous.

Below in hangar deck Whitbread was put to work along with everyone else who had wandered there. Cargill had brought back a number of items from the Stone Beehive, and they had to be uncrated. Whitbread was ingenious enough to volunteer to assist Sally before Cargill gave him another job.

They unloaded skeletons and mummies for the anthropology lab. There were doll-sized miniatures, very fragile, that matched the live miniatures in the petty officers’ lounge. Other skeletons, which Staley said were very numerous in the Beehive, matched the Motie miner now bunked in Crawford’s stateroom.

“Hah!” cried Sally. They were unpacking still another mummy.

“Uh?” Wlhitbread asked.

“This one, Jonathon. It matches the one in the Motie probe. Or does it? The forehead slope is wrong… but of course they’d pick the most intelligent person they could find as emissary to New Caledonia. This is a first contact with aliens for them too.”

There was a small, small-headed mummy, only a meter long, with large, fragile hands. The long fingers on all three hands were broken. There was a dry hand which Cargill had found floating free, different from anything yet found: the bones strong and straight and thick, the joints large. “Arthritis?” Sally wondered. They packed it carefully away and went on to the next box, the remains of a foot which had also been floating free. It had a small, sharp thorn on the heel, and the front of the foot was as hard as a horse’s hoof, quite sharp and pointed, unlike the other Motie foot structures.

“Mutations?” Sally said. She turned to Midshipman Staley, who had also been drafted for striking the cargo below. “You say the radiation was all gone?”

“It was dead cold, uh—Sally,” said Staley. “But it must have been a hell of radiation at one time.”

Sally shivered. “I wonder just now much time we’re talking about. Thousands of years? It would depend on how clean those bombs they used to propel the asteroid were.”

“There was no way of telling,” Staley answered. “But that place felt old, Sally. Old, old. The most ancient thing I can compare it to is the Great Pyramid on Earth. It felt older than that.”

“Um,” she said. “But that’s no evidence, Horst.”

“No. But that place was old. I know it.”

Analysis of the finds would have to wait. Just unloading and storing took them well into the first watch, and everyone was tired. It was 0130, three bells in the first watch, when Sally went to her cabin and Staley to the gun room. Jonathon Whitbread was left alone.

He had drunk too much coffee in the Captain’s cabin and he was not tired. He could sleep later. In fact he would have to, since the Motie ship would pull alongside MacArthur during the forenoon watch, but that was nine hours away, and Whitbread was young.

MacArthur’s corridors glowed with half the lights of the ship’s day. They were nearly empty, with the stateroom doors all closed. The ever present human voices that drifted in every corridor during MacArthur’s day, interfering with each other until no single voice could be heard, had given way to—silence.

The tension of the day remained, though. MacArthur would never be at rest while in the alien system. And out there, invisible, her screens up and her crew standing double watches, was the great cylindrical bulk of Lenin. Whitbread thought of the huge laser cannon on the battleship: many would be trained on MacArthur right now.

Whitbread loved night watches. There was room to breathe, and room to be alone. There was company too, crewmen on watch, late-working scientists—only this time everyone seemed to be asleep. Oh, well, he could watch the miniatures on the intercom, have a final drink, read a little, and go to sleep. The nice thing about the first watch was that there would be unoccupied labs to sit in.

The intercom screen was blank when he dialed the Moties. Whitbread scowled for a second—then grinned and strolled off toward the petty officers’ lounge.

Be it admitted: Whitbread was expecting to find two miniature Moties engaged in sexual congress. A midshipman must find his own entertainment, after all.

He opened the door—and something shot between his feet and out, a flash of yellow and brown. Whitbread’s family had owned dogs. It gave him certain trained reflexes. He jumped back, fast, slammed the door to keep anything else from getting out, then looked down the corridor.

He saw it quite clearly in the instant before it dodged into the crew galley area. One of the miniature Moties; and the shape above its shoulders had to be the pup.

The other adult must still be in the petty officers’ lounge. For a moment Whitbread hesitated. He had caught dogs by moving after them immediately. It was in the galley—but it didn’t know him, wasn’t trained to his voice—and damn it, it wasn’t a dog. Whitbread scowled. This would be no fun at all. He went to an intercom and called the watch officer.

“Jee Zuss Christ,” said Crawford. “All right, you say one of the goddamn things is still in the lounge? Are you sure?”

“No, sir. I haven’t actually looked in there, but I only spotted one.”

“Don’t look in there,” Crawford ordered. “Stay by the door and don’t let anyone in there. I’ll have to call the Captain.” Crawford. scowled. The Captain might well bite his head off, being called out of bed because a pet had got loose, but the standing orders said any activities by aliens must be reported to the Captain immediately.

Blaine was one of those fortunate people who can come awake instantly without transition. He listened to Crawford’s report.

“All right, Crawford, get a couple of Marines to relieve Whitbread and tell the midshipman to stand by. I’ll want his story. Turn out another squad of Marines and wake up the cooks. Have them search the galley.” He closed his eyes to think. “Keep the lounge sealed until Dr. Horvath gets down there.” He switched off the intercom. Have to call Horvath, Rod thought.

And have to call the Admiral. Best to postpone that until he knew what had happened. But it couldn’t be put off long. He pulled on his tunic before calling the Science Minister.

“They got loose? How?” Horvath demanded. The Science Minister was not one of those fortunate people. His eyes were wounds. His thin hair went in all directions at once. He worked his mouth, clearly not satisfied with the taste.

“We don’t know,” Rod explained patiently. “The camera was off. One of my officers went to investigate.” That’ll do for the scientists, anyway. Damned if I’m going to let a bunch of civilians roast the kid. If he’s got lumps coming, I’ll give ‘em myself. “Doctor, we’ll save time if you’ll come down to the lounge area immediately.”

The corridor outside the lounge was crowded. Horvath in a rumpled red-silk dressing gown; four Marines, Leyton, the junior officer of the watch, Whitbread, Sally Fowler dressed in a bulky housecoat but with her face well scrubbed and her hair in a bandana. Two cooks and a petty officer cook, all muttering as they rattled pans in the galley, were searching for the Motie while more Marines looked around helplessly.

Whitbread was saying, “I slammed the door and looked down the corridor. The other one could have gone the other way—”

“But you think he’s still in there.”

“Yessir.”

“All right, let’s see if we can get in there without letting him out.”

“Uh—do they bite, Cap’n?” a Marine corporal asked. “We could issue the men some gauntlets.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Horvath assured them. “They have never bitten anyone.”

“Yessir,” the corporal said. One of his men muttered, “They said that about hive rats, too,” but no one paid any attention. Six men and a woman formed a semicircle around Horvath as he prepared to open the door. They were tense, grim, the armed Marines ready for anything. For the first time Rod felt a wild urge to laugh. He choked it down. But that poor, tiny beast— Horvath went through the door quickly. Nothing came out.

They waited.

“All right,” the Science Minister called. “I can see it. Come on in, one at a time. It’s under the table.”

The miniature watched them slide through the door, one by one, and surround it. If it were waiting for an opening, it never saw one. When the door was shut and seven men and a woman ringed its refuge, it surrendered. Sally cradled it in her arms.

“Poor little thing,” she crooned. The Motie looked around, obviously frightened.

Whitbread examined what was left of the camera. It had shorted out, somehow. The short had maintained itself long enough for metal and plastic to fuse and drip, leaving a stench not yet removed by MacArthur’s air plant. The wire netting just behind the camera had melted too, leaving a large hole. Blaine came over to examine the wreckage.

“Sally,” Rod asked. “Could they have been intelligent enough to plan this?”

“No!” said Sally and Horvath, forcefully, in chorous. “The brain’s too small,” Dr. Horvath amplified.

“Ah,” Whitbread said to himself. But he did not forget that the camera had been inside the netting.

Two communications division artificers were summoned to patch the hole. They welded new netting over it, and Sally put the miniature back in its cage. The artificers brought in another video camera, which they mounted outside the netting. No one made any comment.

The search went on through the watch. No one found the female and the pup. They tried getting the big Motie to help, but she obviously didn’t understand or wasn’t interested. Finally, Blaine went back to his cabin to sleep for a couple of hours. When he woke the miniatures were still missing.

“We could set the ferrets after them,” Cargill suggested at breakfast in the wardroom. A leading torpedoman kept a pair of the cat-sized rodents and used them to keep the forecastle clear of mice and rats. The ferrets were extremely efficient at that.

“They’d kill the Moties,” Sally protested. “They aren’t dangerous. Certainly no more dangerous than rats. We can’t kill them!”

“If we don’t find them pretty soon, the Admiral’s going to kill me,” Rod growled, but he gave in. The search continued and Blaine went to the bridge.

“Get me the Admiral,” he told Staley.

“Aye aye, sir.” The midshipman spoke into the com circuit.

A few moments later Admiral Kutuzov’s craggy bearded features came onto the screen. The Admiral was on his bridge, drinking tea from a glass. Now that Rod thought of it, he had never spoken to Kutuzov when he wasn’t on the bridge. When did he sleep? Blaine reported the missing Moties.

“You still have no idea what these miniatures are, Captain?” Kutuzov demanded.

“No, sir. There are several theories. The most popular is that they’re related to the Moties the same way that monkeys are related to humanity.”

“That is interesting, Captain. And I suppose these theories explain why there are monkeys on asteroid mining ship? And why this miner brought two monkeys aboard your war vessel? I have not noticed that we carry monkeys, Captain Blaine.”

“No, sir.”

“The Motie probe arrives in three hours,” Kutuzov muttered. “And the miniatures escaped last night. This timing is interesting, Captain. I think those miniatures are spies.”

“Spies, sir?”

“Spies. You are told they are not intelligent. Perhaps true, but could they memorize? That does not seem to me impossible. You have told me of mechanical abilities of large alien. It ordered miniatures to return that Trader’s watch. Captain, under no circumstances may adult alien be allowed contact with miniatures which have escaped. Nor may any large alien do so. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You want reason?” the Admiral demanded. “If there is any chance at all that those beasts could learn secrets of Drive and Field, Captain…”

“Yes, sir. I’ll see to it.”

“See that you do, Captain.”

Blaine sat for a moment staring at the blank screen, then glanced across at Cargill. “Jack, you shipped with the Admiral once, didn’t you? What’s he really like under all that legendary image?”

Cargill took a seat near Blaine’s command chair. “I was only a middie when he was Captain, Skipper. Not too close a relationship. One thing, we all respected him. He’s the toughest officer in the service and he doesn’t excuse anyone, especially not himself. But if there are battles to be fought, you’ve got a better chance of coming back alive with the Tsar in command.”

“So I’ve heard. He’s won more general fleet actions than any officer in the service, but Jesus, what a tough bastard.”

“Yes, sir.” Cargill studied his captain closely. They had been lieutenants together not long before, and it was easier to talk to Blaine than it would be with an older CO. “You’ve never been on St. Ekaterina, have you, Skipper?”

“No.”

“But we’ve got several crewmen from there. Lenin has more, of course. There’s an unholy high percentage of Katerinas in the Navy, Skipper. You know why?”

“Only vaguely.”

“They were settled by the Russian elements of the old CoDominium fleet,” Cargill said. “When the CD fleet pulled out of Sol System, the Russkis put their women and children on Ekaterina. In the Formation Wars they got hit bad. Then the Secession Wars started when Sauron hit St. Ekaterina without warning. It stayed loyal, but…”

“Like New Scotland,” Rod said.

Cargill nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, sir. Imperial loyalist fanatics. With good reason, given their history. The only peace they’ve ever seen has been when the Empire’s strong.”

Rod nodded judiciously, then turned back to his screens. There was one way to make the Admiral happy. “Staley,” Blaine snapped. “Have Gunner Kelley order all Marines to search for the escaped Moties. They are to shoot on sight. Shoot to disable, if possible, but shoot. And have those ferrets turned loose in the galley area.”

21. The Ambassadors

As the Motie ship made its final approach, all details of its construction remained hidden by the flaring drive. MacArthur watched with screens up and charged. A hundred kilometers away, Lenin watched too.

“Battle stations, Mr. Staley,” Blaine ordered softly.

Staley grasped the large red handle which now pointed to Condition Two and moved it all the way clockwise. Alarms trilled, then a recorded trumpet sang “To Arms!,” rapid notes echoing through steel corridors.

“NOW HEAR THIS. NOW HEAR THIS. BATTLE STATIONS, BATTLE STATIONS. CONDITION RED ONE.”

Officers and crew rushed to action stations—gun crews, talkers, torpedomen, Marines. Shipfitters and cooks and storekeepers became damage-control men. Surgeon’s mates manned emergency aid stations throughout the ship—all quickly, all silently. Rod felt a burst of pride. Cziller had given him a taut ship, and by God they still were taut.

“COM ROOM REPORTS CONDITION RED ONE,” the bridge talker announced. The quartermaster’s mate third class said words given him by someone else, and all over the ship men rushed to obey, but he gave no orders of his own. He parroted words that would send MacArthur leaping across space, fire laser cannon and launch torpedoes, attack or withdraw, and he reported results that Blaine probably already knew from his screens and instruments. He took no initiative and never would, but through him the ship was commanded. He was an all-powerful mindless robot.

“GUNNERY STATIONS REPORT CONDITION RED ONE.”

“MARINE COMMANDER REPORTS CONDITION RED ONE.”

“Staley, have the Marines not on sentry duty continue the search for those missing aliens,” Blaine ordered.

“Aye aye, sir.”

“DAMAGE CONTROL REPORTS CONDITION RED ONE.”

The Motie ship decelerated toward MacArthur, the fusion flame of its drive a blaze on the battle cruiser’s screens. Rod watched nervously. “Sandy, how much of that drive could we take?”

“It’s nae too hot, Captain,” Sinclair reported through the intercom. “The Field can handle all of that for twenty minutes or more. And ‘tis nae focused, Skipper, there’d be nae hot spots.”

Blaine nodded. He’d reached the same conclusion, but it was wise to check when possible. He watched the light grow steadily.

“Peaceful enough,” Rod told Renner. “Even if it is a warship.”

“I’m not so sure it is one, Captain.” Renner seemed very much at ease. Even if the Motie should attack he’d be more a spectator than a participant. “At least they’ve aimed their drive flame to miss. Courtesy counts.”

“The hell it does. That flames spreads. Some of it is spilling onto our Langston Field, and they can observe what it does to us.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.”

“MARINES REPORT CIVILIANS IN CORRIDORS, B DECK BULKHEAD TWENTY.”

“God damn it!” Blaine shouted. “That’s astronomy. Get those corridors cleared!”

“It’ll be Buckman,” Renner grinned. “And they’ll have their troubles getting him to his stateroom…”

“Yeah. Mr. Staley, tell the Marines to put Buckman in his cabin even if they have to frogmarch him there.”

Whitbread grinned to himself. MacArthur was in free fall, all her spin gone. Now how would the Marines frogmarch the astrophysicist in that?

“TORPEDO ROOMS REPORT CONDITION RED ONE. TORPEDOES ARMED AND READY.”

“One of the leading cooks thinks he saw a miniature,” Staley said. “The Marines are on the way.”

The alien ship drew closer, her drive a steady white blaze. She was cutting it very fine, Blaine thought. The deceleration hadn’t changed at all. They obviously trusted everything—their drives, their computers, sensors…

“ENGINE ROOM REPORTS CONDITION RED ONE. FIELD AT MAXIMUM STRENGTH.”

“The Marines have Dr. Buckman in his stateroom,” Staley said. “Dr. Horvath is on the intercom. He wants to complain.”

“Listen to him, Staley. But not for long.”

“GUNNERY REPORTS ALL BATTERIES LOCKED ONTO ALIEN CRAFT. LOCKED ON AND TRACKING.”

MacArthur was at full alert. All through the ship her crew waited at action stations. All nonessential equipment located near the ship’s hull had been sent below.

The tower containing Blaine’s patrol cabin stuck out of the battle cruiser’s hull like an afterthought. For spin gravity it was conveniently far from the ship’s axis, but in a battle it would be the first thing shot off. Blaine’s cabin was an empty shell now, his desk and the more important gear long since automatically raised into one of the nullgravity recreation areas.

Every idle compartment at the ship’s core was jammed, while the outer decks were empty, cleared to make way for damage-control parties.

And the Motie ship was approaching fast. She was still no more than a brightening light, a fusion jet fanning out to splash MacArthur’s Langston Field.

“GUNNERY REPORTS ALIEN SHIP DECELERATING AT POINT EIGHT SEVEN ZERO GRAVITIES.”

“No surprises,” said Renner sotto voce.

The light expanded to fill the screen—and then dimmed. Next moment the alien ship was sliding precisely alongside the battle cruiser, and its drive flame was already off.

It was as if the vessel had entered an invisible dock predetermined six days ago. The thing was at rest relative to MacArthur. Rod saw shadows moving within the inflated rings at its fore end.

Renner snarled, an ugly sound. His face contorted. “Goddamn show-offs!”

“Mr. Renner, control yourself.”

“Sorry, sir. That’s the most astounding feat of astrogation I’ve ever heard of. If anyone tried to tell me about it, I’d call him a liar. Who do they think they are?” Renner was genuinely angry. “Any astrogator-in-training that tried a stunt like that would be out on his tail, if he lived through the crash.”

Blaine nodded. The Motie pilot had left no margin of error at all. And— “I was wrong. That couldn’t possibly be a warship. Look at it.”

“Yah. It’s as fragile as a butterfly. I could crush it in my hand.”

Rod mused a moment, then gave orders. “Ask for volunteers. To make first contact with that ship, alone, using an unarmed taxi. And… keep Condition Red One.”

There were a good many volunteers.

Naturally Mr. Midshipman Wbitbread was one of them. And Whitbread had done it before.

Now he waited in the taxi. He watched the hangar doors unfolding through his polarized plastic faceplate.

He had done this before. The Motie miner hadn’t killed him, had she? The black rippled. Sudden stars showed through a gap in the Langston Field.

“That’s big enough,” Cargill’s voice said in his right ear. “You may launch, Mr. Whitbread. On your way—and Godspeed.”

Whitbread fired thruster clusters. The taxi rose, floated through the opening into starry space and the distant glare of Murcheson’s Eye. Behind him the Langston Field closed. Whitbread was sealed outside.

MacArthur was a sharply bounded region of supernatural blackness. Whitbread circled it at leisure. The Mote flashed bright over the black rim, followed by the alien ship.

Whitbread took his time. The ship grew slowly. Its core was as slender as a spear. Functional marking showed along its sides: hatch covers, instrument ports, antennae, no way to tell. A single black square fin jutted from near the midpoint: possibly a radiator surface.

Within the broad translucent doughnuts that circled the fore end he could see moving shapes. They showed clearly enough to arouse horror: vaguely human shadows twisted out of true.

Four toroids, and shadows within them all. Whitbread reported, “They’re using all their fuel tanks for living space. They can’t expect to get home without our help.”

The Captain’s voice: “You’re sure?”

“Yes, sir. There could be an inboard tank, but it wouldn’t be very large.”

He had nearly reached the alien craft. Whitbread slowed to a smooth stop just alongside the inhabited fuel tanks. He opened his air-lock door.

A door opened immediately near the fore end of the metal core. A Motie stood in the oval opening; it wore a transparent envelope. The alien waited.

Whitbread said, “Permission to leave the—”

“Granted. Report whenever convenient. Otherwise, use your own judgment. The Marines are standing by, Whitbread, so don’t yell for help unless you mean it. They’ll come fast. Now good luck.”

As Cargill’s voice faded, the Captain came on again. “Don’t take any serious risks, Whitbread. Remember, we want you back to report.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

The Motie stepped gracefully out of his way as Whitbread approached the air lock. It left the Motie standing comically on vacuum, its big left hand gripping a ring that jutted out from the hull. “There’s stuff poking out all over,” Whitbread said into his mike. “This thing couldn’t have been launched from inside an atmosphere.”

He stopped himself in the oval opening and nodded at the gently smiling alien. He was only half sardonic as he asked formally, “Permission to come aboard?”

The alien bowed from the waist—or perhaps it was an exaggerated nod? The joint in its back was below the shoulders. It gestured toward the ship with the two right arms.

The air lock was Motie-sized, cramped. Whitbread found three recessed buttons in a web of silver streamers. Circuitry. The Motie watched his hesitation, then reached past him to push first one, then another.

The lock closed behind him.

The Mediator stood on emptiness, waiting for the lock to cycle. She wondered at the intruder’s queer structure, the symmetry and the odd articulation of its bones. Clearly the thing was not related to known life. And its home ship had appeared in what the Mediator thought of as the Crazy Eddie point.

She was far more puzzled at its failure to work out the lock circuitry without help.

It must be here in the capacity of a Mediator. It had to be intelligent. Didn’t it? Or would they send an animal first? No, certainly not. They couldn’t be that alien; it would be a deadly insult in any culture.

The lock opened. She stepped in and set it cycling. The intruder was waiting in the corridor, filling it like a cork in a bottle. The Mediator took time to strip off her pressure envelope, leaving her naked. Alien as it was, the thing might easily assume she was a Warrior. She must convince the creature that she was unarmed.

She led the way toward the roomier inflated sections. The big, clumsy creature had trouble moving. It did not adapt well to free fall. It stopped to peer through window panels into sections of the ship, and examined mechanisms the Browns had installed in the corridor… why would an intelligent being do that?

The Mediator would have liked to tow the creature, but it might take that as an attack. She must avoid that at all costs.

For the present, she would treat it as a Master.

There was an acceleration chamber: twenty-six twisted bunks stacked in three columns, all similar in appearance to Crawford’s transformed bunk; yet they were not quite identical, either. The Motie moved ahead of him, graceful as a dolphin. Its short pelt was a random pattern curved brown and white stripes, punctuated by four patches of thick white fur at the groin and armpits. Whibread found it beautiful. Now it had stopped to wait for him—impatiently, Whitbread thought.

He tried not to think about how thoroughly he was trapped. The corridor was unlighted and claustrophobically narrow. He looked into a line of tanks connected by pumps, possibly a cooling system for hydrogen fuel. It would connect to that single black fin outside.

Light flashed on the Motie.

It was a big opening, big enough even for Whitbread. Beyond: dim sunlight, like the light beneath a thunderstorm. Whitbread followed the Motie into what had to be one of the toroids. He was immediately surrounded by aliens.

They were all identical. That seemingly random pattern of brown and white was repeated on every one of them. At least a dozen smiling lopsided faces ringed him at a polite distance. They chattered to each other in quick squeaky voices.

The chattering stopped suddenly. One of the Moties approached Whitbread and spoke several short sentences that might have been in different languages, though to Whitbread they were all meaningless.

Whitbread shrugged, theatrically, palms forward.

The Motie repeated the gesture, instantly, with incredible accuracy. Whitbread cracked up. He sprawled helplessly in free fall, arms folded around his middle, cackling like a chicken.

Blaine spoke in his ear, his voice sober and metallic. “All right, Whitbread, everyone else is laughing too. The question is—”

“Oh, no! Sir, am I on the intercom again?”

“The question is, what do the Moties think you’re doing?”

“Yessir. It was the third arm that did it.” Whitbread had sobered. “It’s time for my strip-tease act, Captain. Please take me off that intercom…”

The telltale at his chin was yellow, of course. Slow poison; but this time he wasn’t going to breath it. He took a deep breath, undogged, and lifted his helmet. Still holding his breath, he took SCUBA gear from an outside patch of his suit and fitted the mouthpiece between his teeth. He turned on the air; it worked fine.

Leisurely he began to strip. First came the baggy coverall that contained the suit electronics and support gear. Then he unsnapped the cover, strips that shielded the zippers, and opened the tight fabric of the pressure suit itself. The zippers ran along each limb and up the chest; without them it would take hours to get in and out of suit, which looked like a body stocking or a leotard. The elastic fibers conformed to every curve of his musculature, as they had to, to keep him from exploding in vacuum; with their support, his own skin was in a sense his pressure suit, and his sweat glands were the temperature regulating system.

The tanks floated free in front of him as he struggled out of the suit. The Moties moved slowly, and one—a Brown, no stripes, identical to the miner aboard MacArthur—came over to help.

He used the all-purpose goop in his tool kit to stick his helmet to the translucent plastic wall. Surprisingly it did not work. The brown Motie recognized his difficulty instantly. He (she, it) produced a tube of something and dabbed it on Whitbread’s helmet; now it stuck. Jonathon faced the camera toward him, and stuck the rest of his suit next to it.

Humans would have aligned themselves with their head at the same end, as if they must define an up direction before they could talk comfortably. The Moties were at all angles. They clearly didn’t give a damn. They waited, smiling.

Whitbread wriggled the rest of the way out of his suit until he wore nothing at all.

The Moties moved in to examine him.

The Brown was startling among all the brown-and-white patterns. It was shorter than the others, with slightly bigger hands and an odd look to the head, as far as Whitbread could tell, it was identical to the miner. The others looked like the dead one in the Motie light-sail probe.

The brown one was examining his suit, and seemed to be doing things to the tool kit; but the others were prodding at him, seeking the musculature and articulations of his body, looking for places where prodding would produce reflex twitching and jumping.

Two examined his teeth, which were clenched. Others traced his bones with their fingers: his ribs, his spine, the shape of his head, his pelvis, the bones of his feet. They palpated his hands and moved the fingers in ways they were not meant to go. Although they were gentle enough, it was all thoroughly unpleasant.

The chattering rose to a crescendo. Some of the sounds were so shrill they were nearly inaudible shrieks and whistles, but behind them were melodious mid-range tones. One phrase seemed to be repeated constantly in high tenor. Then they were all behind him, showing each other his spine. They were very excited about Whitbread’s spine. A Motie signaled him by catching his eye and then hunching back and forth. The joints jutted as if its back were broken in two places. Whitbread felt queasy watching it, but he got the idea. He curled into fetal position, straightened, then curled up again. A dozen small alien hands probed his back.

Presently they backed away. One approached and seemed to invite Whitbread to explore his (her, its) anatomy. Whitbread shook his head and deliberately looked away. That was for the scientists.

He received his helmet and spoke into the mike. “Ready to report, sir. I’m not sure what to do next. Shall I try to get of them to come back to MacArthur with me?”

Captain Blaine’s voice sounded strained. “Definitely not. Can you get outside their ship?”

“Yes, sir, if I have to.”

“We’d rather you did. Report on a secure line, Whitbread.”

“Uh—yes, sir.” Jonathon signaled the Moties, pointed to his helmet and then to the air lock. The one who had been conducting him around nodded. He climbed back into his suit with help from the brown Motie, dogged the fastenings and attached his helmet. A Brown-and-white led him to the air lock.

There was no convenient place outside to attach the safety line, but after a glance his Motie escort glued a hook onto the ship’s surface. It did not look substantial, that hook. Jonathon worried about it briefly. Then frowned. Where was the ring the Motie had held when Whitbread first approached? It was gone. Why?

Oh, well. MacArthur was close. If the hook broke they would come get him. Gingerly he pushed away from the Motie ship until he hung in empty space. He used helmet sights to line up exactly with the antenna protruding from MacArthur’s totally black surface. Then he touched the SECURITY stud with his tongue.

A thin beam of coherent light stabbed out from his helmet. Another came in from MacArthur, following his own into a tiny receptacle set into the helmet. A ring around that receptacle stayed in darkness; if there were any spillover the tracking system on MacArthur would correct it or, if the spill touched still a third ring around Whitbread’s receiving antenna, cut off communication entirely.

“Secure, sir,” he reported. He let an irritated but puzzled note creep into his voice. After all, he thought, I’m entitled to a little expression of opinion. Aren’t I?

Blaine answered immediately. “Mr. Whitbread, the reason for this security is not merely to make you uncomfortable. The Moties do not understand our language now, but they can make recordings; and later they will understand Anglic. Do you follow me?”

“Why—yes sir.” Ye gods, the Old Man was really thinking ahead.

“Now, Mr. Whitbread, we cannot allow any Motie aboard MacArthur until we have disposed of the problem of the miniatures, and we will do nothing to let the Moties know we have such a problem. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Excellent. I’m sending a boatload of scientists your way—now that you’ve broken the ground, so to speak. By the way, well done. Before I send the others, have you further comments?”

“Um. Yes, sir. First, there are two children aboard. I saw them clinging to the backs of adults. They’re bigger than miniatures, and colored like the adults.”

“More evidence of peaceful intent,” Blaine said. “What else?”

“Well, I didn’t get a chance to count them, but it looks like twenty-three Brown-and-whites and two brown asteroid-miner types. Both of the children were with the Browns. I’ve been wondering why.”

“Eventually we’ll be able to ask them. All right, Whitbread, we’ll send over the scientists. They’ll have the cutter. Renner, you on?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Work out a course. I want MacArthur fifty kilometers from the Motie ship. I don’t know what the Moties will do when we move, but the cutter’ll be over there first.”

“You’re moving the ship, sir?” Renner asked incredulously. Whitbread wanted to cheer but restrained himself.

“Yes.”

Nobody said anything for a long moment.

“All right,” Blaine capitulated. “I’ll explain. The Admiral is very concerned about the miniatures. He thinks they might be able to talk about the ship. We’ve orders to see that the escaped miniatures have no chance to communicate with an adult Motie, and one klick is just a bit close.”

There was more silence.

“That’s all, gentlemen. Thank you, Mr. Whitbread,” Rod said. “Mr. Staley, inform Dr. Hardy that he can get aboard the cutter any time.”

“Well, you’re on,” Chaplain Hardy thought to himself. He was a round, vague man, with dreamy eyes and red hair just beginning to turn gray. Except for conducting the Sunday worship services he had deliberately stayed in his cabin during most of the expedition.

David Hardy was not unfriendly. Anyone could come to his cabin for coffee, a drink, a game of chess, or a long talk, and many did. He merely disliked people in large numbers. He could not get to know them in a crowd.

He also retained his professional inclination not to discuss his work with amateurs and not to publish results until enough evidence was in. That, he told himself, would be impossible now. And what were the aliens? Certainly they were intelligent. Certainly they were sentient. And certainly they had a place in the divine scheme of the universe. But what?

Crewmen moved Hardy’s equipment aboard the cutter. A tape library, several stacks of children’s books, reference works (not many; the cutter’s computer would be able draw on the ship’s library; but David still liked books, impractical as they were). There was other equipment: two display screens with sound transducers, pitch reference electronic filters to shape speech sounds, raise or low pitch, change timbre and phase. He had tried to stow the gear himself, but First Lieutenant Cargill had talked him out of it. Marines were expert at the task, and Hardy’s worries about damage were nothing compared to theirs; if anything broke they’d have Kelley to contend with.

Hardy met Sally in the air lock. She was not traveling light either. Left to herself, she’d have taken everything, even the bones and mummies from the Stone Beehive; but the Captain would only allow her holographs, and even those were hidden until she could learn the Moties attitude toward grave robbers. From Cargill’s description of the Beehive, the Moties had no burial customs, but that was absurd. Everyone had burial customs, even the most primitive humans.

She could not take the Motie miner, either, or the remaining miniature, which had become female again. And the ferrets and Marines were searching for the other miniature and the pup (and why had it run away with the other miniature, not its mother?). She wondered if the fuss she had made about Rod’s orders to the Marines might be responsible for the ease with which she won her place on the cutter. She knew she wasn’t really being fair to Rod. He had his orders from the Admiral. But it was wrong. The miniatures weren’t going to hurt anyone. It took a paranoid to fear them.

She followed Chaplain Hardy into the cutter’s lounge. Dr. Horvath was already there. The three of them would be the first scientists aboard the alien ship, and she felt a surge of excitement. There was so much to learn!

An anthropologist—she thought of herself as fully qualified now, and certainly there was no one to dispute it—a linguist, and Horvath, who had been a competent physicist before going into administration. Horvath was the only useless one in the group, but with his rank he was entitled to the seat if he demanded it. She did not think the same description applied to herself, although half the scientists aboard MacArthur did.

Three scientists, a coxswain, two able spacers, and Jonathon Whitbread. No Marines, and no weapons aboard. Almost, the excitement was enough to cover the fear that welled up from somewhere in her insides. They had to be unarmed, of course; but she would have felt better, all the same, if Rod Blaine had been aboard. And that was impossible.

Later there would be more people on the cutter. Buckman with a million questions once Hardy cracked the communications problem. The biologists would come in force. A Navy officer, probably Crawford, to study the Motie weapons. An engineering officer. Anyone, but not the Captain. It was unlikely that Kutuzov would allow Rod Blaine to leave his ship no matter how peaceful they might find the Moties.

She was suddenly homesick. On Sparta she had a home, Charing Close, and within minutes was the Capital. Sparta was the center of civilization—but she seemed to be living in a series of space craft of diminishing sizes, with the prison camp thrown in for variety. When she graduated from the university she had made a decision: she would be a person, not an ornament to some man’s career. Right now, though, there was much to be said for being an ornament, especially for the right man, only—No. She must be her own woman.

There was a crash couch and a curved instrument board at one end of the cutter’s lounge. It was the fire-control bridge—some lounge! But there were also couches and recessed tables for games and dining.

“Have you been through this boat?” Horvath was asking her.

“I beg your pardon?” Sally answered.

“I said, ‘Have you been through this boat?’ It has gun emplacements all over it. They took out the works, but they left enough to show there were guns. Same with the torpedoes. They’re gone, but the launch ports are still there. What kind of embassy ship is this?”

Hardy looked up from a private reverie. “What would you have done in the Captain’s place?”

“I’d have used an unarmed boat.”

“There aren’t any,” Hardy replied softly. “None you could live on, as you’d know if you spent any time on hangar deck.” Chapel was held on hangar deck, and Horvath had not attended. That was his business, but no harm in reminding him.

“But it’s so obviously a disarmed warship!”

Hardy nodded. “The Moties were bound to discover our terrible secret sooner or later. We are a warlike species, Anthony. It’s part of our nature. Even so, we arrive in a completely disarmed fighting vessel. Don’t you think that’s a significant message for the Moties?”

“But this is so important to the Empire!”

David Hardy nodded assent. The Science Minister was right, although the Chaplain suspected he had the wrong reasons.

There was a slight lurch, and the cutter was on her way. Rod watched on the bridge screens and felt helpless frustration. From the moment the cutter came alongside the Motie vessel, one of Crawford’s batteries would be locked onto her—and Sally Fowler was aboard the frail, disarmed ship.

The original plan had the Moties coming aboard MacArthur, but until the miniatures were found that was impossible. Rod was glad that his ship would not be host to the aliens. I’m learning to think paranoid, he told himself. Like the Admiral.

Meanwhile, there was no sign of the miniatures, Sally wasn’t speaking to him, and everyone else was edgy.

“Ready to take over, Captain,” Renner said. “I relieve you, sir.”

“Right. Carry on, Sailing Master.”

Acceleration alarms rang, and MacArthur moved smoothly away from the alien vessel—and away from the cutter, and Sally.

22. Word Games

The shower: a plastic bag of soapy water with a young man in it, the neck of the bag sealed tight around the man’s neck. Whitbread used a long-handled brush to scratch himself everywhere he itched, which was everywhere. There was pleasure in the pulling and stretching of muscles. It was so finking small in the Motie ship! So claustrophobic-cramped!

When he was clean he joined the others in the lounge. The Chaplain and Horvath and Sally Fowler, all wearing sticky-bottomed falling slippers, all aligned in the up direction. Whitbread would never have noticed such a thing before. He said, “Science Minister Horvath, I am to place myself under your orders for the time being.”

“Very well, Mr.… Whitbread.” Horvath trailed off. He seemed worried and preoccupied. They all did.

The Chaplain spoke with effort. “You see, none of us really knows what to do next. We’ve never contacted aliens before.”

“They’re friendly. They wanted to talk,” said Whitbread.

“Good. Good, but it leaves me entirely on the hook.” The Chaplain’s laugh was all nerves. “What was it like, Whitbread?”

He tried to tell them. Cramped, until you got to the plastic toroids… fragile… no point in trying to tell the Moties apart except the Browns were somehow different from the Brown-and-whites… “They’re unarmed,” he told them. “I spent three hours exploring that ship. There’s no place aboard that they could be hiding big weapons.”

“Did you get the impression they were guiding you away from anything?”

“No-oo.”

“You don’t sound very certain,” Horvath said sharply.

“Oh it isn’t that, sir. I was just remembering the tool room. We wound up in a room that was all tools, wall and floor and ceiling. A couple of walls had simple thing on them: hand drills, ripsaws with odd handles, screw and a screwdriver. Things I could recognize. I saw nail and what I think was a hammer with a big flat head. It all looked like a hobby shop in somebody’s basement. But there were some really complex things in there too, things I couldn’t figure at all.”

The alien ship floated just outside the forward window. Inhuman shadows moved within it. Sally was watching them too… but Horvath said dryly, “You were saying that the aliens were not herding you.”

“I don’t think they led me away from anything. I’m sure I was led to that tool room. I don’t know why, but I think it was an intelligence test. If it was, I flunked.”

Chaplain Hardy said, “The only Motie we’ve questioned so far doesn’t understand the simplest gestures. Now you tell me that these Moties have been giving you intelligence tests—”

“And interpreting gestures. Amazingly quick to understand them, in fact. Yes, sir. They’re different. You saw the pictures.”

Hardy wound a strand of his thinning red hair around a knobby finger and tugged gently. “From your helmet camera? Yes, Jonathon. I think we’re dealing with two kinds of Moties. One is an idiot savant and doesn’t talk. The other… talks,” he finished lamely. He caught himself playing with his hair and smoothed it back into place. “I hope I can learn to talk back.”

They’re all dreading it, Whitbread realized. Especially Sally. And even Chaplain Hardy, who never gets upset about anything. All dreading that first move. Horvath said, “Any other impressions?”

“I keep thinking that ship was designed for free fall. There are sticky strips all over. Inflated furniture likewise. And there are short passages joining the toroids, as wide as the toroids themselves. Under acceleration they’d be like open trap doors with no way around them.”

“That’s strange,” Horvath mused. “The ship was under acceleration until four hours ago.”

“Exactly, sir. The joins must be new.” The thought hit Whitbread suddenly. Those joins must be new.

“But that tells us even more,” Chaplain Hardy said quietly. “And you say the furniture is at all angles. We all saw that the Moties didn’t care how they were oriented when they spoke to you. As if they were peculiarly adapted to free fall. As if they evolved there…”

“But that’s impossible,” Sally protested. “Impossible but—you’re right, Dr. Hardy! Humans always orient themselves. Even the old Marines who’ve been in space all their lives! But nobody can evolve in free fall.”

“An old enough race could,” Hardy said. “And there are the non-symmetric arms. Evolutionary advancement? It would be well to keep the theory in mind when we talk to the Moties.” If we can talk to them, he added to himself.

“They went crazy over my backbone,” Whitbread said. “As if they’d never seen one.” He stopped. “I don’t know whether you were told. I stripped for them. It seemed only fair that they… know what they’re dealing with.” He couldn’t look at Sally.

“I’m not laughing,” she said. “I’m going to have to do the same thing.”

Whitbread’s head snapped up. “What?”

Sally chose her words with care; remember provincial mores, she told herself. She did not look up from the deck. “Whatever Captain Blaine and Admiral Kutuzov choose to hide from the Moties, the existence of two human sexes isn’t one of them. They’re entitled to know how we’re made, and I’m the only woman aboard MacArthur.”

“But you’re Senator Fowler’s niece!”

She did smile at that. “We won’t tell them.” She stood up immediately. “Coxswain Lafferty, we’ll be going now.” She turned back, very much the Imperial lady, even to her stance, which gave no sign that she was in free fall. “Jonathon, thank you for your concern. Chaplain, you may join me as soon as I call.” And she went.

A long time later Whitbread said, “I wondered what was making everyone so nervous.”

And Horvath, looking straight ahead, said, “She insisted.”

Sally called the cutter when she arrived. The same Motie who had greeted Whitbread, or an identical one, bowed her aboard in a courtly fashion. A camera on the taxi picked that up and caused the Chaplain to lean forward sharply. “That half-nod is very like you, Whitbread. He’s an excellent mimic.”

Sally called again minutes later, by voice alone. She was in one of the toroids. “There are Moties all around me. A lot of them are carrying instruments. Hand-sized. Jonathon, did—”

“Most of them didn’t have anything in their hands. These instruments, what do they look like?”

“Well, one looks like a camera that’s been half taken apart, and, another has a screen like an oscilloscope screen.” Pause. “Well, here goes. Fowler out.” Click.

For twenty minutes they knew nothing of Sally Fowler. Three men fidgeted, their eyes riveted to a blank intercom screen.

When she finally called, her voice was brisk. “All right, gentlemen, you may come over now.”

“I’m on.” Hardy unstrapped and floated in a slow arc to the cutter air lock. His voice, too, was brisk with relief. The waiting was ended.

There was the usual bustle of bridge activities around Rod, scientists looking at the main view screens, quartermasters securing from MacArthur’s fifty-kilometer move. To keep occupied Rod was having Midshipman Staley run through a simulated Marine assault on the Motie ship. All purely theoretical, of course; but it did help keep Rod from brooding about what was happening aboard the alien vessel. The call from Horvath was a welcome distraction, and Rod was ebulliently cordial as he answered.

“Hello, Doctor! How are things going?”

Horvath was almost smiling. “Very well, thank you, Captain. Dr. Hardy is on his way to join Lady Sally. I sent your man Whitbread along.”

“Good.” Rod felt tension pain where it had settled above and between his shoulder blades. So Sally had got through that…

“Captain, Mr. Whitbread mentioned a tool room aboard the alien ship. He believes that he was being tested for his tool-using ability. It strikes me that the Moties may be judging us all on that ability.”

“Well they might. Making and using tools is a basic—”

“Yes, yes, Captain, but none of us are toolmakers! We have a linguist, an anthropologist, an administrator—me—and some Navy warriors. The joke is on us, Captain. We spent too much consideration on learning about Moties. None on impressing them with our intelligence.”

Blaine considered that. “There are the ships themselves… but you have a point, Doctor. I’ll send you someone. We’re bound to have someone aboard who can do well on such a test.”

When Horvath was off the screen, Rod touched the intercom controls again. “Kelley, you can take half your Marines off alert now.”

“Aye aye, Captain.” The Gunner’s face showed no signs of emotion, but Rod knew just how uncomfortable battle armor was. The entire Marine force of MacArthur was wearing it on full alert in hangar deck.

Then, thoughtfully, Blaine called Sinclair. “It’s an unusual problem, Sandy. We need someone who’s generally good with tools and willing to go aboard the Motie ship. If you’ll pick me some men, I’ll ask for volunteers.”

“Never mind, Captain. I’ll go myself.”

Blaine was shocked. “You, Sandy?”

“Aye and why not, Captain? Am I no skilled with tools? Can I no fix anything that ever worked in the first place? My laddies can handle aye that could go wrong wi’ MacArthur. I’ve trained them well. Ye will no miss me…”

“Hold on a minute, Sandy.”

“Aye, Captain?”

“OK. Anybody who’d do well in a test will know the Field and Drive. Even so, maybe the Admiral won’t let you go.”

“There’s nae another aboard who’ll find out everything about yon beasties’ ship, Captain.”

“Yeah—OK, get the surgeon’s approval. And give me a name. Whom shall I send if you can’t go?”

“Send Jacks, then. Or Leigh Battson, or any of my lads but Thumbs Menchikov.”

“Menchikov. Isn’t he the artificer who saved six men trapped in the after torpedo room during the battle with Defiant?”

“Aye, Captain. He’s also the laddie who fixed your shower two weeks before that battle.”

“Oh. Well, thanks, Sandy.” He rang off and looked around the bridge. There was really very little for him to do. The screens showed the Motie ship in the center of MacArthur’s main battery fire pattern; his ship was safe enough from anything the alien vessel could do, but now Sally would be joined by Hardy and Whitbread… He turned to Staley. “That last was very good. Now work out a rescue plan assuming that only half the Marines are on ready alert.”

Sally heard the activity as Hardy and Whitbread were conducted aboard the Motie ship, but she barely glanced around when they appeared. She had taken the time to dress properly, but grudged the necessity, and in the dim and filtered Motelight she was running her hands over the body of a Brown-and-white, bending its (her) elbow and shoulder joints and tracing the muscles, all the while dictating a running monologue into her throat mike.

“I conclude they are another subspecies, but closely related to the Browns, perhaps closely enough to breed true. This must be determined by genetic coding, when we take samples back to New Scotland where there is proper equipment. Perhaps the Moties know, but we should be careful about what we ask until we determine what taboos exist among Moties.

“There is obviously no sex discrimination such as exists in the Empire; in fact the predominance of females is remarkable. One Brown is male and cares for both pups. The pups are weaned, or at least there is no obvious sign of a nursing female—or male—aboard.

“My hypothesis is that, unlike humanity after the Secession Wars, there is no shortage of mothers or child bearers, and thus there is no cultural mechanism of overprotectiveness such as survives within the Empire. I have no theory of why there are no pups among the Brown-and-whites, although it is possible that the immature Moties I observe are the issue of Brown-and-whites and the Browns serve as child trainers. There is certainly a tendency to have the Browns do all the technical work.

“The difference in the two types is definite if not dramatic. The hands are larger and better developed in the Brown, and the forehead of the Brown slopes back more sharply. The Brown is smaller. Question: Which is better evolved as a tool user? The Brown-and-white has a slightly larger brain capacity, the Brown has better hands. So far every Brown-and-white I have seen is female, and there is one of each sex of Brown: is this accident, a clue to their culture, or something biological? Transcript ends. Welcome aboard, gentlemen.”

Whitbread said, “Any trouble?”

Her head was in a plastic hood that sealed around her neck like a Navy shower bag; she was obviously not used to nasal respirators. The bag blurred her voice slightly. “None at all. I certainly learned as much as they did from the um, er, orgy. What’s next?”

Language lessons.

There was a word: Fyunch(click). When the Chaplain pointed at himself and said “David,” the Motie he was looking at twisted her lower right arm around into the same position and said “Fyunch(click),” making the click with her tongue.”

Fine. But Sally said, “My Motie had the same name I think.”

“Do you mean you picked the same alien?”

“No, I don’t think so. And I know Fyunch(click)”—she said it carefully, making the click with her tongue then ruined the effect by giggling—”isn’t the word for Motie. I’ve tried that.”

The Chaplain frowned. “Perhaps all proper names sound alike to us. Or we may have the word for arm,” he said seriously. There was a classic story about that, so old that it probably came from preatomic days. He turned to another Motie, pointed at himself, and said, “Fyunch(click)?” His accent was nearly perfect, and he didn’t giggle.

The Motie said, “No.”

“They picked that up quickly,” said Sally.

Whitbread tried it. He swam among the Moties, pointing to himself and saying “Fyunch(click)?” He obtained four perfectly articulated No’s before an inverted Motie tapped him on the kneecap and said, “Fyunch(click) Yes.”

So: there were three Moties who would say “Fyunch(click)” to a human. Each to a different human, and not to the others. So?

“It may mean something like ‘I am assigned to you,’ ” Whitbread suggested.

“Certainly one hypothesis,” Hardy agreed. A rather good one, but there were insufficient data—had the boy made a lucky guess?

Moties crawled around them. Some of the instruments they carried might have been cameras or recorders. Some instruments made noises when the humans spoke; others extruded tape, or made wiggly orange lines on small screens. The Moties gave some attention to Hardy’s instruments, especially the male Brown mute, who disasembled Hardy’s oscilioscope and put it back together again before his eyes. The images on it seemed brighter and the persistence control worked much better, he thought. Interesting. And only the Browns did things like that.

The language lessons had become a group effort. It was a game now, this teaching of Anglic to Moties. Point and say the word, and the Moties would generally remember it. David Hardy gave thanks.

The Moties kept fiddling with the insides of their instruments, tuning them, or sometimes handing them to a Brown with a flurry of bird whistles. The range of their own voices was astonishing. Speaking Mote, they ranged from bass to treble in instants. The pitch was part of the code, Hardy guessed.

He was aware of time passing. His belly was a vast emptiness whose complaints he ignored with absentminded contempt. Chafe spots developed around his nose where the respirator fitted. His eyes smarted from Motie atmosphere that got under his goggles, and he wished he’d opted for either a helmet or a plastic sack like Sally’s. The Mote itself was a diffused bright point that moved slowly across the curved translucent wall. Dry breathing air was slowly dehydrating him.

These things he felt as passing time, and ignored. A kind of joy was in him. David Hardy was fulfilling his mission in life.

Despite the uniqueness of the situation, Hardy decided to stick to traditional linguistics. There were unprecedented problems with hand, face, ears, fingers. It developed that the dozen fingers of the right hands had one collective name, the three thick fingers of the left another. The ear had one name flat and another erect. There was no name for face, although they picked up the Anglic word immediately, and seemed to think it a worthwhile innovation.

He had thought that his muscles had adjusted to free fall; but now they bothered him. He did not put it down to exhaustion. He did not know where Sally had disappeared to, and the fact did not bother him. This was a measure of his acceptance of both Sally and the Moties as colleagues; but it was also a measure of how tired he was. Hardy considered himself enlightened, but what Sally would have called “overprotectiveness of women” was deeply ingrained in the Imperial culture—especially so in the monastic Navy.

It was only when his air gave out that the others could persuade Hardy to go back to the cutter.

Their supper was plain, and they hurried through it compare notes. Mercifully the others left him alone until he’d eaten, Horvath taking the lead in shushing everyone although he was obviously the most curious of the lot. Even though the utensils were designed for free-fall conditions, none of the others were used to long periods zero gravity, and eating took new habits that could be learned only through concentration. Finally Hardy let one of the crewmen remove his lap tray and looked up. Three eager faces telepathically beamed a million questions at him.

“They learn Anglic well enough,” David said. “I wish I could say the same for my own progress.”

“They work at it,” Whitbread wondered. “When you give them a word, they keep using it, over and over, trying it out in sentences, trying it out on everything around whatever you showed them—I never saw anything like it.”

“That’s because you didn’t watch Dr. Hardy very long,” Sally said. “We were taught that technique in school, but I’m not very good at it.”

“Young people seldom are.” Hardy stretched out to relax. That void had been filled. But it was embarrassing—the Moties were better at his job than he was. “Young people usually haven’t the patience for linguistics. In this case, though, your eagerness helps, since the Moties are directing your efforts quite professionally. By the way Jonathon, where did you go?”

“I took my Fyunch(click) outside and showed him around the taxi. We ran out of things to show the Motic in their own ship and I didn’t want to bring them here. Can we do that?”

“Certainly.” Horvath smiled. “I’ve spoken to Captain Blaine and he leaves it to our judgment. As he says there’s nothing secret on the cutter. However, I’d like there to be something a little special—some ceremony, wouldn’t you think? After all, except for the asteroid miner the Moties have never visited a human ship.”

Hardy shrugged. “They make little enough of our coming aboard their craft. You want to remember, though, unless the whole Motie race is fantastically gifted at languages—a hypothesis I reject—they’ve had their special ceremony before they lifted off their planet. They’ve put language specialists aboard. I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that our Fyunch(click)s are the Motie equivalent of full professors.”

Whitbread shook his head. The others looked at him, and finally he spoke. He was rather proud of having worked out a technique to let a junior officer interrupt the others. “Sir, that ship left the Mote planet only hours—maybe less than one hour—after MacArthur appeared in their system. How would they have time to gather specialists?”

“I hadn’t known that,” Hardy said slowly. “But these must be specialists of some kind. What use would such fantastic linguistic abilities be among the general population? And fantastic is not too strong a word. Still and all, we’ve managed to puzzle them slightly, or did the rest of you notice?”

“The tool room?” Sally asked. “I guess that’s what you’d call it, although I don’t think I’d have figured it out if Jonathon hadn’t given me the clue first. They took me there just after I left you, Dr. Hardy, and they didn’t seem puzzled to me. I noticed you stayed a lot longer than I did, though.”

“What did you do there?” David asked.

“Why—nothing. I looked at all the gadgetry. The whole place was covered with junk—by the way, those wall clamps weren’t substantial enough to take real gravity, I’m sure of that. They must have built that room after they got here. But anyway, since there wasn’t anything I could understand I didn’t pay much attention to the place.”

Hardy folded his hands in an attitude of prayer, then looked up embarrassed. He’d got into that habit long before he entered the priesthood, and somehow could never break himself of it; but it indicated concentration not reverence. “You did nothing, and they were not curious about it.” He thought furiously for long seconds. “Yet I asked the names of the equipment, and spent quite long time there, and my Fyunch(click) seemed very surprised. I could be misinterpreting the emotion, but I really think my interest in the tools unsettled them.”‘

“Did you try to use any of the gadgets?” Whitbread asked.

“No. Did you?”

“Well, I played around with some of the stuff…”

“And were they surprised or curious about that?”

Jonathon shrugged. “They were all watching me all the time. I didn’t notice anything different.”

“Yes.” Hardy folded his hands again, but this time didn’t notice he was doing it. “I think there is something odd about that room and the interest they showed in our interest in it. But I doubt that we’ll know why until Captain Blaine sends over his expert. Do you know who’s coming?”

Horvath nodded. “He’s sending Chief Engineer Sinclair.”

“Hmmm.” The sound was involuntary. The others looked at Jonathon Whitbread, who grinned slowly. “If the Moties were puzzled by you, sir, just think what’ll go through their heads when they hear Commander Sinclair talk.”

On a Navy warship men do not maintain an average weight. During the long idle periods those who like to eat amuse themselves by eating. They grow fat. But men who can dedicate their lives to a cause—including a good percentage of those who will remain in the Navy—tend to forget about eating. Food cannot hold their attention.

Sandy Sinclair looked straight ahead of himself as he sat rigid on the edge of the examining table. It was this way with Sinclair: he could not look a man in the eye while he was naked. He was big and lean, and his stringy muscles were much stronger than they looked. He might have been an average man given a skeleton three sizes too large.

A third of his surface area was pink scar tissue. Sharp metal flying out of an explosion had left that pink ridge across his short ribs. Most of the rest had been burned into him by puffs of flame or droplets of metal. A space battle left burns, if it left a man alive at all.

The doctor was twenty-three, and cheerful. “Twenty four years in service, eh? Ever been in a battle?”

Sinclair snapped, “You’ll hae your own share o’ scars if ye stay wi’ the Navy long enough.”

“I believe you, somehow. Well, Commander, you’re in admirable shape for a man in his forties. You could handle a month of free fall, I think, but we’ll play safe and drag you back to MacArthur twice a week. I don’t suppose I have to tell you to keep up on the free-fall exercises.”

Rod Blaine called the cutter several times the next day, but it was evening before he could get anyone besides the pilot. Even Horvath had gone aboard the Motie ship.

Chaplain Hardy was exhausted and jubilant, with a smile spread across his face and great dark circles under his eyes. “I’m taking it as a lesson in humility, Captain. They’re far better at my job—well, at linguistics, anyway—than I am. I’ve decided that the fastest way to learn their language will be to teach them Anglic. No human throat will ever speak their language—languages?—without computer assistance.”

“Agreed. It would take a full orchestra. I’ve heard some of your tapes. In fact, Chaplain, there wasn’t much else to do.”

Hardy smiled. “Sorry. We’ll try to arrange more frequent reporting. By the way, Dr. Horvath is showing a party of Moties through the cutter now. They seem particularly interested in the drive. The brown one wants to take things apart, but the pilot won’t let him. You did say there were no secrets on this boat.”

“Certainly I said that, but it might be a bit premature to let them fool with your power source. What did Sinclair say about it?”

“I don’t know, Captain.” Hardy looked puzzled. “They’ve had him in that tool room all day. He’s still there.”

Blaine fingered the knot on his nose. He was getting the information he needed, but Chaplain Hardy hadn’t been exactly whom he wanted to talk to. “Uh, how many Moties are there aboard your ship?”

“Four. One for each of us: myself, Dr. Horvath, Lady Sally, and Mr. Whitbread. They seem to be assigned mutual guides.”

“Four of them.” Rod was trying to get used to the idea. The cutter wasn’t a commissioned vessel, but it was one of His Majesty’s warships, and somehow having a bunch aliens aboard was—nuts. Horvath knew the risks he was taking. “Only four? Doesn’t Sinclair have a guide?”

“Oddly enough, no. A number of them are watching him work in the tool room, but there was no special one assigned to him.”

“And none for the coxswain or the spacers on the cutter?”

“No.” Hardy thought a moment. “That is odd, isn’t it? As if they class Commander Sinclair with the unimportant crewmen.”

“Maybe they just don’t like the Navy.”

David Hardy shrugged. Then, carefully, he said, “Captain, sooner or later we’ll have to invite them aboard MacArthur.”

“I’m afraid that’s out of the question.”

Hardy sighed. “Well, that’s why I brought it up now, that we could thrash it out. They’ve shown that they trust us, Captain. There’s not a cubic centimeter of their embassy ship that we haven’t seen, or at least probed with instruments. Whitbread will testify that there’s no sign of weaponry aboard. Eventually they’re going to wonder what guilty secrets we’re hiding aboard.”

“I’m going to tell you. Are there Moties within earshot?”

“No. And they haven’t learned Anglic that well anyway.”

“Don’t forget they will learn, and don’t forget recorders. Now, Chaplain, you’ve got a problem—about Moties and Creation. The Empire has another. For a long time we’ve talked about the Great Galactic Wizards showing up and deciding whether to let the humans join, right? Only it’s the other way around, isn’t it? We’ve got to decide whether to let the Moties out of their system, and until that’s decided we don’t want them to see the Langston Field generators, the Alderson Drive, our weapons… not even just how much of MacArthur is living space, Chaplain. It would give away too much about our capabilities. We’ve a lot to hide, and we’ll hide it.”

“You’re treating them as enemies,” David Hardy said gently.

“And that’s neither your decision nor mine, Doctor. Besides, I’ve got some questions I want answered before I decide that the Moties are nothing more than steadfast friends.” Rod let his gaze go past the Chaplain, and his eyes focused a long way off. I’m not sorry it’s not my decision, he thought. But ultimately they’re going to ask me. As future Marquis of Crucis, if nothing else.

He had known the subject would come up, and would again, and he was ready. “First, why did they send us a ship from Mote Prime? Why not from the Trojan cluster? It’s much closer.”

“I’ll ask them when I can.”

“Second, why four Moties? It may not be important, but I’d like to know why they assigned one to each of you scientists, one to Whitbread, and none to any of the crew.”

“They were right, weren’t they? They set guides on the four people most interested in teaching them—”

“Exactly. How did they know? Just for example, how could they have known Dr. Horvath would be aboard? And the third question is, what are they building now?”

“All right, Captain.” Hardy looked unhappy, not angry. He was and would be harder to refuse than Horvath… partly because he was Rod’s confessor. And the subject would come up again. Rod was sure of that.

23. Eliza Crossing the Ice

During the weeks that followed MacArthur was a bustle of activity. Every scientist worked overtime after each data transmission from the cutter, and every one of them wanted Navy assistance immediately. There was also the problem of the escaped miniatures, but this had settled to a game, with MacArthur losing. In the mess room it was even money that they were both dead, but no bodies were found. It worried Rod Blaine, but there was nothing he could do.

He also allowed the Marines to stand watches in normal uniform. There were no threats to the cutter, and it was ridiculous to keep a dozen men uncomfortable in battle armor. Instead he doubled the watch keeping surveillance around MacArthur, but no one—or no thing—tried to approach, escape, or send messages. Meanwhile the biologists went wild over clues to Motie psychology and physiology, the astronomy section continued to map Mote Prime, Buckman dithered whenever anyone else used the astronomical gear, and Blaine tried to keep his overcrowded ship’ running smoothly. His appreciation of Horvath grew every time he had to mediate a dispute between scientists.

There was more activity aboard the cutter. Commander Sinclair had gone aboard and been immediately taken to the Motie ship. Three days passed before a Brown-and-white began following Sinclair around, and it was a peculiarly quiet Motie. It did seem interested in the cutter’s machinery, unlike the others who had assigned themselves to a human. Sinclair and his Fyunch(click) spent long hours aboard the alien ship, poking into corners, examining everything.

“The lad was right about the tool room,” Sinclair told Blaine during one of his daily reports. “It’s like the nonverbal intelligence tests BuPers worked up for new recruits. There are things wrong wi’ some o’ the tools, and ‘tis my task to put them right.”

“Wrong how?”

Sinclair chuckled, remembering. He had some difficulty explaining the joke to Blaine. The hammer with the big, flat head would hit a thumb every time. It needed to be trimmed. The laser heated too fast… and that was a tricky one. It had generated the wrong frequency of light. Sinclair fixed it by doubling the frequency—somehow. He also learned more about compact lasers than he’d ever known before. There were other tests like that. “They’re good, Captain. It took ingenuity to come up wi’ some of the testing gadgets wi’out giving away more than they did. But they canna keep me from learning about their ship… Captain, I already ken enough to redesign the ship’s boats to be more efficient. Or make millions o’ crowns designing miner ships.”

“Retiring when we go back, Sandy?” Rod asked; but he grinned widely to show he didn’t mean it.

In the second week, Rod Blaine also acquired a Fyunch(click).

He was both dismayed and flattered. The Motie looked like all the others: brown-and-white markings, a gentle smile in a lopsided face just high enough above the deck that Rod could have patted her on the head—if he’d ever seen the Motie face to face, which he never would.

Each time he called the cutter she was there, always eager to see Blaine and talk to him. Each time he called, her Anglic was better. They would exchange a few words, and that was that. He didn’t have time for a Fyunch(click), or a need for one either. Learning Motie language wasn’t his job—from the progress made, it wasn’t anyone’s job—and he only saw her through a phone link. What use was a guide he would never meet?

“They seem to think you’re important,” was Hardy’s dead-pan answer.

It was something to think about while he presided over his madhouse of a ship. And the alien didn’t complain at all.

The month’s flurry of activity hardly affected Horace Bury. He received no news at all from the cutter, and had nothing to contribute to the scientific work on the ship. Alert to rumors, which were always helpful, he waited for news to filter down through the grapevine; but not very much did. Communications with the cutter seemed to stop with the bridge, and he had no real friends among the scientists other than Buckman. Blaine had given up putting everything on the intercom. For the first time since he left New Chicago, Bury felt imprisoned.

It bothered him more than it should have, although he was introspective enough to know why. All his life he had tried to control his environment as far as he could reach: around a world, across light years of space and decades of time—or throughout a Navy battle cruiser. The crew treated him as a guest, but not as a master; and anywhere he was not master, he was a prisoner.

He was losing money, too. Somewhere in the restricted sections of MacArthur, beyond the reach of all but the highest-ranking scientists, physicists were studying the golden stuff from the Stone Beehive. It took weeks of effort to pick up the rumor that it was a superconductor of heat.

That would be priceless stuff, and he knew he must obtain a sample. He even knew how it might be done, but forced himself to idleness. Not yet! The time to steal his sample would be just before MacArthur docked in New Scotland. Ships would be waiting there despite the cost, not only a ship openly acknowledging him as owner, but at least one other. Meanwhile, listen, find out, know what else he should have when he left MacArthur.

He had several reports on the Stone Beehive to crosscheck against each other. He even tried to gain information from Buckman; but the results were more amusing than profitable.

“Oh, forget the Stone Beehive,” Buckman had exclaimed. “It was moved into place. It’s no damned use at all. The Beehive’s got nothing to do with the formation of the Trojan point clusters, and the Moties have messed up the internal structure to the point where you can’t tell anything about the original rock…”

So. The Moties could and did make superconductors of heat. And there were always the little Moties. He enjoyed the search for the escaped miniatures. Naturally most of the Navy personnel were silently rooting for the underdog, the fleeing miniature and the child, Eliza crossing the ice. And the miniature was winning. Food disappeared from odd places: staterooms, lounges, everywhere but the kitchen itself. The ferrets could find no scent. How could the miniatures have made truce with the ferrets? Bury wondered. Certainly the aliens were… alien, yet the ferrets had had no trouble scenting them the first night.

Bury enjoyed the hunt, but… He took the lesson: a miniature was harder to catch than to keep. If he expected to sell many as pets he had better sell them in foolproof cages. Then there was the matter of acquiring a breeding pair. The longer the miniatures remained free, the less grew Bury’s chances of persuading the Navy that they were harmless, friendly pets.

But it was fun seeing the Navy look foolish. Bury rooted for both sides, and practiced patience; and the weeks went on.

While six Fyunch(click)s bunked aboard the cutter, the rest of the Moties worked. The interior of the alien ship changed like dreams; it was different every time anyone went aboard. Sinclair and Whitbread made a point of touring it periodically to see that no weapons were built; perhaps they would have known and perhaps not.

One day Hardy and Horvath stopped by the Captain’s watch cabin after an hour in MacArthur’s exercise rooms.

“The Moties have a fuel tank coming,” Horvath told Rod. “It was launched at about the same time as their own ship, by linear accelerator, but in a fuel-saving orbit. It should arrive in two weeks.”

“So that’s what it is.” Blaine and his officers had worried about that silent object coasting at leisure toward their position.

“You knew about it? You might have mentioned it to us.”

“They’ll need to retrieve it,” Blaine speculated. “Hmm. I wonder if one of my boats might get it for them. Would they let us do that?”

“I see no reason why not. We’ll ask,” said David Hardy. “One more thing, Captain.”

Rod knew something tricky was coming. Horvath had Dr. Hardy ask for all the things Rod might refuse.

“The Moties want to build an air-lock bridge between the cutter and the embassy ship,” Hardy finished.

“It’s only a temporary structure and we need it.” Horvath paused. “It’s only a hypothesis, you understand, but, Captain, we now think that every structure is only temporary to them. They must have had high-gee couches at takeoff, but they’re gone now. They arrived with no fuel to take them home. They almost certainly redesigned their life-support system for free fall in the three hours following their arrival.”

“ ‘And this too shall pass away,’ ” Hardy added helpfully. “But the idea doesn’t bother them. They seem to like it.”

“It’s a major departure from human psychology,” Horvath said earnestly. “Perhaps a Motie would never try to design anything permanent at all. There will be no sphinx, no pyramids, no Washington Monument, no Lenin’s Tomb.”

“Doctor, I don’t like the idea of joining the two ships.”

“But, Captain, we need something like this. People and Moties are constantly passing back and forth, and they have to use the taxi every time. Besides, the Moties have already started work—”

“May I point out that if they join those two ships, you and everyone aboard will thenceforth be hostage to the Moties’ good will?”

Horvath was ruffled. “I’m sure the aliens can be trusted, Captain. We’re making very good progress with them.”

“Besides,” Chaplain Hardy added equably, “we’re hostage now. There was never a way to avoid the situation. MacArthur and Lenin are our protection, if we need protection. If two battleships don’t scare them—well, we knew the situation when we boarded the cutter.”

Blaine ground his teeth. If the cutter was expendable, the cutter’s personnel were not. Sinclair, Sally Fowler, Dr. Horvath, the Chaplain—MacArthur’s most valuable people were living aboard the cutter. Yet the Chaplain was clearly right. They were all subject to murder at any moment, save for the risk of MacArthur’s vengeance.

“Tell them to go ahead,” Rod said. The air-lock bridge would not increase the danger at all.

The lock was begun as soon as Rod gave permission. A tube of thin metal, flexibly jointed, jutting from the hull of the Motie ship, it snaked toward them like a living creature. Moties swarmed around it in fragile-seeming suits. As seen from the cutter’s main port, they might almost have been men—almost.

Sally’s eyes blurred as she watched. The lighting was strange—dim Mote light and space-black shadows, and occasional flares of artificial light, everything reflected from the bright, curved metal surface. The perspective was all wrong, and it gave her a headache.

“I keep wondering where they’re getting the metal,” said Whitbread. He sat near her, as he usually did when they were both between jobs. “There wasn’t any spare mass aboard the ship, not the first time I went through it and not now. They must be tearing their ship apart.”

“That would fit,” said Horvath.

They had gathered around the main window after dinner, with tea and coffee bulbs in their hands. The Moties had become tea and chocolate fanciers; they could not stomach coffee. Human, Motie, human, Motie, they circled the window on the horseshoe-shaped free-fall bench. The Fyunch(click)s had learned the human trick of aligning themselves all in the same direction.

“Look how fast they work,” Sally said. “The bridge seems to grow before your very eyes.” Again her eyes tried to cross. It was as if many of the Moties were working farther back, well behind the others. “The one marked with the orange strips must be a Brown. She seems to be in charge, don’t you think?”

“She’s also doing most of the work,” said Sinclair.

“That makes an odd kind of sense,” said Hardy. “If she knows enough to give the orders, she must be able to do the work better than any of the others, too, wouldn’t you think?” He rubbed his eyes. “Am I out of my mind, or are some of those Moties smaller than others?”

“It does look that way,” said Sally.

Whitbread stared at the bridge builders. Many of the Moties seemed to be working a long way behind the embassy ship—until three of them passed in front of it. Carefully he said, “Has anyone tried watching this through the scope? Lafferty, get it on for us, will you?”

In the telescope screen it was shockingly clear. Some of the Motie workmen were tiny, small enough to crawl into any crevice. And they had four arms each.

“Do—do you often use those creatures as workmen?” Sally asked her Fyunch(click).

“Yes. We find them very useful. Are there not—equal creatures—in your ships?” The alien seemed surprised. Of all the Moties, Sally’s gave the impression of being most often surprised at the humans. “Do you think Rod will be worried?”

“But what are they?” Sally demanded. She ignored the question the Motie had asked.

“They are—workers,” the Motie answered. “Useful animals. You are surprised because they are small? Yours are large, then?”

“Uh, yes,” Sally answered absently. She looked to the others. “I think I’d like to go see these—animals—close up. Anyone want to come along?” But Whitbread was already getting into his suit, and so were the others.

“Fyunch(click),” said the alien.

“God Almighty!” Blaine exploded. “Have they got you answering the phones now?”

The alien spoke slowly, with care for enunciation. Her grammar was not perfect, but her grasp of idiom and inflection was freshly amazing every time she spoke. “Why not? I talk well enough. I can remember a message. I can use the recorder. I have little to do when you are not available.”

“I can’t help that.”

“I know.” With a touch of complacence the alien added, “I startled a rating.”

“God’s teeth, you startled me. Who’s around?”

“Coxswain Lafferty. All the other humans are absent. They have gone to look at the tunnel. When it is finished the ratings will not have to go with them when they wish to visit the other ship. Can I pass on a message?”

“No, thanks, I’ll call back.”

“Sally should be back soon,” said Blaine’s Motie. “How are you? How goes the ship?”

“Well enough.”

“You always sound so cautious when you speak of the ship. Am I stepping on Navy secrets? It-ss not the ship that concerns me, Rod. I’m Fyunch(click) to you. It means considerably more than just guide.” The Motie gestured oddly. Rod had seen her do that before, when she was upset or annoyed.

“Just what does Fyunch(click) mean?”

“I am assigned to you. You are a project, a masterwork. I am to learn as much about you as there is to know. I am to become an expert on you, My Lord Roderick Blaine, and you are to become a field of study to me. It-ss not your gigantic, rigid, badly designed ship that interest-ss me, it-ss your attitudes toward that ship and the humans aboard, your degree of control over them, your interess-t in their welfare, et cetera.”

How would Kutuzov handle this? Break contact? Hell. “Nobody likes being watched. Anyone would feel a bit uncomfortable being studied like that.”

“We guessed you would take it that way. But, Rod, you’re here to study us, are-unt you? Surely we are entitled to study you back.”

“You have that right.” Rod’s voice was stiff despite himself. “But if someone becomes embarrassed while you’re talking to him, that’s probably the reason.”

“God damn it to hell,” said Blaine’s Motie. “You are the first intelligent beings we’ve ever met who are-unt relatives. Why should you expect to be comfortable with us?” She rubbed the flat center of her face with her upper right forefinger, then dropped her hand as if embarrassed. It was the same gesture she’d used a moment before.

There were noises off screen. Blaine’s Motie said, “Hang on a moment. Okay, it-ss Sally and Whitbread.” Her voice rose. “Sally? The Captain’s on screen.” She slid out of the chair. Sally Fowler slid in. Her smile seemed forced as she said, “Hello, Captain. What’s new?”

“Business as usual. How goes it at your end?”

“Rod, you look flustered. It’s a strange experience, isn’t it? Don’t worry, she can’t hear us now.”

“Good. I’m not sure I like an alien reading my mind that way. I don’t suppose they really read minds.”

“They say not. And they guess wrong sometimes.” She ran a hand through her hair, which was in disarray, perhaps because she had just doffed a pressure suit helmet. “Wildly wrong. Commander Sinclair’s Fyunch(click) wouldn’t talk to him at first. They thought he was a Brown; you know, an idiot carpenter type. How are you doing with the miniatures?”

That was a subject they’d both learned to avoid. Rod wondered why she’d brought it up. “The loose ones are still loose. No sign of them. They might even have died somewhere we wouldn’t find them. We’ve still got the one that stayed behind. I think you’d better have a look at her, Sally, next time you’re over. She may be sick.”

Sally nodded. “I’ll come over tomorrow. Rod, have you been watching the alien work party?”

“Not particularly. The air lock seems almost finished already.”

“Yes… Rod, they’ve been using trained miniatures to do part of the work.”

Rod stared stupidly.

Sally’s eyes shifted uneasily. “Trained miniatures. In pressure suits. We didn’t know there were any aboard. I suppose they must be shy; they must hide when humans are aboard. But they’re only animals, after all. We asked.”

“Animals.” Oh my God. What would Kutuzov say?

“Sally, this is important. Can you come over tonight and brief me? You and anyone else who knows anything about this.”

“All right. Commander Sinclair is watching them now. Rod, it’s really fantastic how well the little beasts are trained. And they can get into places where you’d have to use jointed tools and spy eyes.”

“I can imagine. Sally, tell me the truth. Is there the slightest chance the miniatures are intelligent?”

“No. They’re just trained.”

“Just trained.” And if there were any alive aboard MacArthur they’d have explored the ship from stem to stern. “Sally, is there the slightest chance that any of the aliens can hear me now?”

“No. I’m using the earphone, and we haven’t allowed them to work on our equipment.”

“So far as you know. Now listen carefully, then. I want to talk privately to everyone else on that cutter, one at a time. Has anyone said anything—anything at all—about there being miniatures loose aboard MacArthur?”

“No-oo. You told us not to, remember? Rod, what’s wrong?”

What’s wrong? “For God’s sake, don’t say anything about the loose miniatures. I’ll tell the others as you put them on. And I want to see all of you, everyone except the cutter’s regular crew, tonight. It’s time we pooled our knowledge about Moties, because I’m going to have to report to the Admiral tomorrow morning.” He looked almost pale. “I guess I can wait that long.”

“Well, of course you can,” she said. She smiled enchantingly, but it didn’t come off very well. She didn’t think she’d ever seen Rod so concerned, and it upset her. “We’ll be over in an hour. Now here’s Mr. Whitbread, and please, Rod, stop worrying.”

24. Brownies

MacArthur’s wardroom was crowded. All the seats at the main table were taken by officers and scientists and there were others around the periphery. At one bulkhead the communications people had installed a large screen while the mess stewards got in the artificers’ way as they delivered coffee to the assembled company. Everyone chattered, carefree, except Sally. She remembered Rod Blaine’s worried face, and she couldn’t join in the happy reunion.

Officers and ratings stood as Rod came into the wardroom. Some of the civilians stood likewise; others pretended not to see the Captain; and a few looked at him, then looked away, exploiting their civilian status. As Rod took his place at the head of the table he muttered, “At ease,” then sat carefully. Sally thought he looked even more worried than before.

“Kelley.”

“Sir!”

“Is this room secure?”

“As near as we can make it, sir. Four files outside and I looked into the duct works.”

“What is this?” Horvath demanded. “Just who do you think you are guarding against?”

“Everyone—and every thing—not here, Doctor.” Rod looked at the Science Minister with eyes that showed both command and pleading. “I must tell you that everything discussed here will be classified Top Secret. Do each and all of you waive the reading of the Imperial Regulations on disclosure of classified information?”

There was muttered assent. The cheery mood of the group had suddenly vanished.

“Any dissents? Let the record show there were none. Dr. Horvath, I am given to understand that three hours ago you discovered that the miniatures are highly trained animals capable of technical work performed under command. Is that correct?”

“Yes. Certainly. It was quite a surprise, I can tell you! The implications are enormous—if we can learn to direct them, they would be fabulous additions to our capabilities.”

Rod nodded absently. “Is there any chance that we could have known that earlier? Did anyone know it? Anyone at all?”

There was a confused babble but no one answered. Rod said, carefully and clearly, “Let the record show there was no one.”

“What is this record you keep speaking of?” Horvath demanded. “And why are you concerned about it?”

“Dr. Horvath, this conversation will be recorded and duly witnessed because it may be evidence in a court martial. Quite possibly mine. Is that clear enough?”

“What— Good heavens!” Sally gasped. “Court-martial? You? Why?”

“The charge would be high treason,” Rod said. “I see most of my officers aren’t surprised. My lady, gentlemen, we have strict orders from the Viceroy himself to do nothing to compromise any Imperial military technology, and in particular to protect the Langston Field and Alderson Drive from Motie inspection. In the past weeks animals capable of learning that technology and quite possibly of passing it on to other Moties have roamed my ship at will. Now do you understand?”

“I see.” Horvath showed no signs of alarm, but his face grew thoughtful. “And you have secured this room— Do you really believe the miniatures can understand what we say?”

Rod shrugged. “I think it possible they can memorize conversations and repeat them. But are the miniatures still alive? Kelley?”

“Sir, there haven’t been any signs of them for weeks. No raids on food stores. Ferrets haven’t turned up a thing but a bloody lot of mice. I think the beasties are dead, Captain.”

Blaine rubbed his nose, then quickly drew his hand away. “Gunner, have you ever heard of ‘Brownies’ aboard this ship?”

Kelley’s face showed no surprise. In fact it showed nothing. “Brownies, Captain?”

“Rod, have you lost your mind?” Sally blurted. Everyone was looking at her, and some of them didn’t seem friendly. Oh boy, she thought, I’ve stuck my foot in it. Some of them know what he’s talking about. Oh boy.

“I said Brownies, Gunner. Have you ever heard of them?”

“Well, not officially, Captain. I will say some of the spacers seem lately to believe in the Little People. Couldn’t see any harm in it meself.” But Kelley looked confused. He had heard of this and he hadn’t reported it, and now the Captain, his Captain, might be in trouble over it.

“Anyone else?” Rod demanded.

“Uh—sir?”

Rod had to strain to see who was speaking. Midshipman Potter was near the far wall, almost hidden by two biologists. “Yes, Mr. Potter?”

“Some of the men in my watch section, Captain—they say that if ye leave some food-grain, cereals, mess leftovers, anything at all—in the corridors or under your bunk along with something that needs fixing, it gets fixed.” Potter looked uncomfortable. It was obvious he thought he was reporting nonsense. “One of the men called them ‘Brownies.’ I thought it a joke.”

Once Potter had spoken there were a dozen others, even some of the scientists. Microscopes with smoother focusing operations than the best things ever made by Leica Optical. A handmade lamp in the biology section. Boots and shoes customized to individual feet. Rod looked up at that one.

“Kelley. How many of your troops have sidearms individualized like yours and Mr. Renner’s?”

“Uh—I don’t know, sir.”

“I can see one from here. You, man, Polizawsky, how did you come by that weapon?”

The Marine stammered. He wasn’t used to speaking to officers, certainly not the Captain, and most certainly not the Captain in an ugly mood. “Uh, well, sir, I leaves my weapon and a bag o’ popcorn by my bunk and next morning it’s done, sir. Like the others said, Captain.”

“And you didn’t think this unusual enough to report to Gunner Kelley?”

“Uh—sir—uh, some of the others, we thought maybe, uh, well, the Surgeon’s been talking about hallucinations in space, Captain, and we, uh—”

“Besides, if you reported it I might stop the whole thing,” Rod finished for him. Oh, God damn it to hell! How was he going to explain all this? Busy, too busy arbitrating squabbles with the scientists— But the fact stood out. He’d neglected his naval duties, and with what outcome?

“Aren’t you taking all this too seriously?” Horvath asked. “After all, Captain, the Viceroy’s orders were given before we knew much about Moties. Now, surely, we can see they aren’t dangerous, and they certainly aren’t hostile.”

“Are you suggesting, Doctor, that we put ourselves in the position of countermanding an Imperial Directive?”

Horvath looked amused. His grin spread slowly across his face. “Oh no,” he said. “I don’t even imply, it. I only suggest that if and when—when, really, it’s inevitable—that policy is changed, all this will seem a trifle silly, Captain Blaine. Childish in fact.”

“Be damned to you!” Sinclair exploded. “That’s nae way to talk to the Captain, mon!”

“Gently, Sandy,” First Lieutenant Cargill interjected. “Dr. Horvath, I take it you’ve never been involved in military intelligence? No, of course not. But you see, in intelligence work we have to go by capabilities, not by intentions. If a potential enemy can do something to you, you have to prepare for it, without regard to what you think he wants to do.”

“Exactly,” Rod said. He was glad of the interruptions. Sinclair was still fuming at his end of the table, and it wouldn’t take much to make him explode again. “So first we have to find out what the potential of the miniatures is. From what I’ve seen of the air-lock construction, plus what we gather about the ‘Brownies,’ that’s quite high.”

“But they’re only animals,” Sally insisted. She looked at the fuming Sinclair, the sardonically smiling Horvath and Rod’s worried face. “You don’t understand. This business with tools—well, yes, they’re good with tools, but it’s not intelligence. Their heads are too small. The more brain tissue they use for this instinct to make tools work, the more they have to give up. They’ve virtually no sense of smell or taste. They’re very nearsighted. They’ve less sense of language than a chimpanzee. Their space perception is good, and they can be trained, but they don’t make tools, they only fix or change things. Intelligence!” She exploded. “What intelligent being would have custom formed the grip on Mr. Battson’s toothbrush?

“As for spying on us, how could they? Nobody could have trained them for it. They were randomly selected the first place.” She looked around at their faces, trying to judge if she was getting through.

“You’re really sure the escaped miniatures are alive?” The voice was hearty, tinged with New Scot accent. Rod looked across to Dr. Blevins, a colonial veterinarian drafted into the expedition. “My own miniature is dying, Captain. Nothing I can do about it. Internal poisoning, glandular deterioration—the symptoms seem to be similar to old age.”

Blaine shook his head slowly. “I wish I could think so Doc, but there are too many Brownie stories in this ship. Before this meeting I talked to some of the other chiefs and it’s the same on the lower decks. Nobody wanted report it because first, we’d think they were crazy, and second, the Brownies were too useful to risk losing. No, for all of Gunner Kelley’s Irish folk tales, there have never been any Little People on Navy ships—it has to be the miniatures.”

There was a long silence. “What harm are they doing anyway?” Horvath asked. “I’d think some Brownies would be an asset, Captain.”

“Hah.” That didn’t need comment in Rod’s opinion. “Harm or good, immediately after this meeting we will sterilize this ship. Sinclair, have you arranged to evacuate hangar deck?”

“Aye, Captain.”

“Then do it. Open it to space, and see all the compartments in there are opened to space. I want that hangar deck dead. Commander Cargill, see that the essential watch crew are in battle armor. Alone in their battle armor, Number One. The rest of you give some thought to whatever equipment you have that can’t stand hard vacuum. When hangar deck’s done, Kelley’s Marines will help you get that into hangar deck; then we depressurize the rest of the ship. We’re going to put an end to Brownies once and for all.”

“But” — ”Hey, that’s silly” — ”My cultures will die” — “Goddamn regular Navy bastards are always” — ”Can he do that?” — ”Aye aye, Captain” — ”What the hell does he think he’s—”

“Tenn-shut!” Kelley’s roar cut through the babble.

“Captain, do you really have to be so vicious about it?” Sally asked.

He shrugged. “I think they’re cute too. So what? If I don’t order it done, the Admiral will anyway. Now, are we all agreed that the miniatures aren’t spies?”

“Not deliberate ones,” Renner said. “But, Captain, do you know about the incident with the pocket computer?”

“No.”

“The big Motie took Miss Fowler’s pocket computer apart. And put it back together again. It works.”

“Uh.” Rod made a sour face. “But that was the big brown Motie.”

“Which can talk to the little Moties. It made the miniatures give Mr. Bury his watch back,” Renner said.

“I’ve got the crew alerted, Captain,” Cargill reported. He was standing by the wardroom intercom. “I didn’t tell anyone anything. The crew thinks it’s a drill.”

“Good thinking, Jack. Seriously, everyone, what’s the objection to killing off these vermin? The big Motie did the same thing, and if, as you say, they’re only animals, there must be plenty more of them. We won’t be upsetting the big Moties one whit. Will we?”

“Well, no-oo,” said Sally. “But—”

Rod shook his head decisively. “There are plenty of reasons for killing them, and I haven’t heard any for keeping them around. We can take that as settled, then.”

Horvath shook his head. “But it’s all so drastic, Captain. Just what do we think we’re protecting?”

“The Alderson Drive, directly. Indirectly, the whole Empire, but mainly the Drive,” Cargill said seriously. “And don’t ask me why I think the Empire needs protecting from Moties. I don’t know, but—I think it does.”

“You won’t save the Drive. They’ve already got that,” Renner announced. He gave them all a lopsided smile as everyone in the room swiveled toward him.

“What?!” Rod demanded. “How?”

“Who’s the bloody traitor?” Sinclair demanded. “Name the scum!”

“Whoa! Hold it! Stop already!” Renner insisted. “They already had the Drive, Captain. I only learned an hour ago. It’s all recorded, let me show you.” He stood and went to the big screen. Images flashed across it until Renner found the place he wanted. He turned to the watchful group.

“It’s nice to be the center of attention—” Renner cut off at the sight of Rod’s glare. “This is a conversation between, uh, my Motie and myself. I’ll use split screens to show you both sides of it.” He touched the controls and the screen sprang to life: Renner on MacArthur’s bridge, his Fyunch(click) in the Motie embassy ship. Renner ran it at high speed until he found precisely what he wanted.

“You might have come from anywhere,” said Renner’s Motie. “Though it seems more likely that you came from a nearby star, such as—well, I can point to it.” Stellar images showed on a screen behind the Motie; screen within screens. She pointed with the upper right arm. The star was New Caledonia. “We know that you have an instantaneous drive, because of where you appeared.”

Renner’s image sat forward. “Where we appeared?”

“Yes. You appeared precisely in the…” Renner’s Motie seemed to search for a word. Visibly, she gave up. “Renner, I must tell you of a creature of legend.”

“Say on.” Renner’s image dialed for coffee. Coffee and stories, they went together.

“We will call him Crazy Eddie, if you like. He is a… he is like me, sometimes, and he is a Brown, an idiot savant tinker, sometimes. Always he does the wrong things for excellent reasons. He does the same things over and over, and they always bring disaster, and he never learns.”

There were small sounds of whispering in MacArthur’s wardroom. Renner’s image said, “For instance?”

Renner’s Motie’s image paused to think. It said, “When a city has grown so overlarge and crowded that it is in immediate danger of collapse… when food and clean water flow into the city at a rate just sufficient to feed every mouth, and every hand must work constantly to keep it that way… when all transportation is involved in moving vital supplies, and none is left over to move people out of the city should the need arise… then it is that Crazy Eddie leads the movers of garbage out on strike for better working conditions.”

There was considerable laughter in the wardroom. Renner’s image grinned and said, “I think I know the gentleman. Go on.”

“There is the Crazy Eddie Drive. It makes ships vanish.”

“Great.”

“Theoretically, it should be an instantaneous drive, a key to throw the universe wide open. In practice it makes ships vanish forever. The drive has been discovered and built and tested many times, and always it makes ships vanish forever with everyone aboard, but only if you use it right, mind. The ship must be in just the right place, a place difficult to locate exactly, with the machinery doing just what the theoreticians postulate it must, or nothing will happen at all.”

Both Renners were laughing now. “I see. And we appeared in this point, the Crazy Eddie point. From which you deduce that we have solved the secret of the Crazy Eddie Drive.”

“You got it.”

“And what does that make us?”

The alien parted its lips in a smile disturbingly shark-like, disturbingly human… Renner gave them a good look at that smile before he turned it off.

There was a long silence, then Sinclair spoke. “Well, that’s plain enough, is it not? They ken the Alderson Drive but not the Langston Field.”

“Why do you say that, Commander Sinclair?” Horvath asked. Everyone tried to explain it to him at once, but the Chief Engineer’s burr easily carried through the babble.

“Yon beasties’ ships vanish, but only at the correct place, aye? So they ken the Drive. But they never see the ships back home, because they coom into normal space in yon red star. ‘Tis plain as a pikestaff.”

“Oh.” Horvath nodded sadly. “With nothing to protect them— After all, it is the inside of a star, isn’t it?”

Sally shuddered. “And your Motie said they’d tried it often.” She shuddered again. Then: “But, Mr. Renner—none of the other Moties ever talk about astrogation or anything like that. Mine told me about ‘Crazy Eddie’ as if he were around only in primitive times—a lost legend.”

“And mine spoke of Crazy Eddie as an engineer always using tomorrow’s capital to fix today’s problems,” Sinclair blurted.

“Anyone else?” Rod prompted.

“Well—” Chaplain David Hardy looked embarrassed. His plump face was almost beet-red. “My Motie says Crazy Eddie founds religions. Weird, very logical, and singularly inappropriate religions.”

“Enough,” Rod protested. “I seem to be the only one whose Motie has never mentioned Crazy Eddie.” He looked thoughtful. “We can all agree that the Moties do have the Drive, but not the Field?”

They all nodded. Horvath scratched his ear for a moment, then said, “Now that I remember the history of Langston’s discovery, it’s no surprise that the Moties don’t have the Field. I’m amazed they have the Drive itself, although its principles can be deduced from astrophysical research. The Field, though, was a purely accidental invention.”

“Given that they know it exists, then what?” Rod asked.

“Then— I don’t know,” Horvath said.

There was complete silence in the room. An ominous silence. Finally the bubble burst. Sally was laughing.

“You all look so deadly serious,” she protested. “Suppose they have both Drive and Field? There’s only the one planet full of Moties. They aren’t hostile, but even if they were, do you really think they would be a threat to the Empire? Captain, what could Lenin do to the Mote planet right now, all by itself, if Admiral Kutuzov gave the order?”

The tension broke. Everyone smiled. She was right, of course. The Moties didn’t even have warships. They didn’t have the Field, and if they invented it, how would they learn space-war tactics? Poor peaceful Moties, what challenge could they be to the Empire of Man?

Everyone except Cargill. He wasn’t smiling at all as he said, quite seriously, “I just don’t know, my lady. And I really wish I did.”

Horace Bury was not invited to the conference, although he knew of it. Now, while it was still going on, a Marine guard came to his cabin and politely, but very firmly, ushered him out of it. The guard would not say where he was taking Bury, and after a while it was obvious he did not know.

“The Gunner, he says to stay with you and be ready to take you to where the rest of them is, Mr. Bury.”

Bury slyly examined the man. What would this one do for a hundred thousand crowns? But then, it wasn’t necessary. Not at the moment. Surely Blaine wasn’t going to have him shot. For a moment Bury was frightened. Could they have made Stone talk, back on New Chicago?

By Allah, no one was safe. Absurd. Even if Stone had told everything, there were and could be no messages to MacArthur from the Empire. They were as effectively sealed off as the Moties.

“You are to stay with me. Does your officer say where I am to go?”

“Not right now, Mr. Bury.”

“Then take me to Dr. Buckman’s laboratory. Why not? We will both be more comfortable.”

The private thought about, it. “OK, come on.”

Bury found his friend in an ugly mood. “Pack everything that can’t stand hard vacuum,” Buckman was muttering. “Get everything that can ready for it. No reason. Just do it.” He poked at gadgetry. He had already packed a good deal in boxes and big plastic bags.

Bury’s own tension may have showed. Senseless orders, a guard outside the door… he was feeling like a prisoner again. It took him quite a while to calm Buckman down. Finally the astrophysicist slumped into a chair and lifted a cup of coffee. “Haven’t seen you much,” he said. “Been busy?”

“There is really very little for me to do in this ship. Few tell me anything,” Bury said equably—and that took self-control. “Why must you be ready for hard vacuum here?”

“Hah! I don’t know. Just do it. Try to call the Captain, he’s in conference. Try to complain to Horvath, and he’s in conference. If they aren’t available when you need them, just what use are they, anyway?”

Sounds came through from the corridor outside: heavy things were being moved. What could it be about? Sometimes they evacuated ships to get rid of rats…

That was it! They were killing off the miniatures! Allah be praised, he had acted in time. Bury smiled widely in relief. He had a better idea of the value of the miniatures since the night he had left a box of bhaklavah next to the open faceplate of his personal pressure suit. He’d almost lost it all.

To Buckman he said, “How did you make out in the Trojan point asteroids?”

Buckman looked startled. Then he laughed. “Bury, I haven’t thought about that problem in a month. We’ve been studying the Coal Sack. We’ve found a mass in there… probably a protostar. And an infrared source. The flow patterns in the Coal Sack are fantastic. As if the gas and dust were viscous. Of course it’s the magnetic fields that make it act like that. We’re learning wonderful things about the dynamics of a dust cloud. When I think of the time I wasted on those Trojan point rocks… when the whole problem was so trivial!”

“Well, go on, Buckman. Don’t leave me hanging.”

“Uh? Oh, I’ll show you.” Buckman went to the intercom and read out a string of numbers.

Nothing happened.

“That’s funny. Some idiot must have put a RESTRICTED on it.” Buckman closed his eyes, recited another string of numbers. Photographs appeared on the screen. “Ah. There!”

Asteroids tumbled on the screen, the pictures blurred and jumpy. Some were lopsided, some almost spherical, many marked with craters.

“Sorry about the quality. The near Trojans are a good distance away… but all it took was time and MacArthur’s telescopes. Do you see what we found?”

“Not really. Unless…” All of them had craters. At least one crater. Three long, narrow asteroids in succession, and each had a deep crater at one end. One rock twisted almost into a cashew shape; and the crater was at the inside of the curve. Each asteroid in the sequence had a big deep crater in it; and always a line through the center would have gone through the rock’s center of mass.

Bury felt fear and laughter rising in him. “Yes, I see. You found that every one of those asteroids had been moved into place artificially. Therefore you lost interest.”

“Naturally. When I think that I was expecting to find some new cosmic principle—” Buckman shrugged. He swallowed some coffee.

“I don’t suppose you told anyone?”

“I told Dr. Horvath. Why, do you suppose he put the RESTRICTED designation on it?”

“It may be. Buckman, how much energy do you think it would take to move such a mass of rocks around?”

“Why, I don’t know. A good deal, I think. In fact…” Buckman’s eyes glowed. “An interesting problem. I’ll let you know after this idiocy is over.” He turned back to his gear.

Bury sat where he was, staring at nothing. Presently he began to shiver.

25. The Captain’s Motie

“I appreciate your concern for the safety of the Empire, Admiral,” Horvath said. He nodded sagely at the glowering figure on MacArthur’s bridge screen. “Indeed I do. The fact remains, however, that we either accept the Moties’ invitation or we might as well go home. There’s nothing more to learn out here.”

“You, Blaine. You agree with that?” Admiral Kutuzov’s expression was unchanged.

Rod shrugged. “Sir, I have to take the advice of the scientists. They say that we’ve got about all we’re going to get from this distance.”

“You want to take MacArthur into orbit around the Mote planet, then? That is what you recommend? For the record?”

“Yes, sir. Either that or go home, and I don’t think we know enough about the Moties simply to leave.”

Kutuzov took a long, slow breath. His lips tightened.

“Admiral, you have your job, I have mine,” Horvath reminded him. “It’s all very well to protect the Empire against whatever improbable threat the Moties pose, but I must exploit what we can learn from Motie science and technology. That, I assure you, isn’t trivial. They’re so far advanced, in some respects that I—well, I haven’t any words to describe it, that’s all.”

“Exactly.” Kutuzov emphasized the word by pounding the arm of the command chair with his closed fists. “They have technology, beyond ours. They speak our language and you say we will never speak theirs. They know the Alderson effect, and now they know Langston Fields exist. Perhaps, Dr. Horvath, we should go home. Now.”

“But—” Horvath began.

“And yet,” Kutuzov continued. “I would not like to fight war with these Moties without knowing more about them. What are planetary defenses? Who governs Moties? I notice for all your work you cannot answer that question. You do not even know who is commanding that ship of theirs.”

“True.” Horvath nodded vigorously. “It’s a very strange situation. Sometimes I honestly think they don’t have a commander, but on the other hand they do seem to refer back to their ship for instructions sometimes… and then there’s the sex matter.”

“You play games with me, Doctor?”

“No, no,” Horvath said with irritation. “It’s quite straightforward. All of the Brown-and-whites have been female since their arrival. In addition, the brown female has become pregnant and has given birth to a brown-and-white pup. Now it’s a male.”

“I know of sex changes in aliens. Perhaps one Brown-and-white was male until shortly before embassy ship arrived?”

“We thought of that. But it seems more likely that the Brown-and-whites haven’t been breeding because of population pressure. They all stay female—they may even be mules, since a Brown is mother of one. Crossbreed between the Brown and something else? That would point to a something else aboard the embassy ship.”

“They got an admiral aboard their ship,” Kutuzov said positively. “Just as we do. I knew it. What do you tell them when they ask of me?”

Rod heard a snort behind him and guessed that Kevin Renner was strangling. “As little as possible, sir,” Rod said. “Only that we’re subject to orders from Lenin. I don’t think they know your name, or if there’s one man or a council aboard.”

“Just so.” The Admiral almost smiled. “Just what you know about their command, da? You watch, they got an admiral aboard that ship, and he’s decided he wants you closer to their planet. Now my problem is, do I learn more by letting you go than he learns by getting you there?”

Horvath turned away from the screen and sent a pleading look to Heaven, Its Wonders, and All the Saints. How could he deal with a man like that, the look asked.

“Any sign of little Moties?” Kutuzov asked. “Have you still Brownies aboard His Imperial Majesty’s General Class battle cruiser MacArthur?”

Rod shuddered at the heavy sarcasm. “No, sir. I’ve evacuated the hangar deck and opened everything in it space. Then I put all MacArthur’s passengers and crew into hangar deck and opened up the ship. We fumigated the plant rooms with ciphogene, poured carbon monoxide through all the vents, opened to space again, and after we came back from hangar deck we did the same thing there. The miniatures are dead, Admiral. We have the bodies. Twenty-four of them, to be exact, although we didn’t find one of them until yesterday. It was pretty ripe after three weeks…”

“And there are no signs of Brownies? Or of mice?”

“No, sir. Rats, mice, and Moties—all dead. The other miniature, the one we had caged—it’s dead too, sir. The vet thinks it was old age.”

Kutuzov nodded. “So that problem is solved. What of adult alien you have aboard?”

“It’s sick,” Blaine said. “Same symptoms as the miniature had.”

“Yes, that’s another thing,” Horvath said quickly. “I want to ask the Moties what to do for the sick miner, but Blaine won’t let me without your permission.”

The Admiral reached somewhere off screen. When he faced them again he held a glass of tea, which he blew on noisily. “The others know you have this miner aboard?”

“Yes,” Horvath said. When Kutuzov glared, the Science Minister continued quickly, “They seem to have always known it. None of us told them, I’m sure of that.”

“So they know. Have they asked for the miner? Or to see it?”

“No.” Horvath frowned deeply again. His voice was incredulous. “No, they haven’t. In fact, they haven’t shown the least concern about the miner; no more than they might have for the miniatures—you’ll have seen the pictures of the Moties evacuating their ship, Admiral? They have to kill off the little beasts too. The things must breed like hive rats.” Horvath paused, his brow wrinkled even more deeply. Then, abruptly, “Anyway, I want to ask the others what to do for the sick miner. We can’t just let it die.”

“That might be best for all,” Kutuzov mused. “Oh, very well, Doctor. Ask them. It is hardly admitting anything important about Empire to tell them we do not know proper diet for Moties. But if you ask and they insist on seeing that miner, Blaine, you will refuse. If necessary, miner will die—tragically and suddenly, by accident, but die. Is that clearly understood? It will not talk to other Moties, not now and not ever.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Rod sat impassively in his command chair. Now, do I agree with that? he thought. I should be shocked, but—

“Do you still wish to ask under those circumstances, Doctor?” Kutuzov asked.

“Yes. I expected nothing else from you anyway.” Horvath’s lips were pressed tightly against his teeth. “We now have the main question: the Moties have invited us to take orbit around their planet. Why they have done so is a matter for interpretation. I think it is because they genuinely want to develop trade and diplomatic relations with us, and this is the logical way we should go about it. There is no evidence for any other view. You, of course, have your own theories…”

Kutuzov laughed. It was a deep, hearty laugh. “Actually, Doctor, I may believe same as you. What has that to do with anything? Is my task to keep Empire safe. What I believe has no importance.” The Admiral stared coldly into the screens. “Very well. Captain, I give you discretion to act in this situation. However, you will first arm torpedo-destruct systems for your ship. You understand that MacArthur cannot be allowed to fall into Motie hands?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very well. You may go, Captain. We will follow in Lenin. You will transmit records of all information you obtain every hour—and you understand that if there is threat to your ship, I will not attempt to rescue you if there is any possibility of danger to Lenin? That my first duty is to return with information including, if this is so, how you were killed?” The Admiral turned so that he gazed directly at Horvath. “Well, Doctor, do you still want to go to Mote Prime?”

“Of course.”

Kutuzov shrugged. “Carry on, Captain Blaine. Carry on.”

MacArthur’s towboats had retrieved an oil-drum-shape cylinder half the size of the Motie embassy ship. It was very simple: a hard, thick shell of some foamed material heavy with liquid hydrogen, spinning slowly, with a bleeder valve at the axis. Now it was strapped to the embassy ship aft the toroidal living spaces. The slender spine meant to guide the plasma flow for the fusion drive had been altered too, bent far to the side to direct the thrust through the new center of mass. The embassy ship was tilted far back on her drive, like a smaller but very pregnant woman trying to walk.

Moties—Brown-and-whites, guided by one of the Browns—were at work disassembling the air-lock bridge, melting it down, and reshaping the material into ring shaped support platforms for the fragile toroids. Others worked within the ship, and three small brown-and-white shapes played among them. Again the interior changed like dreams. Free-fall furniture was reshaped. Floors were slanted, vertical to the new line of thrust.

There were no Moties aboard the cutter now; they were all at work; but contact was maintained. Some of the midshipmen took their turns doing simple muscle work aboard the embassy ship.

Whitbread and Potter were working in the acceleration chamber, moving the bunks to leave room for three smaller bunks. It was a simple rewelding job, but it took muscle. Perspiration collected in beads inside their filter helmets, and soaked their armpits.

Potter said, “I wonder what a man smells like to a Motie? Dinna answer if you find the question offensive,” he added.

“ ’Tis a bit hard to say,” Potter’s Motie answered. “My duty it is, Mr. Potter, to understand everything about my Fyunch(click). Perhaps I fit the part too well. The smell of clean sweat wouldna offend me even if ye had nae been working in our own interest. What is it ye find funny, Mr. Whitbread?”

“Sorry. It’s the accent.”

“What accent is that?” Potter wondered.

Whitbread and Whitbread’s Motie burst out laughing. “Well, it is funny,” said Whitbread’s Motie. “You used to have trouble telling us apart.”

“Now it’s the other way around,” Jonathon Whitbread said. “I have to keep counting hands to know if I’m talking to Renner or Renner’s Motie. Give me a hand here, will you, Gavin?… And Captain Blaine’s Motie. I have to keep shaking myself out of the Attention position, and then she’ll say something and I’ll snap right back into it. She’ll give orders like she’s master of the cutter, and we’ll obey, and then she’ll say, ‘Just a minute, Mister,’ and order us to forgive her. It’s confusing.”

“Even so,” said Whitbread’s Motie, “I wonder sometimes whether we’ve really got you figured out. Just because I can imitate you doesn’t mean I can understand you…”

“ ’Tis our standard technique, as old as the hills, as old as some mountain ranges. It works. What else can we do, Jonathan Whitbread’s Fyunch(click)?”

“I wondered, that’s all. These people are so versatile. We can’t match all of your abilities, Whitbread. You find it easy to command and easy to obey; how can you do both? You’re good with tools—”

“So are you,” said Whitbread, knowing it was an understatement.

“But we tire easily. You’re ready to go on working, aren’t you? We’re not.”

“And we aren’t good at fighting… Well, enough of that. We play your part in order to understand you, but you each seem to play a thousand parts. It makes things difficult for an honest, hardworking bug-eyed monster.”

“Who told you about bug-eyed monsters?” Whitbread exclaimed.

“Mr. Renner, who else? I took it as a compliment—that he would trust my sense of humor, that is.”

“Dr. Horvath would kill him. We’re supposed to be tippy-toe careful in our relationship with aliens. Don’t offend taboos, and all that.”

“Dr. Horvath,” Potter said. “I am reminded that Dr. Horvath wanted us to ask you something. Ye’ know that we have a Brown aboard MacArthur.”

“Sure. A miner. Her ship visited MacArthur, then came home empty. It was pretty obvious she’d stayed with you.”

“She’s sick,” Potter said. “She has been growing worse. Dr. Blevins says it has the marks of a dietary disease, but he has nae been able to help her. Hae you any idea what it is that she might lack?”

Whitbread thought he knew why Horvath had not asked his Motie about the Brown; if the Moties demanded to see the miner, they must be refused on orders from the Admiral himself. Dr. Horvath thought the order was stupid; he would never be able to defend it. Whitbread and Potter were not called upon to try. Orders were orders.

When the Moties did not answer at once, Jonathon said, “Between them the biologists have tried a lot of things. New foods, analysis of the Brown’s digestive fluids, x-rays for tumor. They even changed the atmosphere in her cabin to match the Mote Prime atmosphere. Nothing works. She’s unhappy, she whines, she doesn’t move around much. She’s getting thin. Her hair is coming out.

Whitbread’s Motie spoke in a voice gone oddly flat. “You haven’t any idea what might be wrong with her?”

“No,” said Whitbread.

It was strange and uncomfortable, the way the Moties were looking at them. They seemed identical now, floating half-crouched, anchored by hand holds: identical pose, identical markings, identical faint smiles. Their individual identities didn’t show now. Perhaps it was all a pose—

“We’ll get you some food,” Potter’s Motie said suddenly. “You may hae guessed right. It may be her diet.”

Both Moties left. Presently Whitbread’s Motie returned with a pressure bag that contained grain and plum-sized fruits and a chunk of red meat. “Boil the meat, soak the grain, and give her the fruit raw,” she said. “And test the ionization in her cabin air.” She ushered them out.

The boys boarded an open scooter to return to the cutter. Presently Potter said, “They behaved verra strangely. I canna but think that something important happened a minute ago.”

“Yah.”

“Then what was it?”

“Maybe they think we’ve been mistreating the Brown. Maybe they wonder why we won’t bring her here. Maybe the other way around: they’re shocked that we take so much trouble for a mere Brown.”

“And perhaps they were tired and we imagined it.” Potter fired thruster clusters to slow the scooter.

“Gavin. Look behind us.”

“Not now. I must see to the safety o’ my command.” Potter took his time docking the scooter, then looked around.

More than a dozen Moties had been working outside the ship. The bracing for the toroids was conspicuously unfinished… but the Moties were all streaming into the airlock.

The Mediators came streaming into the toroid, bouncing gently from the walls in their haste to get out of each other’s way. Most of them showed in one way or another that they were Fyunch(click) to aliens. They tended to underuse their lower right arms. They wanted to line themselves with their heads pointing all in the same direction.

The Master was white. The tufts at her armpits and groin were long and silky, like the fur of an Angora cat. When they were all there, the Master turned to Whitbread’s Motie and said, “Speak.”

Whitbread’s Motie told of the incident with the midshipmen. “I’m certain they meant it all,” she concluded.

To Potter’s Motie the Master said, “Do you agree?”

“Yes, completely.”

There was a panicky undercurrent of whispers, some Motie tongues, some in Anglic. It cut off when the Master said, “What did you tell them?”

“We told them the disease might well be a diet deficiency—”

There was shocked human-sounding laughter amoung the Mediators, none at all among the few who had not been assigned Fyunch(click)s.

“—and gave them food for the Engineer. It will not help, of course.”

“Were they fooled?”

“Difficult to tell. We are not good at lying directly. It is not our specialty,” said Potter’s Motie.

A buzz of talk rose in the toroid. The Master allowed it for a time. Presently she spoke. “What can it mean? Speak of this.”

One answered. “They cannot be so different from us. They fight wars. We have heard hints of whole planets rendered uninhabitable.”

Another interrupted. There was something gracefully human—feminine, in the way she moved. It seemed grotesque to the Master. “We think we know what causes humans to fight. Most animals on our world and theirs have a surrender reflex that prevents one member of a species from killing another. Humans use weapons instinctively. It makes the surrender reflex too slow.”

“But it was the same with us, once,” said a third. “Evolution of the Mediator mules put an end to that. Do you say that humans do not have Mediators?”

Sally Fowler’s Motie said, “They have nothing that bred for the task of communicating and negotiating between potential enemies. They are amateurs at everything, second-best at everything they do. Amateurs do their negotiating. When negotiations break down, they fight.”

“They are amateurs at playing Master, too,” one said. Nervously she stroked the center of her face. “They take turns at playing Master. In their warships they station Marines between fore and aft, in case the aft section should wish to become masters of the ship. Yet, when Lenin speaks, Captain Blaine obeys like a Brown. It is,” she said, “difficult to be Fyunch(click) to a part-time Master.”

“Agreed,” said Whitbread’s Motie. “Mine is not a Master, but will be someday.”

Another said, “Our Engineer has found much that needs improvement in their tools. There is now no class to fit Dr. Hardy—”

“Stop this,” said the Master, and the noise stopped. “Our concern is more specific. What have you learned of their mating habits?”

“They do not speak of this to us. Learning will be difficult. There seems to be only one female aboard.”

“ONE female?”

“To the best that we can learn.”

“Are the rest neuters, or are most neuters?”

“It would seem that they are not. Yet the female is not pregnant, has not been pregnant at any time since our arrival.”

“We must learn,” said the Master. “But you must also conceal. A casual question. It must be asked very carefully, to reveal as little as possible. If what we suspect is true—can it be true?”

One said, “All of evolution is against it. Individuals that survive to breed must carry the genes for the next generation. How, then—?”

“They are alien. Remember, they are alien,” said Whitbread’s Motie.

“We must find out. Select one among you, and formulate your question, and select the human you will ask. The rest of you must avoid the subject unless the aliens introduce it.”

“I think we must conceal nothing.” One stroked the center of her face as if for reassurance. “They are alien. They may be the best hope we have ever had. With their help we may break the ancient pattern of the Cycles.”

The Master showed her surprise. “You will conceal the crucial difference between Man and ourselves. They will not learn of it.”

“I say we must not!” cried the other. “Listen to me! They have their own ways—they solve problems, always—” The others converged on her. “No, listen! You must listen!”

“Crazy Eddie,” the Master said wonderingly. “Confine her in comfort. We will need her knowledge. No other must be assigned to her Fyunch(click), since the strain has driven her mad.”

Blaine let the cutter lead MacArthur to Mote Prime at .780 gee. He was acutely aware that MacArthur was an alien warship capable of devastating half the Motie planet, and did not like to think of what weaponry might be trained on her by uneasy Moties. He wanted the embassy ship to arrive first—not that it would really help, but it might.

The cutter was almost empty now. The scientific personnel were living and working aboard MacArthur, reading endless data into the computer banks, cross-checking and codifying, and reporting their findings to the Captain for transmission to Lenin. They could have reported directly, of course, but there are many privileges to rank. MacArthur’s dinner parties and bridge games tended to become discussion groups.

Everyone was concerned about the brown miner. She became steadily worse, eating as little of the food provided by the Moties as she had of MacArthur’s provisions. It was frustrating, and Dr. Blevins tried endless tests with no results. The miniatures had waxed fat and fecund while loose aboard MacArthur, and Blevins wondered if they had been eating something unexpected, like missile propellant, or the insulation from cables. He offered her a variety of unlikely substances, but the Brown’s eyesight grew dim, her fur came out in patches, and she howled. One day she stopped eating. The next she was dead.

Horvath was beside himself with fury.

Blaine thought it fitting to call the embassy ship. The gently smiling Brown-and-white that answered could only be Horvath’s Motie, although Blaine would have been hard-pressed to say how he knew. “Is my Fyunch(click) available?” Rod asked. Horvath’s Motie made him uncomfortable.

“I’m afraid not, Captain.”

“All right. I called to report that the Brown we had aboard this ship is dead. I don’t know how much it means to you, but we did our best. The entire scientific staff of MacArthur tried to cure her.”

“I’m sure of that, Captain. It doesn’t matter. May we have the body?”

Rod considered it a moment. “I’m afraid not.” He couldn’t guess what the Moties could learn from the corpse of an alien that had never communicated when alive; but perhaps he was learning from Kutuzov. Could there have been microtattooing below the fur…? And why weren’t the Moties more concerned about the Brown? That was something he certainly couldn’t ask. Best to be thankful they weren’t upset. “Give my regards to my Fyunch(click).”

“I have bad news also,” said Horvath’s Motie. “Captain, you no longer have a Fyunch(click). She has gone mad.”

“What?” Rod was more shocked than he would have believed. “Mad? Why? How?”

“Captain, I don’t imagine you can grasp what a strain it has been for her. There are Moties who give orders and there are Moties who make and fix tools. We are neither: we communicate. We can identify with a giver of orders and it is no strain, but an alien giver of orders? It was too much. She— How shall I put it? Mutiny. Your word is mutiny. We have none. She is safe and under confinement, but it is best for her that she does not speak with aliens again.”

“Thank you,” Rod said. He watched the gently smiling image fade from the screen and did nothing more for five minutes. Finally he sighed and began dictating reports for Lenin. He worked alone and it was as if he had lost a part of himself and was waiting for it to come back.