The Mote in God's Eye

26. Mote Prime

Two scooters converged at the cutter and suited figures climbed aboard. When both humans and Moties had checked over the ship, the Navy ratings who had brought her to orbit gratefully turned her over to the midshipmen and returned to MacArthur. The middies eagerly took their places in the control cabin and examined the landscape below.

“We’re to tell you that all contact with you will be through this ship,” Whitbread told his Motie. “Sorry, but we can’t invite you aboard MacArthur.”

Whitbread’s Motie gave a very human shrug to express her opinion of orders. Obedience posed no strain on either her or her human. “What will you do with the cutter when you leave?”

“It’s a gift,” Whitbread told her. “Maybe you’ll want it for a museum. There are things the Captain wants you to know about us—”

“And things he wants to conceal. Certainly.”

From orbit the planet was all circles: seas, lakes, an arc of a mountain range, the line of a river, a bay. There was one, eroded and masked by a forest. It would have been undetectable had it not fallen exactly across a line of mountains, breaking the backbone of a continent as a man’s foot breaks a snake. Beyond, a sea the size of the Black Sea showed a flattish island in the exact center.

“The magma must have welled up where the asteroid tore the crust open,” said Whitbread. “Can you imagine the sound it must have made?”

Whitbread’s Motie nodded.

“No wonder you moved all the asteroids out to the Trojan points. That was the reason, wasn’t it?”

“I don’t know. Our records are-unt complete from that long ago. I imagine the asteroids must have been easier to mine, easier to make a civilization from, once they were lumped together like that.”

Whitbread remembered that the Beehive had been stone cold without a trace of radiation. “Just how long ago did all this happen?”

“Oh, at least ten thousand years. Whitbread, how old are your oldest records?”

“I don’t know. I could ask someone.” The midshipman looked down. They were crossing the Terminator—which was a series of arcs. The night side blazed with a galaxy of cities. Earth might have looked this way during the CoDominium; but the Empire’s worlds had never been so heavily populated.

“Look ahead.” Whitbread’s Motie pointed to a fleck of flame at the world’s rim. “That’s the transfer ship. Now we can show you our world.”

“I think your civilization must be a lot older than ours,” said Whitbread.

Sally’s equipment and personal effects were packed and ready in the cutter’s lounge, and her minuscule cabin seemed bare and empty now. She stood at the view port and watched the silver arrowhead approach MacArthur. Her Motie was not watching.

“I, um, I have a rather indelicate question,” Sally’s Fyunch(click) said.

Sally turned from the view port. Outside, the Motie ship had come alongside and a small boat was approaching from MacArthur. “Go ahead.”

“What do you do if you don’t want children yet?”

“Oh, dear,” said Sally, and she laughed a little. She was the only woman among nearly a thousand men—and in a male-oriented society. She had known all this before she came, but still she missed what she thought of as girl talk. Marriage and babies and housekeeping and scandals: they were part of civilized life. She hadn’t known how big a part until the New Chicago revolt caught her up, and she missed it even more now. Sometimes in desperation she had talked recipes with MacArthur’s cooks as a poor substitute, but the only other feminine-oriented mind within light years was—her Fyunch(click).

“Fyunch(click),” the alien reminded her. “I wouldn’t raise the subject but I think I ought to know—do you have children aboard MacArthur?”

“Me? No!” Sally laughed again. “I’m not even married.”

“Married?”

Sally told the Motie about marriage. She tried not to skip any basic assumptions. It was sometimes hard to remember that the Motie was an alien. “This must sound a bit weird,” she finished.

“ ‘Come, I will conceal nothing from you,’ as Mr. Renner would say.” The mimicry was perfect, including gestures. “I think your customs are strange. I doubt that we’ll adopt many of them, given the differences in physiology.”

“Well—yes.”

“But you marry to raise children. Who raises children born without marriage?”

“There are charities,” Sally said grimly. Her distaste was impossible to disguise.

“I take it you’ve never…” The Motie paused delicately.

“No, of course not.”

“How not? I don’t mean why not, I mean how?”

“Well—you know that men and women have to have sexual relations to make a baby, the same as you—I’ve examined you pretty thoroughly.”

“So that if you aren’t married you just don’t—get together?”

“That’s right. Of course, there are pills a woman can take if she likes men but doesn’t want to take the consequences.”

“Pills? How do they work? Hormones?” The Motie seemed interested, if somewhat detached.

“That’s right.” They had discussed hormones. Motie physiology employed chemical triggers also, but the chemicals were quite different.

“But a proper woman doesn’t use them,” Sally’s Motie suggested.

“No.”

“When will you get married?”

“When I find the right man.” She thought for a moment, hesitated, and added, “I may have found him already.” And the damn fool may already be married to his ship, she added to herself.

“Then why don’t you marry him?”

Sally laughed. “I don’t want to jump into anything. ‘Marry in haste, repent at leisure.’ I can get married any time.” Her trained objectivity made her add, “Well, any time within the next five years. I’ll be something of a spinster if I’m not married by then.”

“Spinster?”

“People would think it odd.” Curious now, she asked, “What if a Motie doesn’t want children?”

“We don’t have sexual relations,” Sally’s Motie said primly.

There was an almost inaudible clunk as the ground-to-orbit ship secured alongside.

The landing boat was a blunt arrowhead coated with ablative material. The pilot’s cabin was a large wrap-around transparency, and there were no other windows. When Sally and her Motie arrived at the entryway, she was startled to see Horace Bury just ahead of her.

“You’re going down to the Mote, Your Excellency?” Sally asked.

“Yes, my lady.” Bury seemed as surprised as Sally. He entered the connecting tube to find that the Moties had employed an old Navy trick—the tube was pressurize with a lower pressure at the receiving end, so that the passengers were wafted along. The interior was surprisingly large, with room for all: Renner, Sally Fowler, Chaplain Hardy—Bury wondered if they would ship him back up to MacArthur every Sunday—Dr. Horvath, Midshipmen Whitbread and Staley, two ratings Bury did not recognize—and alien counterparts for all but three of the humans. He noted the seating arrangements with an amusement that only partly covered his fears: four abreast, with a Motie seat beside each of the human seats. As they strapped in he was further amused. They were one short.

But Dr. Horvath moved forward into the control cabin and took a seat next to the brown pilot. Bury settled into the front row, where seats were only two abreast—and a Motie took the other. Fear surged into his throat. Allah is merciful, I witness that Allah is One— No! There was nothing to fear and he had done nothing dangerous.

And yet—he was here, and the alien was beside him, while behind him on MacArthur, any accident might bring the ship’s officers to discover what he had done to his pressure suit.

A pressure suit is the most identity-locked artifact a man of space can own. It is far more personal than a pipe or a toothbrush. Yet others had exposed their suits to the ministrations of the unseen Brownies. During the long voyage to Mote Prime, Commander Sinclair had examined the modifications the Brownies had made.

Bury had waited. Presently he learned through Nabil that the Brownies had doubled the efficiency of the recycling systems. Sinclair had returned the pressure suits to their owners—and begun modifying the officers’ suits in a similar fashion.

One of the air tanks on Bury’s suit was now a dummy. It held half a liter of pressurized air and two miniatures in suspended animation. The risks were great. He might be caught. The miniatures might die from the frozen-sleep drugs. Someday he might need air that was not there. Bury had always been willing to take risks for sufficient profit.

When the call came, he had been certain he was discovered. A Navy rating had appeared on his room screen, said, “Call for you, Mr. Bury,” smiled evilly, and switched over. Before he could wonder Bury found himself facing an alien.

“Fyunch(click),” said the alien. It cocked its head and shoulders at him. “You seem confused. Surely you know the term.”

Bury had recovered quickly. “Of course. I was not aware that any Motie was studying me.” He did not like the idea at all.

“No, Mr. Bury, I have only just been assigned. Mr. Bury, have you thought of coming to Mote Prime?”

“No, I doubt that I would be allowed to leave the ship.”

“Captain Blaine has given permission, if you-urr willing. Mr. Bury, we would deeply appreciate your comments regarding the possibilities for trade between the Mote and the Empire. It seems likely we would both profit.”

Yes! Beard of the Prophet, an opportunity like that— Bury had agreed quickly. Nabil could guard the hidden Brownies.

But now, as he sat aboard the landing boat, it was difficult to control his fears. He looked at the alien beside him.

“I am Dr. Horvath’s Fyunch(click),” the Motie said. “You should relax. These boats are well designed.”

“Ah,” said Bury, and he relaxed. The worst was hours away. Nabil had by now safely removed the dummy tank into MacArthur’s main air lock with hundreds of others, and it would be safe. The alien ship was undoubtedly superior to similar human craft, if for no other reason than the Moties’ desire to avoid risk to the human ambassadors. But it was not the trip down that kept fear creeping into his throat until it tasted bright and sharp like new copper—there was a slight lurch. The descent had begun.

To everyone’s surprise it was dull. There were occasional shifts in gravity but no turbulence. Three separate times they felt almost subliminal clunks, as of landing gear coming down—and then there was a rolling sensation. The ship had come to rest.

They filed out into a pressurized chamber. The air was good but scentless, and there was nothing to see but the big inflated structure around them. They looked back at the ship and stared unashamedly.

It was gull-winged now, built like a glider. The edges of the crazy arrowhead had sprouted a bewildering variety of wings and flaps.

“That was quite a ride,” Horvath said jovially as he came to join them. “The whole vehicle changes shape. There aren’t any hinges on the wings—the flaps come out as if they were alive! The jet scoops open and closes like mouths! You really should have seen it. If Commander Sinclair ever comes down we’ll have to give him the window seat,” he chortled. He did not notice the glares.

An inflated air lock opened at the far end of the building, and three brown-and-white Moties entered. Fear rose in Bury’s throat again as they separated, one joining each of the Navy ratings, while the other came directly to Bury.

“Fyunch(click),” it said.

Bury’s mouth was very dry.

“Don’t be afraid,” said the Motie. “I can’t read your mind.”

It was definitely the wrong thing to say if the Motie wanted Bury at ease. “I’m told that is your profession.”

The Motie laughed. “It’s my profession, but I can’t do it. All I will ever know is what you show me.” It didn’t sound at all as Bury sounded to himself. It must have studied humans in general; only that.

“You’re male,” he noticed.

“I am young. The others were female by the time they reached MacArthur. Mr. Bury, we have vehicles outside and a place of residence for you nearby. Come and see our city, and then we can discuss business.” It took his arm in two small right arms, and the touch was very strange. Bury let himself be led to the air lock.

“Don’t be afraid. I can’t read your mind,” it had said, reading his mind. On many rediscovered worlds of the First Empire there were rumors of mind readers, but none had ever been found, praise the mercy of Allah. This thing claimed that it was not; and it was very alien. The touch was not abhorrent, although people of Bury’s culture hated to be touched. He had been among far too many strange customs and peoples to worry about his childhood prejudices. But this Motie was reassuringly strange—and Bury had never heard of anybody’s Fyunch(click) acting that way. Was it trying to reassure him?

Nothing could have lured him but the hope of profit—profit without ceiling, without limit, profit from merely looking around. Even the terraforming of the New Caladonia worlds by the First Empire had not shown the industrial power that must have moved the asteroids to Mote Beta’s Trojan points.

“A good commercial product,” the Motie was saying, “should not be bulky or massive. We should be able to find items scarce here and plentiful in the Empire, or vice versa. I anticipate great profit from your visit…”

They joined the others in the air lock. Large windows showed the airfield. “Blasted show-offs,” Renner muttered to Bury. When the Trader looked at him quizzically Renner pointed. “There’s city all around, and the airport’s got not one meter of extra space.”

Bury nodded. Around the tiny field were skyscrapers, tall and square-built, jammed close together, with only single belt of green running out of the city to the east. If there were a plane crash it would be a disaster—but the Moties didn’t build planes to crash.

There were three ground cars, limousines, two for passengers and one for luggage, and the human seats took up two-thirds of the room in each. Bury nodded reflectively. Moties didn’t mind being crowded together. As soon as they took their seats the drivers, who were Browns, whipped the cars away. The vehicles ran soundlessly, with a smooth feeling of power, and there was no jolt at all. The motors were in the hubs of the tall balloon tires, much like those of cars on Empire worlds.

Tall, ugly buildings loomed above them to shoulder out the sky. The black streets were wide but very crowded and the Moties drove like maniacs. Tiny vehicles passed each other in intricate curved paths with centimeters of clearance. The traffic was not quite silent. There was a steady low hum that might have been all the hundreds of motors sounding together, and sometimes a stream of high-pitched gibberish that might have been cursing.

Once the humans were able to stop wincing away from each potential collision, they noticed that all the other drivers were Browns, too. Most of the cars earned a passenger, sometimes a Brown-and-white, often a pure White. These Whites were larger than the Brown-and-whites, and their fur was very clean and silky—and they were doing all the cursing as their drivers continued in silence.

Science Minister Horvath turned back to the humans in the seats behind him. “I had a look at the buildings as we came down—roof gardens on every one of them. Well, Mr. Renner, are you glad you came? We were expecting a Navy officer, but hardly you.”

“It seemed most reasonable to send me,” Kevin Renner said. “I was the most thoroughly available officer aboard, as the Captain put it. I won’t be needed to chart courses for a while.”

“And that’s why they sent you?” Sally asked.

“No, I think what really convinced the Captain was the way I screamed and cried and threatened to hold my breath. Somehow he got the idea I really wanted to come. And I did.” The way the navigating officer leaned forward in his seat reminded Sally of a dog sticking its head out of a car window into the wind.

They had only just noticed the walkways that ran one floor up along the edges of the buildings, and they could not see the pedestrians well at all. There were more Whites, and Brown-and-whites, and… others.

Something tall and symmetrical came walking like a giant among the Whites. Three meters tall it must have been, with a small, earless head that seemed submerged beneath the sloping muscles of the shoulders. It carried a massive-looking box of some kind under each of two arms. It walked like a juggernaut, steady and unstoppable.

“What’s that?” Renner asked.

“Worker,” Sally’s Motie replied. “Porter. Not very intelligent.”

There was something else Renner strained to see, for its fur was rust-red, as if it had been dipped in blood. It was the size of his own Motie, but with a smaller head, and as it raised and flexed its right hands it showed fingers so long and delicate that Renner thought of Amazon spiders. He touched his Fyunch(click)’s shoulder and pointed. “And that?”

“Physician. Emm Dee,” Renner’s Motie said. “We’re a differentiated species, as you may have gathered by now. They’re all relatives, so to speak.”

“Yah. And the Whites?”

“Givers of orders. There was one aboard ship, as I’m sure you know.”

“Yah, we guessed that.” The Tsar had, anyway. What else was he right about?

“What do you think of our architecture?”

“Ugly. Industrial hideous,” said Renner. “I knew your ideas of beauty would be different from ours, but—on your honor. Do you have a standard of beauty?”

“Come, I will conceal nothing from you. We do, but it doesn’t resemble yours. And I still don’t know what you people see in arches and pillars—”

“Freudian symbolism,” Renner said firmly. Sally snorted.

“That’s what Horvath’s Motie keeps saying, but I’ve never heard a coherent explanation,” Renner’s Motie said. “Meanwhile, what do you think of your vehicles?”

The limousines were radically different from the two-seaters that zipped past them. No two of the two-seaters were alike either—the Moties did not seem to have discovered the advantages of standardization. But all the other vehicles they had seen were tiny, like a pair of motorcycles, while the humans rode in low-slung stream-lined vehicles with soft curves bright with polish.

“They’re beautiful,” said Sally. “Did you design them just for us?”

“Yes,” her Motie replied. “Did we guess well?”

“Perfectly. We’re most flattered,” Sally said. “You must have put considerable expense into… this…” She trailed off. Renner turned to see where she was looking, and gasped.

There had been castles like this in the Tyrolean Alps of Earth. They were still there, never bombed, but Renner had only seen copies on other worlds. Now a fairy-tale castle, graceful with tall spires, stood among the square buildings of the Motie city. At one corner a reaching minaret was circled by a thin balcony.

“What is that place?” Renner asked.

Sally’s Motie answered. “You will stay there. It is pressurized and self-enclosed, with a garage and cars for your convenience.”

Horace Bury spoke into the admiring silence. “You are most impressive hosts.”

From the first they called it the Castle. Beyond question it had been designed and built entirely for them. It was large enough for perhaps thirty people. Its beauty and luxury were in the tradition of Sparta—with a few jarring notes.

Whitbread, Staley, Sally, Drs. Hardy and Horvath—they knew their manners. They kept firm rein on their laughter as their Fyunch(click) s showed them about their respective rooms. Able Spacers Jackson and Weiss were awed to silence and wary of saying something foolish. Horace Bury’s people had rigid traditions of hospitality; aside from that, he found all customs strange except on Levant.

But Renner’s people respected candor; and candor, he had found, made life easier for everyone. Except in the Navy. In the Navy he had learned to keep his mouth shut. Fortunately his Fyunch(click) held views similar to his own.

He looked about the apartment assigned him. Double bed, dresser, large closet, a couch and coffee table, all vaguely reminiscent of the travelogues he had shown the Moties. It was five times the size of his cabin aboard MacArthur.

“Elbow room,” he said with great satisfaction. He sniffed. There was no smell at all. “You do a great job of filtering the planet’s air.”

“Thanks. As for the elbow room—” Renner’s Motie wiggled all her elbows. “We should need more than you, but we don’t.”

The picture window ran from floor to ceiling, wall to wall. The city towered over him; most of the buildings in view were taller than the Castle. Renner found that he was looking straight down a city street toward a magnificent sunset that was all the shades of red. The pedestrian level showed a hurrying horde of colored blobs, mostly Reds and Browns, but also many Whites. He watched for a time, then turned back.

There was an alcove near the head of his bed. He looked into it. It held a dresser and two odd-looking pieces of furniture that Renner recognized. They resembled what the Brown had done to the bed in Crawford’s stateroom.

He asked, “Two?”

“We will be assigned a Brown.”

“I’m going to teach you a new word. It’s called ‘privacy.’ It refers to the human need—”

“We know about privacy.” The Motie did a double take. “You aren’t suggesting it should apply between a man and his Fyunch(click)!”

Renner nodded solemnly.

“But… but… Renner, do you have any respect for tradition?”

“Do I?”

“No. Dammit. All right, Renner. We’ll sling a door there. With a lock?”

“Yah. I might add that the rest probably feel the same way, whether they say so or not.”

The bed, the couch, the table showed none of the familiar Motie innovations. The mattress was a bit too firm, but what the hell. Renner glanced into the bathroom and burst out laughing. The toilet was a free-fall toilet, somewhat changed from those in the cutter; it had a gold flush, carved into the semblance of a dog’s head. The bathtub was… strange.

“I’ve got to try that bathtub,” said Renner.

“Let me know what you think. We saw some pictures of bathtubs in your travelogues, but they looked ridiculous, given your anatomy.”

“Right. Nobody’s ever designed a decent bathtub. There weren’t any toilets in those pictures, were there?”

“Oddly enough, there weren’t.”

“Mmm.” Renner began sketching. When he had finished, his Motie said, “Just how much water do these use?”

“Quite a lot. Too much for space craft.”

“Well, we’ll see what we can do.”

“Oh, and you’d better hang another door between the bathroom and the living room.”

“More privacy?”

“Yah.”

Dinner that night was like a formal dinner in Sally’s old home on Sparta, but weirdly changed. The servants—silent, attentive, deferential, guided by the host who in deference to rank was Dr. Horvath’s Motie—were Laborers a meter and a half tall. The food was from MacArthur’s stores—except for an appetizer, which was a melon-like fruit sweetened with a yellow sauce. “We guarantee it nonpoisonous,” said Renner’s Motie. “We’ve found a few foods we can guarantee, and we’re looking for more. But you’ll have to take your chances on the taste.” The sauce killed the melon’s sour taste and made it delicious.

“We can use this as a trade item,” said Bury. “We would rather ship the seeds, not the melon itself. Is it hard to grow?”

“Not at all, but it requires cultivation,” said Bury’s Motie. “We’ll give you the opportunity to test the soil. Have you found other things that might be worth trading?”

Bury frowned, and looked down at his plate. Nobody had remarked on those plates… they were gold: plates, silverware, even the wine goblets, though they were shaped like fine crystal. Yet they couldn’t be gold, because they didn’t conduct heat; and they were simple copies of the plastic free-fall utensils aboard MacArthur’s cutter, even to the trademarks stamped on the edges.

Everyone was waiting for his answer. Trade possibilities would profoundly affect the relationship between Mote and Empire. “On our route to the Castle I looked for signs of luxuries among you. I saw none but those designed specifically for human beings. Perhaps I did not recognize them.”

“I know the word, but we deal very little in luxuries. We—I speak for the givers of orders, of course—we put more emphasis on power, territory, the maintenance of a household and a dynasty. We concern ourselves with providing a proper station in life for our children.”

Bury filed the information: “We speak for the givers of orders.” He was dealing with a servant. No. An agent. He must keep that in mind, and wonder how binding were his Fyunch(click)’s promises. He smiled and said, “A pity. Luxuries travel well. You will understand my problem in finding trade goods when I tell you that it would hardly be profitable to buy gold from you.”

“I thought as much. We must see if we can find something more valuable.”

“Works of art, perhaps?”

“Art?”

“Let me,” said Renner’s Motie. She switched to a high-pitched, warbling language, talked very fast for perhaps twenty seconds, then looked about at the assembled company. “Sorry, but it was quicker that way.”

Bury’s Motie said, “Quite so. I take it you would want the originals?”

“If possible.”

“Of course. To us a copy is as good as the original. We have many museums; I’ll arrange some tours.”

It developed that everyone wanted to go along.

When they returned from dinner, Whitbread almost laughed when he saw there was now a door on the bathroom. His Motie caught it and said, “Mr. Renner had words to say about privacy.” She jerked a thumb at the door that now closed off her alcove.

“Oh, that one wasn’t necessary,” said Whitbread. He was not used to sleeping alone. If he woke in the middle of the night, who would he talk to until he fell asleep again?

Someone knocked on the door. Able Spacer Weiss—from Tabletop, Whitbread recalled. “Sir, may I speak with you privately?”

“Right,” said Whitbread’s Motie, and she withdrew to the alcove. The Moties had caught on to privacy fast. Whitbread ushered Weiss into the room.

“Sir, we’ve got sort of a problem,” Weiss said. “Me and Jackson, that is. We came down to help out, you know, carrying luggage and cleaning up and like that.”

“Right. You won’t be doing any of that. We’ve each been assigned an Engineer type.”

“Yes, sir, but it’s more than that. Jackson and me, we’ve been assigned a Brown each too. And, and—”

“Fyunch(click)’s.”

“Right.”

“Well, there are certain things you can’t talk about.” Both ratings were stationed in hangar deck and wouldn’t know much about Field technology anyway.

“Yes, sir, we know that. No war stories, nothing about ship’s weapons or drive.”

“All right. Aside from that, you’re on vacation. You’re traveling first class, with a servant and a native guide. Enjoy it. Don’t say anything the Tsar would hang you for, don’t bother to ask about the local red-light district, and don’t worry about the expense. Have a ball, and hope they don’t send you up on the next boat.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Weiss grinned suddenly. “You know? This is why I joined the Navy. Strange worlds. This is what the enlistment men promised us.”

“ ‘Golden cities far…’ Me too.”

Afterwards Whitbread stood by the picture window. The city glowed with a million lights. Most of the tiny cars had disappeared, but the streets were alive with huge silent trucks. The pedestrians had slacked off somewhat. Whitbread spotted something tall and spindly that ran among the Whites as if they were stationary objects. It dodged around a huge Porter type and was gone.

27. The Guided Tour

Renner was up before dawn. The Moties chose and set out clothing for him while he was bathing in the remarkable tub. He let their choice stand. He would indulge them; they might be the last nonmilitary servants he would ever have. His sidearm was discreetly laid out with his clothing, and after a lot of thought, Renner buckled it under a civilian jacket woven from some marvelous shining fibers. He didn’t want the weapon, but regulations were regulations.

The others were all at breakfast, watching the dawn through the big picture window. It came on like sunset, in all the shades of red. Mote Prime’s day was a few hours too long. At night they would stay up longer; they would sleep longer in the mornings and still be up at dawn.

Breakfast featured large, remarkably egg-shaped boiled eggs. Inside the shell it was as if the egg came prescrambled, with a maraschino cherry buried off-center. Renner was told that the cherry thing was not worth eating, and he didn’t try.

“The Museum is only a few blocks from here.” Dr. Horvath’s Motie rubbed her right hands briskly together. “Let’s walk. You’ll want warm clothes, I think.”

The Moties all had that problem: which pair of hands to use to imitate human gestures? Renner expected Jackson’s Motie to go psychotic. Jackson was left-handed.

They walked. A cold breeze whipped them from around corners. The sun was big and dim; you could look directly at it this early in the day. Tiny cars swanned six feet below them. The smell of Mote Prime air seeped faintly through the filter helmets, and so did the quiet hum of cars and the fast jabber of Motie voices.

The group of humans moved among crowds of Moties of all colors—and were ignored. Then a group of white furred pedestrians turned a corner and lingered to examine them. They chattered in musical tones and stared curiously.

Bury seemed uncomfortable; he stayed within the group as much as he could. He doesn’t want eye tracks all over him, Renner decided. The Sailing Master found himself being examined by a very pregnant White, the bulge of her child high up above the complexities of the major joint in her back. Renner smiled at her, squatted on his heels, and turned his back to her. His Fyunch(click) sang in low tones, and the White moved closer, then half a dozen white Moties were running a dozen small hands over his vertebrae.

“Right! A little lower,” said Renner. “OK, scratch right there. Ahh.” When the Whites had moved on, Renner stretched his long legs to catch up with the tour. His Motie trotted alongside.

“I trust I will not learn your irreverence,” his Fyunch(click) said.

“Why not?” Renner asked seriously.

“When you are gone there will be other work for us. No, do not be alarmed. If you are capable of satisfying the Navy, I can have no more trouble keeping the givers of orders happy.” There was an almost wistful tone, Renner thought—but he wasn’t sure. If Moties had facial expressions, Renner hadn’t learned them.

The Museum was a good distance ahead of them. Like other buildings it was square-built, but its face was glass or something like it. “We have many places that fit your word ‘museum,’ ” Horvath’s Motie was saying, “in this and other cities. This one was closest and specializes in painting and sculpture.”

A juggernaut loomed over them, three meters tall, and another meter beyond that because of the cargo on its head. It—she, Renner noted from the long, shallow bulge of pregnancy high on her abdomen. The eyes were soft animal eyes, without awareness, and she caught up with them and passed, never slowing.

“Carrying a child doesn’t seem to slow a Motie down,” Renner observed.

Brown-and-white shoulders and heads turned toward him. Renner’s Motie said, “No, of course not. Why should it?”

Sally Fowler took up the task. She tried carefully to explain just how useless pregnant human females were. “It’s one reason we tend to develop male-oriented societies. And—” She was still lecturing on childbirth problems when they reached the Museum.

The doorway would have caught Renner across the bridge of his nose. The ceilings were higher; they brushed his hair. Dr. Horvath had to bend his head.

And the lighting was a bit too yellow.

And the paintings were placed too low.

Conditions for viewing were not ideal. Aside from that, the colors in the paints themselves were off. Dr. Horvath and his Motie conversed with animation following his revelation that blue plus yellow equals green to a human eye. The Motie eye was designed like a human eye, or an octopus eye, for that matter: a globe, an adaptable lens, receptor nerves along the back. But the receptors were different.

Yet the paintings had impact. In the main hall—which had three-meter ceilings and was lined with larger paintings—the tour stopped before a street scene. Here a Brown-and-white had climbed on a car and was apparently haranguing a swarm of Browns and Brown-and-whites, while behind him the sky burned sunset-red. The expressions were all the same flat smile, but Renner sensed violence and looked closer. Many of the crowd carried tools, always in their left hands, and some were broken. The city itself was on fire.

“It’s called ‘Return to Your Tasks.’ You’ll find that the Crazy Eddie theme recurs constantly,” said Sally’s Motie. She moved on before she could be asked to explain further.

The next painting in line showed a quasi-Motie, tall and thin, small-headed, long-legged. It was running out of a forest, at the viewer. Its breath trailed smoky-white behind it. “The Message Carrier,” Hardy’s Motie called it.

The next was another outdoor scene: a score of Browns and Whites eating around a blazing campfire. Animal eyes gleamed red around them. The whole landscape was dark red; and overhead Murcheson’s Eye gleamed against the Coal Sack.

“You can’t tell what they’re thinking and feeling from looking at them, can you? We were afraid of that,” said Horvath’s Motie. “Nonverbal communication. The signals are different with us.”

“I suppose so,” said Bury. “These paintings would all be salable, but none especially so. They would be only curiosities… though quite valuable as such, because of the huge potential market and the limited source. But they do not communicate. Who painted them?”

“This one is quite old. You can see that it was painted on the wall of the building itself, and—”

“But what kind of Motie? Brown-and-whites?”

There was impolite laughter among the Moties. Bury’s Motie said, “You will never see a work of art that was not made by a Brown-and-white. Communication is our specialty. Art is communication.”

“Does a White never have anything to say?”

“Of course. He has a Mediator say it for him. We translate, we communicate. Many of these paintings are arguments, visually expressed.”

Weiss had been trailing along, saying nothing. Renner noticed. Keeping his voice down, he asked the man, “Any comments?”

Weiss scratched his jaw. “Sir, I haven’t been in a museum since grade school… but aren’t some paintings made just to be pretty?”

“Umm.”

There were only two portraits in all the halls of paintings. Brown-and-whites both, they both showed from the waist up. Expression in the Moties must show in body language, not faces. These portraits were oddly lighted and their arms were oddly distorted. Renner thought them evil.

“Evil? No!” said Renner’s Motie. “That one caused the Crazy Eddie probe to be built. And this was the designer of a universal language, long ago.”

“Is it still used?”

“After a fashion. But it fragmented, of course. Languages do that. Sinclair and Potter and Bury don’t speak the same language you do. Sometimes the sounds are similar, but the nonverbal signals are very different.”

Renner caught up with Weiss as they were about to enter the hall of sculpture. “You were right. In the Empire there are paintings that are just supposed to be pretty. Here, no. Did you notice the difference? No landscape without Moties doing something in it. Almost no portraits, and those two were slanted pictures. In fact, everything’s slanted.” He turned to appeal to his Motie. “Right? Those pictures you pointed out, done before your civilization invented the camera. They weren’t straight representations.”

“Renner, do you know how much work goes into a painting?”

“I’ve never tried. I can guess.”

“Then can you imagine anyone going to that much trouble if he doesn’t have something to say?”

“How about ‘mountains are pretty’?” Weiss suggested.

Renner’s Motie shrugged.

The statues were better than the paintings. Differences in pigment and lighting did not intrude. Most did show Moties; but they were more than portraits. A chain of Moties of diminishing size, Porter to three Whites to nine Browns to twenty-seven miniatures? No, they were all done in white marble and had the shape of decision makers. Bury regarded them without expression and said, “It occurs to me that I will need interpretations of any of these before I could sell them anywhere. Or even give them as gifts.”

“Inevitably so,” said Bury’s Motie. “This, for instance, illustrates a religion of the last century. The soul of the parent divides to become the children, and again to become the grandchildren, ad infinitum.”

Another showed a number of Moties in red sandstone. They had long, slender fingers, too many on the left hand, and the left arm was comparatively small. Physicians? They were being killed by a thread of green glass that swept among them like a scythe: a laser weapon, held by something offstage. The Moties were reluctant to talk about it. “An unpleasant event in history,” said Bury’s Motie, and that was that.

Another showed fighting among a few marble Whites and a score of an unrecognizable type done in red sandstone. The red ones were lean and menacing, armed with more than their share of teeth and claws. Some weird machine occupied the center of the melee. “Now that one is interesting,” said Renner’s Motie. “By tradition, a Mediator—one of our own type—may requisition any kind of transportation he needs, from any decision maker. Long ago, a Mediator used his authority to order a time machine built. I can show you the machine, if you will travel to it; it is on the other side of this continent.”

“A working time machine?”

“Not working, Jonathon. It was never completed. His Master went broke trying to finish it.”

“Oh.” Whitbread showed his disappointment.

“It was never tested,” said the Motie. “The basic theory may be flawed.”

The machine looked like a small cyclotron with a cabin inside. It almost made sense, like a Langston Field generator.

“You interest me strangely,” Renner said to his Motie. “You can requisition any transportation, any time?”

“That’s right. Our talent is communication, but our major task is stopping fights. Sally has lectured us on your, let’s say, your racial problems involving weapons and the surrender reflex. We Mediators evolved out of that. We can explain one being’s viewpoint to another. Noncommunication can assume dangerous proportions sometimes—usually just before a war, by one of those statistical flukes that make you believe in coincidence. If one of us can always get to transportation—or even to telephones or radios—war becomes unlikely.”

There were awed expressions among the humans, “Vee-erry nice,” said Renner. Then, “I was wondering whether you could requisition MacArthur.”

“By law and tradition, yes. In practice, don’t be a fool.”

“OK. These things fighting around the time machine—”

“Legendary demons,” Bury’s Motie explained. “They defend the structure of reality.”

Renner remembered ancient Spanish paintings dating from the time of the Black Plague in Europe, paintings of living men and women being attacked by the revived and malevolent dead. Next to the white Moties these red sandstone things had that impossibly lean, bony look, and a malevolence that was almost tangible.

“And why the time machine?”

“The Mediator felt that a certain incident in history had happened because of a lack of communication. He decided to correct it.” Renner’s Motie shrugged with her arms; a Motie couldn’t lift her shoulders. “Crazy Eddie. The Crazy Eddie probe was like that. A little more workable, maybe. A watcher of the sky—a meteorologist, plus some other fields—found evidence that there was life on a world of a nearby star. Right away this Crazy Eddie Mediator wanted to contact them. He tied up enormous amounts of capital and industrial power, enough to affect most of civilization. He got his probe built, powered by a light sail and a battery of laser cannon for—”

“This all sounds familiar.”

“Right. The Crazy Eddie probe was in fact launched toward New Caledonia, much later, and with a different pilot. We’ve been assuming you followed it home.”

“So it worked. Unfortunately the crew was dead, but it reached us. So why are you still calling it the Crazy Eddie probe? Oh, never mind,” said Renner. His Motie was chortling.

Two limousines were waiting for them outside the Museum and stairs had been erected leading down to street level. Tiny two-seater cars zipped around the obstruction without slowing down, and without collisions.

Staley stopped at the bottom. “Mr. Renner! Look!”

Renner looked. A car had stopped alongside a great blank building; for there were no curbs. The brown chauffeur and his white-furred passenger disembarked, and the White walked briskly around the corner. The Brown disengaged two hidden levers at the front, then heaved against the side of the car. It collapsed like an accordian, into something half a meter wide. The Brown turned and followed the white Motie.

“They fold up!” Staley exclaimed.

“Sure they do,” said Renner’s Motie. “Can you imagine the traffic jam if they didn’t? Come on, get in the cars.”

They did. Renner said, “I wouldn’t ride in one of those little death traps for Bury’s own petty-cash fund.”

“Oh, they’re safe. That is,” said Renner’s Motie, “it isn’t the car that’s safe, it’s the driver. Browns don’t have much territorial instinct, for one thing. For another, they’re always fiddling with the car, so nothing’s ever going to fail.”

The limousine started off. Browns appeared behind them and began removing the stairs.

The buildings around them were always square blocks, the streets a rectangular grid. To Horvath the city was clearly a made city, not something that had grown naturally. Someone had laid it out and ordered it built from scratch. Were they all like this? It showed none of the Browns’ compulsion to innovate.

And yet, he decided, it did. Not in basics, but in such things as street lighting. In places there were broad electro luminescent strips along the buildings. In others there were things like floating balloons, but the wind did not move them. Elsewhere, tubes ran along the sides of the streets, or down the center; or there was nothing at all that showed in the daytime.

And those boxlike cars—each was subtly different, in the design of the lights or the signs of repairs or the way the parked cars folded into themselves.

The limousines stopped. “We’re here,” Horvath’s Motie announced. “The zoo. The Life Forms Preserve, to be more exact. You’ll find that it is arranged more for the convenience of the inhabitants than for the spectators.”

Horvath and the rest looked about, puzzled. Tall rectangular buildings surrounded them. There was no open space anywhere.

“On our left. The building, gentlemen, the building! Is there some law against putting a zoo inside a building?”

The zoo, as it developed, was six stories tall, with ceilings uncommonly high for Moties. It was difficult to tell just how high the ceilings were. They looked like sky. On the first floor it was open blue sky, with drifting clouds and a sun that stood just past noon.

They strolled through a steamy jungle whose character changed as they moved. The animals could not reach them, but it was difficult to see why not. They did not seem aware of being penned up.

There was a tree like a huge bullwhip, its handle planted deep in the earth, its lash sprouting clusters of round leaves where it coiled around the trunk. An animal like a giant Motie stood flat-footed beneath it, staring at Whitbread. There were sharp, raking talons on its two right hands, and tusks showed between its lips. “It was a variant of the Porter type,” said Horvath’s Motie, “but never successfully domesticated. You can see why.”

“These artificial environments are astounding!” Horvath exclaimed. “I’ve never seen better. But why not build part of the zoo in the open? Why make an environment when the real environment is already there?”

“I’m not sure why it was done. But it seems to work out.”

The second floor was a desert of dry sand. The air was dry and balmy, the sky baby blue, darkening to yellow brown at the horizon. Fleshy plants with no thorns grew through the sand. Some were the shape of thick lily pads. Many bore the marks of nibbling teeth. They found the beast that had made the tooth marks, a thing like a nude white beaver with square protruding teeth. It watched them tamely as they passed.

On the third floor it was raining steadily. Lightning flashed, illusory miles away. The humans declined to enter, for they had no rain gear. The Moties were half angry, half apologetic. It had not occurred to them that rain would bother humans; they liked it.

“It’s going to keep happening, too,” Whitbread’s Motie predicted. “We study you, but we don’t know you. You’re missing some of the most interesting plant forms too. Perhaps another day when they have the rain turned off…”

The fourth floor was not wild at all. There were even small round houses on distant illusory hills. Small, umbrella-shaped trees grew red and lavender fruits beneath a flat green disc of foliage. A pair of proto-Moties stood beneath one of these. They were small, round, and pudgy, and their right arms seemed to have shrunk. They looked at the tour group with sad eyes, then one reached up for a lavender fruit. Its left arm was just long enough.

“Another unworkable member of our species,” said Horvath’s Motie. “Extinct now except in life forms preserves.” He seemed to want to hurry them on. They found another pair in a patch of melons—the same breed of melon the humans had eaten for dinner, as Hardy pointed out.

In a wide, grassy field a family of things with hooves and shaggy coats grazed placidly—except for one that stood guard, turning constantly to face the visitors.

A voice behind Whitbread said, “You’re disappointed. Why?”

Whitbread looked back in surprise. “Disappointed? No! It’s fascinating.”

“My mistake,” said Whitbread’s Motie. “I think I’d like a word with Mr. Renner. Care to trail along?”

The party was somewhat spread out. Here there was no chance of getting lost, and they all enjoyed the feel of grass beneath their feet: long, coiled green blades, springier than an ordinary lawn, much like the living carpets in houses of the aristocracy and the wealthier traders.

Renner looked amiably about when he felt eyes on him. “Yes?”

“Mr. Renner, it strikes me that you’re a bit disappointed in our zoo.”

Whitbread winced. Renner frowned. “Yah, and I’ve been trying to figure it out. I shouldn’t feel this way. It’s a whole alien world, all compacted for our benefit. Whitbread, you feel it too?”

Whitbread nodded reluctantly.

“Hah! That’s it. It’s an alien world, all compacted for our benefit, right? How many zoos have you seen on how many worlds?”

Whitbread counted in his head. “Six, including Earth.”

“And they were all like this one, except that the illusion is better. We were expecting something a whole order of magnitude different. It isn’t. It’s just another alien world, except for the intelligent Moties.”

“Makes sense,” said Whitbread’s Motie. Perhaps her voice was a little wistful, and the humans remembered that the Moties had never seen an alien world. “Too bad, though,” the Motie said. “Staley’s having a ball. So are Sally and Dr. Hardy, but they’re professionals.”

But the next floor was a shock.

Dr. Horvath was first out of the elevator. He stopped dead. He was in a city street. “I think we have the wrong door…” He trailed off. For a moment he felt that his mind was going.

The city was deserted. There were a few cars in the streets, but they were wrecks, and some showed signs of fire. Several buildings had collapsed, filling the street with mountains of rubble. A moving mass of black chittered at him and moved away in a swarm, away and into dark holes in a slope of broken masonry, until there were none left.

Horvath’s skin crawled. When an alien hand touched his elbow he jumped and gasped.

“What’s the matter, Doctor? Surely you have animals evolved for cities.”

“No,” said Horvath.

“Rats,” said Sally Fowler. “And there’s a breed of lice that lives only on human beings. But I think that’s all.”

“We have a good many,” said Horvath’s Motie. “Perhaps we can show you a few… though they’re shy.”

At a distance the small black beasts were indistinguishable from rats. Hardy snapped a picture of a swarm that was scrambling for cover. He hoped to develop a blowup later. There was a large, flattish beast, almost invisible until they were right in front of it. It was the color and pattern of the brick it was clinging to.

“Like a chameleon,” Sally said. Then she had to explain chameleons.

“There’s another,” Sally’s Motie said. She pointed out a concrete-colored animal clinging to a gray wall. “Don’t try to disturb it. It has teeth.”

“Where do they get their food?”

“Roof gardens. Though they can eat meat. And there’s an insectivore…” She led them to a “rooftop” two meters above street level. There were grain and fruit trees gone riot, and a small, armless biped that fired a coiled tongue over a meter long. It looked as if it had a mouthful of walnuts.

Bitter cold met them on the sixth floor. The sky was leaden gray. Snow blew in flurries across an infinity of icy tundra. Hardy wanted to stay, for there was considerable life in that cold hell; bushes and tiny trees growing through the ice, a large, placid thing that ignored them, a furry, hopping snowshoe rabbit with dish-shaped ears and no front legs. They almost had to use force to get Hardy out; but he would have frozen in there.

Dinner was waiting for them at the Castle: ship’s stores, and slices of a flat green Motie cactus 75 cm across and 3 thick. The red jelly inside tasted almost meaty. Renner liked it, but the others couldn’t eat it at all. The rest they ate like starved men, talking animatedly between mouthfuls. It must have been the extra-long day that made them so hungry.

Renner’s Motie said, “We have some idea what a tourist wants to see in a strange city, at least we know what you show in your travel films. Museums. The place of government. Monuments. Unique architecture. Perhaps the shops and night clubs. Above all, the way of life of the native.” She gestured deprecatingly. “We’ve had to omit some of this. We don’t have any night clubs. Too little alcohol doesn’t do anything to us. Too much kills. You’ll get a chance to hear our music, but frankly, you won’t like it.”

“Government is Mediators meeting to talk. It might be anywhere. The decision makers live where they like, and they generally consider themselves bound by the agreements of their Mediators. You’ll see some of our monuments. As for our way of life, you’ve been studying that for some time.”

“What about the way of life of a White?” Hardy asked. Then his mouth opened in a bone-cracking yawn.

“He’s right,” Hardy’s Motie broke in. “We should be able to see a giver of orders’ family residence at work. It may be that we can get permission—” The alien broke into a high gabble.

The Moties considered. Sally’s Motie said, “It should be possible. We’ll see. In the meantime, let’s call it a day.”

For the time change had caught the humans. Doctors Horvath and Hardy yawned, blinked, looked surprised, made their excuses, and departed. Bury was still going strong. Renner wondered what rotation his planet had. He himself had had enough spacegoing training to adapt to any schedule.

But the party was breaking up. Sally said her good nights and went upstairs, swaying noticeably. Renner suggested folk singing, got no response, and quit.

A spiral stair ran up the tower. Renner turned off into a corridor, following his curiosity. When he reached an air lock he realized that it must lead to the balcony, the flat ring that circled the tower. He did not care to try the Mote Prime air. He wondered if the balcony was meant to be used at all… and then thought of a ring encircling a slender tower, and wondered if the Moties were playing games with Freudian symbolism.

Probably they were. He continued to his room.

Renner thought at first he was in the wrong room. The color scheme was striking: orange and black, quite different from the muted pale browns of this morning. But the pressure suit on the wall was his, his design and rank markings on the chest. He looked about him, trying to decide whether he liked the change.

It was the only change—no, the room was warmer. It had been too cold last night. On a hunch, he crossed the room and checked the Moties’ sleeping alcove. Yes, it was chilly in there.

Renner’s Motie leaned against the doorjamb, watching him with the usual slight smile. Renner grinned shamefacedly. Then he continued his inspection.

The bathroom—the toilet was different. Just as he had sketched it. Wrong; there wasn’t any water in it. And no flush.

What the hell, there was only one way to test a toilet.

When he looked, the bowl was sparkling clean. He poured a glass of water into it and watched it run away without leaving a drop. The bowl was a frictionless surface.

Have to mention this to Bury, he thought. There were bases on airless moons, and worlds where water, or energy for recycling it, was scarce. Tomorrow. He was too sleepy now.

The rotation period of Levant was 28 hours, 40.2 minutes. Bury had adjusted well enough to MacArthur’s standard day, but it is always easier to adjust to a longer day than to a shorter.

He waited while his Fyunch(click) sent their Brown for coffee. It made him miss Nabil… and wonder if the Brown had more of Nabil’s skills. He had already seriously underestimated the power of the Brown-and-whites. Apparently his Motie could commandeer any vehicle on Mote Prime, whether or not it had been built yet; even so, he was an agent for someone Bury had never seen. The situation was complex.

The Brown returned with coffee and another pot, something that poured pale brown and did not steam. “Poisonous? Very likely,” his Fyunch(click) said. “The pollutants might harm you, or the bacteria. It’s water, from outside.”

It was not Bury’s habit to come too quickly to business. An overeager businessman, he felt, was easily gulled. He was not aware of the thousands of years of tradition behind his opinion. Accordingly he and his Motie liaison talked of many things… “ ‘Of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings,’ ” he quoted, and he identified all of these, to his Motie’s evident interest. The Motie was particularly interested in the various forms of human government.

“But I don’t think I should read this Lewis Carroll,” he said, “until I know considerably more of human culture.”

Eventually Bury raised the subject of luxuries again.

“Luxuries. Yes, I agree, in principle,” said Bury’s Motie. “If a luxury travels well, it can pay for itself merely in diminished fuel costs. That must be true even with your Crazy Eddie Drive. But in practice there are restrictions between us.”

Bury had already thought of a few. He said, “Tell me of them.”

“Coffee. Teas. Wines. I presume you deal in wines also?”

“Wine is forbidden to my religion.” Bury dealt indirectly in the transfer of wines from world to world, but he could not believe the Moties would want to deal in wines.

“It doesn’t matter. We could not tolerate alcohol, and we do not like the taste of coffee. The same would probably apply to your other luxury foods, though they may be worth a try.”

“And you do not yourselves deal in luxuries?”

“No. In power over others, in safety, in durability of customs and dynasties… as usual, I speak for the givers of orders. We deal in these, for their benefit, but we also deal in diplomacy. We trade durable goods and necessities, skills— What do you think of our works of art?”

“They would sell at good prices, until they became common. But I think our trade will be more in ideas, and designs.”

“Ah?”

“The frictionless toilet, and the principle behind it. Various superconductors, which you fabricate more efficiently than we. We found a sample in an asteroid. Can you duplicate it?”

“I’m sure the Browns will find a way.” The Motie waved a languid hand. “There will be no problem here. You certainly have much to offer. Land for instance. We will want to buy land for our embassies.”

Probably that would be offered gratis, Bury thought. But to this race land would be literally priceless; without the humans they could never have more than they had at the moment. And they would want land for settlements. This world was crowded. Bury had seen the city lights from orbit, a field of light around dark oceans. “Land,” he agreed, “and grain. There are grains that grow beneath suns like yours. We know that you can eat some of them. Might they grow here more efficiently than yours? Bulk food would never be shipped at a profit, but seeds may be.”

“You may also have ideas to sell us.”

“I wonder, your inventiveness is enormous and admirable.”

The Motie waved a hand. “I thank you. But we have not made everything there is to make. We have our own Crazy Eddie Drive, for example, but the force field generator that protects—”

“If I should be shot, you would lose the only merchant in this system.”

“Allah’s— I mean to say, are your authorities really so determined to guard their secrets?”

“Perhaps they will change their minds when they know you better. Besides, I’m not a physicist,” Bury said blandly.

“Ah. Bury, we have not exhausted the subject of art. Our artists have a free hand and ready access to materials, and very little supervision. In principle the exchange of art between Mote and Empire would facilitate communication. We have never yet tried to aim our art at an alien mind.”

“Dr. Hardy’s books and education tapes contain many such works of art.”

“We must study them.” Bury’s Motie sipped contemplatively at his dirty water. “We spoke of coffees and wines. My associates have noticed—how shall I put it?—a strong cultural set toward wines, among your scientists and Navy officers.”

“Yes. Place of origin, dates, labels, ability to travel in free fall, what wines go with what foods.” Bury grimaced. “I have listened, but I know nothing of this. I find it annoying and expensive that some of my ships must move under constant acceleration merely to protect a wine bottle from its own sediments. Why can they not simply be centrifuged on arrival?”

“And coffees? They all drink coffee. Coffee varies according to its genetics, soil, climate, method of roasting. I know this is so. I have seen your stores.”

“I have much greater variety aboard MacArthur. Yes, and there is variety among coffee drinkers. Cultural differences. On an American-descended world like Tabletop they would not touch the oily brew preferred in New Paris, and they find the brew of Levant much too sweet and strong.”

“Ah.”

“Have you heard of Jamaica Blue Mountain? It grows on Earth itself, on a large island; the island was never bombed, and the mutations were weeded out in the centuries following the collapse of the CoDominium. It cannot be bought. Navy ships carry it to the Imperial Palace on Sparta.”

“How does it taste?”

“As I told you, it is reserved for the Royal—” Bury hesitated. “Very well. You know me that well. I would not pay such a price again, but I do not regret it.”

“The Navy misjudges your worth because you lack knowledge of wines.” Bury’s Motie did not seem to be smiling. Its bland expression was a Trader’s: it matched Bury’s own. “Quite foolish of them, of course. If they knew how much there was to learn about coffee—”

“What are you suggesting?”

“You have stores aboard. Teach them about coffee. Use your own stores for the purpose.”

“My stores would not last a week among the officers of a battle cruiser!”

“You would show them a similarity between your culture and theirs. Or do you dislike that idea? No, Bury, I am not reading your mind. You dislike the Navy; you tend to exaggerate the differences between them and you. Perhaps they think the same way?”

“I am not reading your mind.” Bury suppressed the fury building in him—and at that moment he saw it. He knew why the alien kept repeating that phrase. It was to keep him off balance. In a trading situation.

Bury smiled broadly. “A week’s worth of good will. Well, I will try your suggestion when we are back in orbit and I dine aboard MacArthur. Allah knows they have much to learn about coffee. Perhaps I can even teach them how to use their percolators correctly.”

28. Kaffee Klatsch

Rod and Sally sat alone in the Captain’s patrol cabin. The intercom screens were off, and the status board above Rod’s desk showed a neat pattern of green lights. Rod stretched his long legs out and sipped at his drink. “You know, this is about the first time we’ve had alone together since we left New Caledonia. It’s nice.”

She smiled uncertainly. “But we don’t have very long—the Moties are expecting us to come back, and I’ve got dictating to do… How much longer can we stay in the Mote system, Rod?”

Blaine shrugged. “Up to the Admiral. Viceroy Merrill wanted us back as soon as possible, but Dr. Horvath wants to learn more. So do I. Sally, we still don’t have anything significant to report! We don’t know whether the Moties are a threat to the Empire or not.”

“Rod Blaine, will you stop acting like a Regular Navy officer and be yourself? There is not one shred of evidence that the Moties are hostile. We haven’t seen any signs of weapons, or wars, or anything like that—”

“I know,” Rod said sourly. “And that worries me. Sally, have you ever heard of a human civilization that didn’t have soldiers?”

“No, but Moties aren’t human.”

“Neither are ants, but they’ve got soldiers— Maybe you’re right, I’m catching it from Kutuzov. Speaking of which, he wants more frequent reports. You know that every scrap of data gets transmitted raw to Lenin inside an hour? We’ve even sent over samples of Motie artifacts, and some of the modified stuff the Brownies worked on…”

Sally laughed. Rod looked pained for a moment, then joined her. “I’m sorry, Rod. I know it must have been painful to have to tell the Tsar that you had Brownies on your ship—but it was funny!”

“Yeah. Funny. Anyway, we send everything we can to Lenin—and you think I’m paranoid? Kutuzov has everything inspected in space, then sealed into containers filled with ciphogene and parked outside his ship! I think he’s afraid of contamination.” The intercom buzzed. “Oh, damn.” Rod tuned to the screen. “Captain here.”

“Chaplain Hardy to see you, Captain,” the Marine sentry announced. “With Mr. Renner and the scientists.”

Rod sighed and gave Sally a helpless look. “Send them in and send in my steward. I imagine they’ll all want a drink.”

They did. Eventually everyone was seated, and his cabin was crowded. Rod greeted the Mote expedition personnel, then took a sheaf of papers from his desk. “First question: Do you need Navy ratings with you? I understand they’ve nothing to do.”

“Well, there’s no harm in their being there,” Dr. Horvath said. “But they do take up room the scientific staff could use.”

“In other words, no,” Rod said. “Fine. I’ll let you decide which of your people to replace them with, Dr. Horvath. Next point: Do you need Marines?”

“Good heavens, no,” Sally protested. She looked quickly to Horvath, who nodded. “Captain, the Moties are so far from being hostile, they’ve built the Castle for us. It’s magnificent! Why can’t you come down and see it?”

Rod laughed bitterly. “Admiral’s orders. For that matter, I can’t let any officer who knows how to construct a Langston Field go down.” He nodded to himself. “The Admiral and I agree on one point: If you do need help, two Marines won’t be any use—and giving the Moties a chance to work that Fyunch(click) thing on a pair of warriors doesn’t seem like a good idea. That brings up the next point. Dr. Horvath, is Mr. Renner satisfactory to you? Perhaps I should ask him to leave the room while you reply.”

“Nonsense. Mr. Renner has been very helpful. Captain, does your restriction apply to my people? Am I forbidden to take, say, a physicist to Mote Prime?”

“Yes.”

“But Dr. Buckman is counting on going. The Moties have been studying Murcheson’s Eye and the Coal Sack for a long time… how long, Mr. Potter?”

The midshipman squirmed uncomfortably before answering. “Thousands of years, sir,” he said finally. “Only…”

“Only what, Mister?” Rod prompted. Potter was a bit shy, and he’d have to outgrow that. “Speak up.”

“Yes, sir. There are gaps in their observations, Captain. The Moties hae never mentioned the fact, but Dr. Buckman says it is obvious. I would hae said they sometimes lose interest in astronomy, but Dr. Buckman can nae understand that.”

“He wouldn’t,” Rod laughed. “Just how important are those observations, Mr. Potter?”

“For astrophysics, perhaps verra important, Captain. They hae been watching yon supergiant for aye their history as it passed across the Coal Sack. ‘Twill go supernova and then become a black hole—and the Moties say they know when.”

Midshipman Whitbread laughed. Everyone turned to stare at him. Whitbread could hardly control his features. “Sorry, sir—but I was there when Gavin told Buckman about that. The Eye will explode in A.D. 2,774,020 on April 27 between four and four-thirty in the morning, they say. I thought Dr. Buckman was going to strangle himself. Then he started doing his own checking. It took him thirty hours—”

Sally grinned. “And he almost killed the Fyunch(click) doing it,” she added. “Had Dr. Horvath’s Motie translating for him when his own came apart.”

“Yes, but he found out they were right,” Whitbread told them. The midshipman cleared his throat and mimicked Buckman’s dry voice. “Damned close, Mr. Potter. I’ve got the mathematics and observations to prove it.”

“You’re developing a talent for acting, Mr. Whitbread,” First Lieutenant Cargill said. “Pity your work in astrogation doesn’t show a similar improvement. Captain, it seems to me that Dr. Buckman can get everything he needs here. There’s no reason for him to go to the Motie planet.”

“Agreed. Dr. Horvath, the answer is no. Besides—do you really want to spend a week cooped up with Buckman? You needn’t answer that,” he added quickly. “Whom will you take?”

Horvath frowned for a moment. “De Vandalia, I suppose.”

“Yes, please,” Sally said quickly. “We need a geologist. I’ve tried digging for rock samples, and I didn’t learn a thing about the make-up of Mote Prime. There’s nothing but ruins made up of older ruins.”

“You mean they don’t have rocks?” Cargill asked.

“They have rocks, Commander,” she answered. “Granite and lava and basalts, but they aren’t where whatever formed this planet put them. They’ve all been used, for walls, or tiles, or roofs. I did find cores in a museum, but I can’t make much sense out of them.”

“Now wait a minute,” said Rod. “You mean you go out and dig at random, and wherever you dig you find what’s left of a city? Even out in the farm lands?”

“Well, there wasn’t time for many digs. But where I did dig, there was always something else underneath. I never knew when to stop! Captain, there was a city like A.D. 2000 New York under a cluster of adobe huts without plumbing. I think they had a civilization that collapsed, perhaps two thousand years ago.”

“That would explain the observation lapses,” Rod said. “But—they seem brighter than that. Why would they let a civilization collapse?” He looked to Horvath, who shrugged.

“I have an idea,” Sally said. “The contaminants in the air—wasn’t there a problem with pollution from internal combustion engines on Earth sometime during the CoDominium? Suppose the Moties had a civilization based on fossil fuels and ran out? Mightn’t they have dropped back into an Iron Age before they developed fusion power and plasma physics again? They seem to be awfully short on radioactive ores.”

Rod shrugged. “A geologist could help a lot, then—and he has far more need to be on the spot than Dr. Buckman does. I take it that’s settled, Dr. Horvath?”

The Science Minister nodded sourly. “But I still don’t like this Navy interference with our work. You tell him, Dr. Hardy. This must stop.”

The Chaplain linguist looked surprised. He had sat at the back of the room, saying nothing but listening attentively. “Well, I have to agree that a geologist will be more useful on the surface than an astrophysicist, Anthony. And—Captain, I find myself in a unique position. As a scientist I cannot approve of all these restrictions placed on our contact with the Moties. As a representative of the Church I have an impossible task. And as a Navy officer—I think I have to agree with the Admiral.”

Everyone turned toward the portly Chaplain in surprise. “I am astonished, Dr. Hardy,” Horvath said. “Have you seen the smallest evidence of warlike activities on Mote Prime?”

Hardy folded his hands carefully and spoke across the tops of his fingertips. “No. And that, Anthony, is what concerns me. We know the Moties do have wars: the Mediator class was evolved, possibly consciously evolved, to stop them. I do not think they always succeed. So why are the Moties hiding their armaments from us? For the same reason we conceal ours, is the obvious answer, but consider: we do not conceal the fact that we have weapons, or even what their general nature is. Why do they?”

“Probably ashamed of them,” Sally answered. She winced at the look on Rod’s face. “I didn’t really mean it that way—but they have been civilized longer than we have, and they might be embarrassed by their violent past.”

“Possibly,” Hardy admitted. He sniffed his brandy speculatively. “And possibly not, Sally. I have the impression the Moties are hiding something important—and hiding it right under our noses, so to speak.”

There was a long silence. Horvath sniffed loudly. Finally the Science Minister said, “And how could they do that, Dr. Hardy? Their government consists of informal negotiations by representatives of the givers of orders class. Every city seems to be nearly autonomous. Mote Prime hardly has a planetary government, and you think they’re able to conspire against us? It is not very reasonable.”

Hardy shrugged again. “From what we have seen, Dr. Horvath, you are certainly correct. And yet I cannot rid myself of the impression that they are hiding something.”

“They showed us everything,” Horvath insisted. “Even givers of orders’ households, where they don’t normally have visitors.”

“Sally was just getting to that before you came in,” Rod said quickly. “I’m fascinated—how does the Motie officer class live? Like the Imperial aristocracy?”

“That’s a better guess than you might think,” Horvath boomed. Two dry martinis had mellowed him considerably. “There were many similarities—although the Moties have an entirely different conception of luxuries from ours. Some things in common, though. Land. Servants. That sort of thing.” Horvath took another drink and warmed to his subject.

“Actually, we visited two households. One lived in a skyscraper near the Castle. Seemed to control the entire building: shops, light industry, hundreds of Browns and Reds and Workers and—oh, dozens of other castes. The other one, though, the agriculturist, was very like a country baron. The work force lived in long rows of houses, and in between the row houses were fields. The ‘baron’ lived in the center of all that,”

Rod thought of his own family home. “Crucis Court used to be surrounded by villages and fields—but of course all the villages were fortified after the Secession Wars. So was the Court, for that matter.”

“Odd you should say that,” Horvath mused. “There was a sort of square fortified shape to the ‘barony’ too. Big atrium in the middle. For that matter, all the residential skyscrapers have no windows on the lower floors, and big roof gardens. Quite self-sufficient. Looked very military. We don’t have to report that impression to the Admiral, do we? He’d be sure we’d discovered militaristic tendencies.”

“Are you so sure he’d be wrong?” Jack Cargill asked. “From what I’ve heard, every one of those givers of orders has a self-sufficient fortress. Roof gardens. Brownies to fix all the machinery—too bad we can’t tame some of them to help Sinclair.” Cargill noted his captain’s black look and hurriedly added, “Anyway, the agriculturist might have a better chance in a fight, but both those places sound like forts. So do all the other residential palaces I’ve heard about.”

Dr. Horvath had been struggling to control himself, while Sally Fowler attempted without success to hide her amusement. Finally she laughed. “Commander Cargill, the Moties have had space travel and fusion power for centuries. If their buildings still have a fortress look, it must be traditional—there’s no possible purpose! You’re the military expert, just how would building your house that way help you against modern weapons?”

Cargill was silenced, but his expression showed he wasn’t convinced.

“You say they try to make their houses self-sufficient?” Rod asked. “Even in the city? But that is silly. They’d still have to bring in water.”

“It rained a lot,” said Renner. “Three days out of six.” Rod looked at the Sailing Master. Was he serious? “Did you know there are left-handed Moties?” Renner continued. “Everything reversed. Two six-fingered left hands, one massive right arm, and the swelling of the skull is on the right.”

“It took me half an hour to notice,” Whitbread laughed. “The new Motie behaved just like Jackson’s old one. He must have been briefed.”

“Left-handed,” said Rod. “Why not?” At least they’d changed the subject. The stewards brought in lunch and everyone fell to. When they finished it was time to leave for the Mote.

“A word with you, Mr. Renner,” Rod said as the Sailing Master was about to go. He waited until everyone but Cargill was gone. “I need an officer down there, and you’re the one senior man that I can spare who meets the Admiral’s restrictions. But although you’ve no weapons but your side arms, and no Marines, that’s a military expedition, and if it comes to it, you’re in charge.”

“Yes, sir,” Renner said. He sounded puzzled.

“If you had to shoot a man or a Motie, could you do it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You answered that very quickly, Mr. Renner.”

“I thought it over very slowly, some time past, when I knew I was joining the Navy. If I had decided I was incapable of shooting anyone, I’d have had to make damned sure the Captain knew it.”

Blaine nodded. “Next question. Can you recognize the need for military action in time to do something? Even if what you do is hopeless?”

“I think so. Captain, can I bring up something else? I do want to go back, and—”

“Speak your piece, Mr. Renner.”

“Captain, your Fyunch(click) went mad.”

“I’m aware of that,” Captain Blaine said coldly.

“I think the Tsar’s hypothetical Fyunch(click) would go mad much faster. What you want is the one officer aboard this ship who is least inclined to the military way of thinking.”

“Get aboard, Mr. Renner. And good luck.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Renner made no attempt to hide his lopsided grin as he left the cabin.

“He’ll do, Captain,” Cargill said.

“I hope so, Number One. Jack, do you think it was our military manner that drove my Motie crazy?”

“No, sir.” Cargill seemed positive.

“Then what did?”

“Captain, I don’t know. I don’t know a lot of things about those bug-eyed monsters. There’s only one thing I am sure of, and that is they’re learning more about us than we are about them.”

“Oh, come on, Number One. They take our people anywhere they ask to go. Sally says they’re bending over backwards—well, for them, that isn’t so hard to do—but anyway, she says they’re very cooperative. Not hiding a thing. You’ve always been scared of the Moties, haven’t you? Any idea why?”

“No, Captain.” Cargill looked closely at Blaine and decided that his boss wasn’t accusing him of funk. “I just don’t like the feel of this.” He glanced at his pocket computer to note the time. “I’ve got to hurry, Skipper. I’m supposed to help Mr. Bury with that coffee business.”

“Bury— Jack, I’ve been meaning to speak to you about him. His Motie lives on the embassy ship now. Bury’s moved to the cutter. What do they talk about?”

“Sir? They’re supposed to be negotiating trade deals—”

“Sure, but Bury knows a lot about the Empire. Economy, industry, general size of the Fleet, how many outies we’ve got to deal with, you name it and he’d probably know it.”

Cargill grinned. “He hasn’t let his right hand know how many fingers there are on the left, Captain. What’s he going to give the Motie for free? Besides, I’ve sort of made sure he won’t say anything you wouldn’t approve of.”

“Now how did you do that?”

“I told him we’d bugged every inch of the cutter, sir.” Cargill’s grin broadened. “Sure, he knows we can’t listen to every one of those bugs every time, but—”

Rod returned the grin. “I expect that’ll work. OK, you’d better move along to the Kaffee Klatsch—you sure you don’t mind helping with this?”

“Hell, Skipper, it was my idea. If Bury can show the cooks how to make better coffee during combat alerts, I might even change my opinion of him. Just why is he being kept a prisoner on this ship, anyway?”

“Prisoner? Commander Cargill—”

“Skipper, everybody in the crew knows there’s something funny about that man’s being aboard. The grapevine has it he’s implicated in the New Chicago revolt and you’re hanging onto him for the Admiralty. That’s about right, isn’t it?”

“Somebody’s doing a lot of talking, Jack. Anyway, I can’t say anything about it.”

“Sure. You’ve got your orders, Skipper. But I notice you aren’t trying to deny it. Well, it figures. Your old man is richer than Bury—I wonder how many Navy people might be for sale? It scares me, having a guy who could buy a whole planet as our prisoner.” Cargill moved quickly through the companionway to the main crew kitchen.

The night before, the dinner party conversation had somehow turned to coffee, and Bury had lost his usual bored detachment when he spoke at length on the subject. He had told them of the historic Mocha-Java blend still grown in places like Makassar, and the happy combination of pure Java and the grua distilled on Prince Samual’s World. He knew the history of Jamaica Blue Mountain although, he’d said, not its taste. As dessert was ending he suggested a “coffee tasting” in the manner of a winetasting party.

It had been an excellent ending to an excellent dinner, with Bury and Nabil moving like conjurors among filter cones and boiling water and hand-lettered labels. All the guests were amused, and it made Bury a different man somehow; it had been hard to think of him as a connoisseur of any kind.

“But the basic secret is to keep the equipment truly clean,” he had said. “The bitter oils of yesterday’s coffee will accumulate in the works, especially in percolators.”

It had ended with Bury’s offer to inspect MacArthur’s coffee-making facilities the next day. Cargill, who thought coffee as vital to a fighting-ship as torpedoes, accepted happily. Now he watched as the bearded Trader examined the large percolator and gingerly drew a cup.

“The machine is certainly well kept,” he said. “Very well kept. Absolutely clean, and the brew is not reheated too often. For standard coffee, this is excellent, Commander.”

Puzzled, Jack Cargill drew a cup and tasted it. “Why, that’s better than the stuff the wardroom gets.”

There were sidelong glances among the cooks. Cargill noticed them. He noticed something else, too. He ran a finger along the side of the percolator and brought it away with a brown oilstain.

Bury repeated the gesture, sniffed at his finger, and touched the tip of his tongue to it. Cargill tasted the oil in his hand. It was like all the bad coffee he had ever swallowed for fear of falling asleep on duty. He looked again at the percolator and stared at the spigot handle.

“Miniatures,” Cargill growled. “Take that damned thing apart.”

They emptied the machine and disassembled it—as far as it would go. Parts made to unscrew were now a fused unit. But the secret of the magic percolator seemed to be selective permeability in the metal shell. It would pass the older oils.

“My company would like to purchase that secret from the Navy,” said Bury.

“We’d like to have it to sell. OK, Ziffren, how long has this been going on?”

“Sir?” The petty officer cook seemed to be thinking. “I don’t know, sir. Maybe two months.”

“Was it this way before we sterilized the ship and killed off the miniatures?” Cargill demanded.

“Uh, yessir,” the cook said. But he said it hesitantly, and Cargill left the mess with a frown.

29. Watchmakers

Cargill made his way to Rod’s cabin. “I think we’ve got Brownies again, Skipper.” He told why.

“Have you talked to Sinclair?” Rod asked. “Jesus, Number One, the Admiral will go out of his mind. Are you sure?”

“No, sir. But I intend to find out. Skipper, I’m positive we looked everywhere when we cleaned out the ship. Where could they have hidden?”

“Worry about that when you know we’ve got them. OK, take the Chief Engineer and go over this ship again, Jack. And make damned sure this time.”

“Aye aye, Skipper.”

Blaine turned to the intercom screens and punched inputs. Everything known about miniatures flashed across the screen. There was not very much.

The expedition to Mote Prime had seen thousands of the miniatures throughout Castle City. Renner’s Motie called them “Watchmakers,” and they functioned as assistants to the brown “Engineers.” The big Moties insisted the Watchmakers were not intelligent but inherited an ability to tinker with tools and equipment, as well as the typical Motie instinct of obedience to the higher castes. They required training, but the adult Watchmakers took care of most of that. Like other subservient castes they were a form of wealth, and the ability to support a large household of Watchmakers, Engineers, and other lower forms was one measure of the importance of a Master. This last was a conclusion of Chaplain Hardy, and not definitely confirmed.

An hour passed before Cargill called. “We’ve got ‘em, Skipper,” the First Lieutenant said grimly. “The B-deck air adsorber-converter—remember that half-melted thing Sandy repaired?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it doesn’t stick out into the corridor any more. Sandy says it can’t possibly work, and he’s digging into it now—but it’s enough for me. We’ve got ‘em.”

“Alert the Marines, Number One. I’m going to the bridge.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Cargill turned back to the air maker. Sinclair had the cover off and was muttering to himself as he examined the exposed machinery.

The guts had changed. The casing had been reshaped. The second filter Sinclair had installed was gone, and the remaining filter had been altered beyond recognition. Goop seeped from one side into a plastic bag that bulged with gas; the goop was highly volatile.

“Aye,” Sinclair muttered. “And the other typical signs, Commander Cargill. Screw fastenings fused together. Missing parts and the rest.”

“So it’s Brownies.”

“Aye,” Sinclair nodded. “We thought we’d killed the lot months ago—and my records show this was inspected last week. T’was normal then.”

“But where did they hide?” Cargill demanded. The chief Engineer was silent. “What now, Sandy?”

Sinclair shrugged. “I’d say we look to hangar deck, sir. ‘Tis the place least used aboard this ship.”

“Right.” Cargill punched the intercom again. “Skipper, we’re going to check hangar deck—but I’m afraid there’s no question about it. There are live Brownies aboard this ship.”

“Do that, Jack. I’ve got to report to Lenin.” Rod took a deep breath and gripped the arms of his command chair as if he were about to enter combat. “Get me the Admiral.”

Kutuzov’s burly features swam on the screen. Rod reported in a rush of words. “I don’t know how many, sir,” he finished. “My officers are searching for additional signs of the miniatures.”

Kutuzov nodded. There was a long silence while the Admiral stared at a point over Blaine’s left shoulder. “Captain, have you followed my orders concerning communications?” he asked finally.

“Yes, sir. Constant monitoring of all emissions to and from MacArthur. There’s been nothing.”

“Nothing so far as we know,” the Admiral corrected. “We must assume nothing, but it is possible that these creatures have communicated with other Moties. If they have, we no longer have any secrets aboard MacArthur. If they have not— Captain, you will order the expedition to return to MacArthur immediately, and you will prepare to depart for New Caledonia the instant they are aboard. Is this understood?”

“Aye aye, sir,” Blaine snapped.

“You do not agree?”

Rod pondered for a moment. He hadn’t thought beyond the screams he’d get from Horvath and the others when they were told. And, surprisingly, he did agree. “Yes, sir. I can’t think of a better course of action. But suppose I can exterminate the vermin, sir?”

“Can you know you have done that, Captain?” Kutuzov demanded. “Nor can I know it. Once away from this system we can disassemble MacArthur piece by piece, with no fear that they will communicate with others. So long as we are here, that is constant threat, and it is risk I am not prepared to take.”

“What do I tell the Moties, sir?” Rod asked.

“You will say there is sudden illness aboard your vessel, Captain. And that we are forced to return to Empire. You may tell them your commander has ordered it and you have no other explanation. If later explanations are necessary, Foreign Office will have time to prepare them. For now, this will do.”

“Yes, sir.” The Admiral’s image faded. Rod turned to the watch officer. “Mr. Crawford, this vessel will be leaving for home in a few hours. Alert the department heads, and then get me Renner on Mote Prime.”

A muted alarm sounded in the Castle. Kevin Renner looked up sleepily to see his Motie at the intercom screen that formed inside one of the decorative paintings on the wall.

Renner glanced at his pocket computer. It was almost noon on MacArthur but the middle of the night in Castle City. He climbed sleepily to his feet and went to the screen. The expression on Blaine’s face brought him to full alert. “Yes, Skipper?”

“There’s a small emergency aboard, Mr. Renner. You’ll have to ask the Moties to send up all our personnel. Yourself included.”

“Dr. Horvath won’t want to come, sir,” Renner said. His mind raced furiously. There was something very wrong here, and if he could read it, so could the Moties.

Blaine’s image nodded. “He’ll have to nonetheless, Mister. See to it.”

“Yes, sir. What about our Moties?”

“Oh, they can come up to the cutter with you,” Blaine said. “It’s not all that serious. Just an OC matter.”

It took a second for that to sink in. By the time it did, Renner was in control of himself. Or hoped he was. “Aye aye, Captain. We’re on the way.”

He went back to his bunk and sat carefully on the edge. As he put on his boots he tried to think. The Moties couldn’t possibly know the Navy’s code designations, but OC meant top military priority… and Blaine had been far too casual when he had said that.

OK, he thought. The Moties know I’m acting. They have to. There’s a military emergency out there somewhere, and I’m to get the hostages off this planet without letting the Moties know it. Which means the Moties don’t know there’s a military emergency, and that doesn’t make sense.

“Fyunch(click),” his Motie reminded him. “What is the matter?”

“I don’t know,” Renner replied. Quite honestly.

“And you do not want to know,” the Motie said. “Are you in trouble?”

“Don’t know that either,” Renner said. “You heard the Captain. Now how do I go about getting everybody moving in the middle of the night?”

“You may leave that to me,” said Renner’s Motie.

The hangar deck was normally kept in vacuum. The doors were so huge that a certain amount of leakage was inevitable. Later, Cargill would supervise as hangar deck was put under pressure; but for now he and Sinclair carried out their inspection in vacuum.

Everything seemed in order, nothing out of place as they entered. “Now,” said Cargill. “What would you fiddle with if you were a miniature Motie?”

“I would put the boats on the hull and use the hangar deck as a fuel tank.”

“There are ships like that. Be a big job for a swarm of Brownies, though.” Cargill strolled out onto the hangar doors. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, and was never sure why he looked down at his feet. It took him a moment to realize that something was wrong.

The crack that separated the two huge rectangular doors…wasn’t there.

Cargill looked about him, bewildered. There was nothing. The doors were part of the hull. The hinge motors, weighing several tons apiece, had vanished.

“Sandy?”

“Aye?”

“Where are the doors?”

“Why, y’re standing on them, ye bloody— I don’t believe it.”

“They’ve sealed us in. Why? How? How could they work in vacuum?”

Sinclair ran back to the air lock. The air-lock door controls— “The instruments read green,” said Sinclair. “Everything’s fine, as far as they know. If the Brownies can fool instruments, they could have had the hangar deck under pressure until just before we arrived.”

“Try the doors.” Cargill swung up onto one of the retractable bracings.

“The instruments show the doors opening. Still opening… complete.” Sinclair turned around. Nothing. A vast expanse of beige-painted floor, as solid as any part of the hull.

He heard Cargill curse. He saw Cargill swing down from the huge retractable brace and drop onto what had been a hangar door. He saw Cargill drop through the floor as if it had been the surface of a pond.

They had to fish Cargill out of the Langston Field. He was chest deep in formless black quicksand, and sinking, his legs very cold, his heart beating very slowly. The Field absorbed all motion.

“I should have got my head into it,” he said when he came round. “That’s what all the manuals say. Get my brain to sleep before my heart slows down. But God’s teeth! How could I think?”

“What happened?” Sinclair asked.

Cargill’s mouth opened, closed, opened again. He managed to sit up. “There aren’t words. It was like a miracle. It was like I was walking on water when they took away my sainthood. Sandy, it was really the damnedest thing.”

“It looked a mite peculiar too.”

“I bet. You see what they did, don’t you? The little bastards are redesigning MacArthur! The doors are still there, but the ships can go through them now. In an emergency you don’t even have to evacuate hangar deck.”

“I’ll tell the Captain,” Sinclair said. He turned to the intercom.

“Where the hell did they hide?” Cargill demanded. The engineering ratings who had pulled him out stared blankly. So did Sinclair. “Where? Where didn’t we look?”

His legs still felt cold. He massaged them. On the screen he could see Rod Blaine’s pained expression. Cargill struggled to his feet. As he did, alarms hooted through the ship.

“NOW HEAR THIS. INTRUDER ALERT. ALL COMBAT PERSONNEL WILL DON BATTLE ARMOR. MARINES REPORT TO HANGAR DECK WITH HAND WEAPONS AND BATTLE ARMOR.”

“The guns!” Cargill shouted.

“I beg your pardon?” Sinclair said. Blaine’s image focused on the First Lieutenant.

“The guns, Skipper! We did not look in the guns. Damn, I’m a bloody fool, did anyone think of the guns?”

“It may be,” Sinclair agreed. “Captain, I request that you send for the ferrets.”

“Too late, Chief,” Blaine said. “There’s a hole in their cage. I already checked.”

“God damn,” Cargill said. He said it reverently. “God damn them.” He turned to the armed Marines swarming onto hangar deck. “Follow me.” He was through treating the miniatures as escaped pets, or as vermin. As of now they were enemy boarders.

They rushed forward to the nearest turret. A startled rating jumped from his post as the First Lieutenant, Chief Engineer, and a squad of Marines in battle armor crammed into his control room.

Cargill stared at the instrument board. Everything seemed normal. He hesitated in real fear before he opened the inspection hatch.

The lenses and focus rings were gone from Number 3 Battery. The space inside was alive with Brownies. Cargill jumped back in horror—and a thread of laser pulse splashed against his battle armor. He cursed and snatched a tank of ciphogene from the nearest Marine and slammed it into the gap. It wasn’t necessary to open the stopcock.

The tank grew hot in his hand, and one laser beam winked through and past him. When the hissing died he was surrounded by yellow fog.

The space inside 3 Battery was thick with dead miniatures and filthy with bones. Skeletons of rats, bits of electronic gear, old boots—and dead Brownies.

“They kept a herd of rats in there,” Cargill shouted. “Then they must have outgrown the herd and eaten them all. They’ve been eating each other—”

“And the other batteries?” Sinclair said in wonder. “We’d best be hasty.”

There was a scream from the corridor outside. The Navy rating who’d been displaced from his post fell to the deck. A bright red stain appeared at his hip. “In the ventilator,” he shouted.

A Marine corporal tore at the grating. Smoke flashed from his battle armor and he jumped back. “Nipped me, by God!” He stared incredulously at a neat hole in his shoulder as three other Marines fired hand lasers at a rapidly vanishing shape. Somewhere else in the ship an alarm sounded.

Cargill grabbed an intercom. “Skipper—”

“I know,” Blaine said quickly. “Whatever you did has them stirred up all over the ship. There are a dozen fire fights going on right now.”

“My God, sir, what do we do?”

“Send your troops to Number 2 Battery to clean that out,” Blaine ordered. “Then get to damage control.” He turned to another screen. “Any other instructions, Admiral?”

The bridge was alive with activity. One of the armored helmsmen jumped from his seat and whirled rapidly.

“Over there!” he shouted. A Marine sentry pointed his Brownie-altered weapon helplessly.

“You are not in control of your vessel,” Kutuzov said flatly.

“No, sir.” It was the hardest thing Blaine had ever had to say.

“CASUALTIES IN CORRIDOR TWENTY,” the bridge talker announced.

“Scientist country,” Rod said. “Get all available Marines into that area and have them assist the civilians into pressure suits. Maybe we can gas the whole ship—”

“Captain Blaine. Our first task is to return to Empire with maximum information.”

“Yes, sir—”

“Which means civilians aboard your vessel are more important than a battle cruiser.” Kutuzov was calm, but his lips were tight with distaste. “Of second priority are Motie artifacts not yet transferred to Lenin. Captain, you will therefore order all civilians off your vessel. I will have Lenin’s boats outside our protective field. You will have two reliable officers accompany civilians. You will then secure any Motie artifacts you think important for shipment to Lenin. You may attempt to regain control of your vessel in so far as that is consistent with these orders—but you will also act swiftly, Captain, because at first sign of any transmission from your vessel other than through secure circuit direct to me, I will blast MacArthur out of space.”

Blaine nodded coldly. “Aye aye, sir.”

“We understand each other, then.” The Admiral’s expression didn’t change at all. “And Godspeed, Captain Blaine.”

“What about my cutter?” Rod asked. “Sir, I have to talk to the cutter.”

“I will alert the cutter personnel, Captain. No. There will be no transmission from your ship.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Rod looked around his bridge. Everyone was staring wildly about. The Marines’ weapons were drawn, and one of the quartermasters was fussing over a fallen companion.

Jesus, can I trust the intercom? Rod wondered. He shouted orders to a runner and waved three Marines to accompany the man.

“Signal from Mr. Renner, sir,” the bridge talker announced.

“Don’t acknowledge,” Blaine growled.

“Aye aye, sir. Do not acknowledge.”

The battle for MacArthur raged on.

30. Nightmare

There were a dozen humans and two Brown-and-whites aboard the cutter. The other ground party Moties had reported directly to the embassy ship, but Whitbread’s and Sally’s Fyunch(click)s had stayed aboard. “No point,” said Whitbread’s Motie. “We’ve been seeing the decision maker every day.” Perhaps there was a point. The cutter was crowded, and the taxi to MacArthur had not arrived.

“What’s holding them up?” Renner said. “Lafferty, put in a call.” Lafferty, the cutter’s pilot, was largely unemployed these days. He used the communications beam.

“No answer, sir,” he said. He sounded puzzled.

“You’re sure the set’s working?”

“It was an hour ago,” Lafferty said. “Uh—there’s a signal. It’s from Lenin, sir.”

Captain Mikhailov’s face appeared on the screen. “You will please request aliens to leave this vessel,” he said.

Somehow the Moties conveyed amusement, surprise, and a slightly hurt look all at once. They left with a backward look and a signaled query. Whitbread shrugged. Staley didn’t. When the Moties were in the air-lock bridge, Staley closed the door behind them.

Kutuzov appeared. “Mr. Renner, you will send all personnel aboard to Lenin. They will wear pressure suits, and one of my boats will arrive to get them. Civilians will cross on a line and will then obey orders of my boat’s pilot. They must carry sufficient air for one hour in space. Meanwhile, you will make no attempt to communicate with MacArthur. Is this understood?”

Renner gulped. “Aye aye, sir.”

“You will not admit aliens until further notice.”

“But what do I tell them, sir?” Renner asked.

“You will tell them Admiral Kutuzov is a paranoid fool, Mr. Renner. Now carry out your orders.”

“Aye aye, sir.” The screen went blank. Renner looked pale. “Now he’s reading minds—”

“Kevin, what’s going on here?” Sally demanded. “Get us up in the middle of the night, rush us up here— Now Rod won’t answer us, and the Admiral wants us to risk our lives and offend the Moties.” She sounded very much like Senator Fowler’s niece; an Imperial lady who had tried to cooperate with the Navy and now had had enough.

Dr. Horvath was even more indignant. “I will not be a party to this, Mr. Renner. I have no intention of putting on a pressure suit.”

“Lenin’s moving alongside MacArthur,” Whitbread said casually. He stared out the view port. “The Admiral has her ringed with boats—I think somebody’s carrying a line over.”

Everyone turned to the view ports. Lafferty focused the cutter’s telescope and flashed the results on the ship’s bridge screens. After a while figures in space suits began moving along lines toward Lenin’s boats, which then moved away to let others take their places.

“They’re abandoning MacArthur,” Staley said wonderingly. He looked up, his angular face contorted. “And one of Lenin’s boats is headed this way. My lady, you’ll have to hurry. I don’t think there’s much time.”

“But I told you, I am not going,” Dr. Horvath insisted.

Staley fingered his pistol. The cabin grew tense.

“Doctor, do you remember the orders Viceroy Merrill gave Admiral Kutuzov?” Renner asked carefully. “As I recall, he was to destroy MacArthur rather than let the Moties obtain any important information.” Renner’s voice was cool, almost bantering.

Horvath tried to say something else. He seemed to be having difficulty controlling his features. Finally he turned to the pressure suit locker without a word. After a moment, Sally followed him.

Horace Bury had gone to his cabin after the coffee demonstration. He liked to work late at night and sleep after lunch, and although there wasn’t anything to work on at the moment, he’d kept the habit.

The ship’s alarms woke him. Somebody was ordering the Marines into combat uniform. He waited, but nothing else happened for a long time. Then came the stench. It choked him horribly, and there was nothing like it in any of his memories. Distilled quintessence of machines and body odor—and it was growing stronger.

More alarms sounded. “PREPARE FOR HARD VACUUM. ALL PERSONNEL WILL DON PRESSURE SUITS. ALL MILITARY PERSONNEL WILL DON BATTLE ARMOR. PREPARE FOR HARD VACUUM.”

Nabil was crying in panic. “Fool! Your suit!” Bury screamed and ran for his own. Only after he was breathing normal ship’s air did he listen for the alarms again.

The voices didn’t sound right. They weren’t coming through the intercom, they were shouted through the corridors. “CIVILIANS WILL ABANDON SHIP. ALL CIVILIAN PERSONNEL, PREPARE TO ABANDON SHIP.”

Really. Bury almost smiled. This was a first time—was it a drill? There were more sounds of confusion. A squad of Marines in battle armor, weapons clutched at the ready, tramped past. The smile slipped and Bury looked about to guess what possessions he might save.

There was more shouting, An officer appeared in the corridor outside and began shouting in an unnecessarily loud voice. Civilians would be leaving MacArthur on a line. They could take one bag each, but would require one hand free.

Beard of the Prophet! What could cause this? Had they saved the golden asteroid metal, the superconductor of heat? Certainly they would not save the precious selfcleaning percolator. What should he try to save?

The ship’s gravity lessened noticeably. Flywheels inside her were rotating to take off her spin. Bury worked quickly to throw together items needed by any traveler without regard to their price. Luxuries he could buy again, but— The miniatures. He’d have to get that air tank from D air lock. Suppose he were assigned to a different air lock?

He packed in frenzy. Two suitcases, one for Nabil to carry. Nabil moved fast enough now that he had orders. There was more confused shouting outside, and several times squads of Navy men and Marines floated past the stateroom door. They all carried weapons and wore armor.

His suit began to inflate. The ship was losing pressure, and all thought of drill or exercise left him. Some of the scientific equipment couldn’t stand hard vacuum—and nobody had once come into the cabin to check his pressure suit. The Navy wouldn’t risk civilian lives in drills.

An officer moved into the corridor. Bury heard the harsh voice speaking in deadly calm tones. Nabil stood uncertainly and Bury motioned to him to turn on his suit communications.

“ALL CIVILIAN PERSONNEL, GO TO YOUR NEAREST AIR LOCKS ON THE PORT FLANK,” the unemotional voice said. The Navy always spoke that way when there was a real crisis. It convinced Bury utterly. “CIVILIAN EVACUATION WILL BE THROUGH PORT-SIDE LOCKS ONLY. IF YOU ARE UNSURE OF YOUR DIRECTION ASK ANY OFFICER OR RATING. PLEASE PROCEED SLOWLY. THERE IS TIME TO EVACUATE ALL PERSONNEL.” The officer floated past and turned into another corridor.

Port side? Good. Intelligently, Nabil had hidden the dummy tank in the nearest air lock. Praise to the Glory of Allah that had been on the port side. He motioned to his servant and began to pull himself from hand hold to hand hold along the wall. Nabil moved gracefully; he had had plenty of practice since they had been confined.

There was a confused crowd in the corridor. Behind him Bury saw a squad of Marines turn into the corridor. They faced away and fired in the direction they’d come. There was answering fire and bright blood spurted to form ever diminishing globules as it drifted through the steel ship. The lights flickered overhead.

A petty officer floated down the corridor and fell in behind them. “Keep moving, keep moving,” he muttered. “God bless the joeys.”

“What are they shooting at?” Bury asked.

“Miniatures,” the petty officer growled. “If they take this corridor, move out fast, Mr. Bury. The little bastards have weapons.”

“Brownies?” Bury asked incredulously. “Brownies?”

“Yes, sir, the ship’s got a plague o’ the little sons of bitches. They changed the air plants to suit themselves… Get movin’, sir. Please. Them joeys can’t hold long.”

Bury tugged at a hand hold and sailed to the end of the corridor, where he was deftly caught by an able spacer and passed around the turn. Brownies? But, they’d been cleared out of the ship…

There was a crowd bunched at the air lock. More civilians were coming, and now noncombatant Navy people began to add to the press. Bury pushed and clawed his way toward the air-bottle locker. Ah. It was still there. He seized the dummy and handed it to Nabil, who fastened it to Bury’s suit.

“That won’t be necessary, sir,” an officer said. Bury realized he was hearing him through atmosphere. There was pressure here—but they hadn’t come through any pressure-tight doors! The Brownies! They’d made the invisible pressure barrier that the miner had on her survey ship! He had to have it! “One never knows,” Bury muttered to the officer. The man shrugged and motioned another pair into the cycling mechanism. Then it was Bury’s turn. The Marine officer waved them forward.

The lock cycled. Bury touched Nabil on the shoulder and pointed. Nabil went, pulling himself along the line into the blackness outside. Blackness ahead, no stars, nothing. What was out there? Bury found himself holding his breath. Praise be to Allah, I witness that Allah is One— No! The dummy bottle was on his shoulders, and inside it two miniatures in suspended animation. Wealth untold! Technology beyond anything even the First Empire ever had! An endless stream of new inventions and design improvements. Only… just what kind of djinn bottle had he opened?

They were through the tightly controlled hole in MacArthur’s Field. Outside was only the blackness of space—and a darker black shape ahead. Other lines led to it from other holes in MacArthur’s Field, and minuscule spiders darted along them. Behind Bury was another space-suited figure, and behind that, another. Nabil and the others ahead of him, and… His eyes were adjusting rapidly now. He could see the deep red hues of the Coal Sack, and the blot ahead must be Lenin’s Field. Would he have to crawl through that? But no, there were boats outside it, and the space spiders crawled into them.

The boat was drawing near. Bury turned for a last look at MacArthur. In his long lifetime he had said good-bye to countless temporary homes; MacArthur had not been the best of them. He thought of the technology that was being destroyed. The Brownie-improved machinery, the magical coffeepot. There was a twinge of regret. MacArthur’s crew was genuinely grateful for his help with the coffee, and his demonstration to the officers had been popular. It had gone well. Perhaps in Lenin…

The air lock was tiny now. A string of refugees followed him along the line. He could not see the cutter, where his Motie would be. Would he ever see him again?

He was looking directly at the space-suited figure behind him. It had no baggage, and it was overtaking Bury because it had both hands free. The light from Lenin was shining on its faceplate. As Bury watched, the figure’s head shifted slightly and the light shone right into the faceplate.

Bury saw at least three pairs of eyes staring back at him. He glimpsed the tiny faces.

It seemed to Bury, later, that he had never thought so fast in his life. For a heartbeat he stared at the thing coming up on him while his mind raced, and then— But the men who heard his scream said that it was the shriek of a madman, or a man being flayed alive.

Then Bury flung his suitcase at it.

He put words into his next scream. “They’re in the suit! They’re inside it!” He was wrenching at his back now, ripping the air tank loose. He poised the cylinder over his head, in both hands, and pitched it.

The pressure suit dodged his suitcase, clumsily. A pair of miniatures in the arms, trying to maneuver the fingers… it lost its hand hold, tried to pull itself back. The metal cylinder took it straight in the faceplate and shattered it.

Then space was filled with tiny struggling figures, flailing six limbs as a ghostly puff of air carried them away. Something else went with them, something football shaped, something Bury had the knowledge to recognize. That was how they had fooled the officer at the air locks. A severed human head.

Bury discovered he was floating three meters from the line. He took a deep, shuddering breath. Good: he’d thrown the right air tank. Allah was merciful.

He waited until a man-shaped thing came out of Lenin’s boat on backpack jets and took him in tow. The touch made him flinch. Perhaps the man wondered why Bury peered so intently into his faceplate. Perhaps not.

31. Defeat

MacArthur lurched suddenly. Rod clawed at the intercom and shouted, “Chief Sinclair! What are you doing, Chief?”

The reply was barely audible. “ ’Tis nae my doin’, Captain. I hae nae control o’ the altitude jets, and precious little o’ anything else.”

“Oh, Lord God,” Blaine said. Sinclair’s image faded from the screens. Other screens faded. Suddenly the bridge was dead. Rod tried alternate circuits. Nothing.

“Computer inactivated,” Crawford reported. “I get nothing at all.”

“Try the direct wire. Get me Cargill,” Rod told his talker.

“I have him, Captain.”

“Jack, what’s the situation back there?”

“Bad, Skipper. I’m beseiged in here, and I don’t have communications except for direct wires—not all of them.”

MacArthur lurched again as something happened aft. “Captain!” Cargill reported excitedly. “Lieutenant Piper reports the Brownies are fighting each other in the main crew kitchen! Real pitched battle!”

“Jesus, Number One, how many of those monsters do we have aboard?”

“Skipper, I don’t know! Hundreds, maybe. They must have hollowed out every gun on the ship, and they’ve spread to everywhere else too. They’re—” Cargill’s voice cut off.

“Jack!” Rod shouted. “Talker, have we got an alternate line to the First Lieutenant?”

Before the Quartermaster’s Mate could answer, Cargill came on the line again. “Close one, Skipper. Two armed miniatures came out of the auxiliary fire-control computer. We killed ‘em.”

Blaine thought furiously. He was losing all his command circuits, and he didn’t know how many men he had left. The computer was bewitched. Even if they did regain possession of MacArthur there was a good chance she couldn’t be made spaceworthy again. “You still on, Number One?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m going down to the air lock to talk to the Admiral. If I don’t call you in fifteen minutes, abandon ship. Fifteen minutes, Jack. Mark.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“And you can start rounding up the crew now. Port side only, Jack—that is, if she stays oriented where she is. The lock officers have orders to close the holes in the Field if she shifts.”

Rod motioned to his bridge crew and began working his way toward the air locks. The corridors were in confusion. Yellow clouds filled several—ciphogene. He’d had hopes for ending the Motie threat with gas, but it hadn’t worked and he didn’t know why.

The Marines had ripped out a number of bulkheads and barricaded themselves behind the debris. They poised watchfully, weapons ready.

“Civilians out?” Rod asked the officer in charge of the lock.

“Yes, sir. Far as we know. Skipper, I had the men make one sweep through that territory, but I don’t like to risk another. The Brownies are thick in civilian country—like they were living there or something.”

“Maybe they were, Piper,” Blaine said. He moved to the air lock and oriented his suit toward Lenin. The communication laser winked on, and he hung in space, holding himself steady to keep the security circuit open.

“Your situation?” Kutuzov demanded. Reluctantly, knowing what it would mean, Rod told him.

“Recommended action?” the Admiral snapped.

“MacArthur may never sail again, sir. I think I’ll have to abandon her and scuttle as soon as I’ve made a sweep to rescue any trapped crewmen.”

“And where will you be?”

“Leading the rescue party, sir.”

“No.” The voice was calm. “I accept your recommendation, Captain, but you are hereby ordered to abandon your ship. Log that order, Commander Borman,” he added to someone on his bridge. “You will issue the order to abandon and scuttle, turn over command to your First Lieutenant, and report aboard Lenin’s number-two cutter. Immediately.”

“Sir. Sir, I request permission to remain with my ship until my crew is safe.”

“Denied, Captain,” the merciless voice snapped. “I am quite aware that you have courage, Captain. Have you enough to live when you lose your command?”

“Sir—” Oh, God damn him to hell! Rod turned toward MacArthur, breaking the secure circuit. There was fighting at the air lock. Several miniatures had dissolved the bulkhead opposite the Marines’ barricade, and the joeys were pouring fire into the gap. Blaine gritted his teeth and turned away from the battle. “Admiral, you cannot order me to leave my crew and run!”

“I cannot? You find it hard to live now, Captain? You think they will whisper about you the rest of your life, and you are afraid of that? And you tell this to me? Carry out your orders, Captain My Lord Blaine.”

“No, sir.”

“You disobey direct order, Captain?”

“I can’t accept that order, sir. She’s still my ship.”

There was a long pause. “Your devotion to Navy tradition is admirable, Captain, but stupid. It is possible that you are only officer in Empire who can devise defense against this menace. You know more about aliens than anyone else in fleet. That knowledge is worth more than your ship. It is worth more than every man aboard your ship, now that civilians are evacuated. I cannot allow you to die, Captain. You will leave that ship even if I am required to send new commanding officer into her.”

“He’d never find me, Admiral. Excuse me, sir, I have work to do.”

“Stop!” There was another pause. “Very well, Captain. I will make agreement with you. If you will stay in communication with me, I will allow you to remain aboard MacArthur until you have abandoned and scuttled. At instant that you are no longer in communication with me, that is moment at which you no longer command MacArthur. Need I send Commander Borman there?”

The trouble is, Rod thought, he’s right. MacArthur’s doomed. Cargill can get the crew out as well as I can. Maybe I do know something important. But she’s my ship! “I’ll accept your proposition, sir. I can direct operations better from here anyway. There’s no communications left on the bridge.”

“Very well. I have your word, then.” The circuit went dead.

Rod turned back to the air lock. The Marines had won their skirmish, and Piper was waving to him. Rod went aboard. “Commander Cargill here,” the intercom said. “Skipper?”

“Yeah, Jack?”

“We’re fighting our way to port side, Skipper. Sinclair’s got his people ready to leave. Says he can’t hold the engine rooms without reinforcements. And a runner tells me there are civilians trapped in the starboard petty officers’ lounge. A Marine squad is there with them, but it’s a tough fight.”

“We’ve been ordered to abandon ship and scuttle, Number One.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We have to get those civilians out. Can you hold a route from bulkhead 160 forward? Maybe I can get some help in to let the scientists get that far.”

“I think we can, sir. But, Captain, I can’t get to the Field generator room! How do we scuttle?”

“I’ll take care of that, too. Get moving, Number One.”

“Aye aye, Skipper.”

Scuttle. The word had an unreal sound. Rod breathed deeply. The suit air had a sharp metallic taste. Or perhaps it wasn’t the air at all.

It was nearly an hour before one of Lenin’s boats pulled alongside the cutter. They watched it approach in silence.

“Relay from MacArthur through Lenin, sir,” the coxswain said. The screen lit.

The face on the screen wore Rod Blaine’s features but it wasn’t his face. Sally didn’t recognize him. He looked older, and the eyes were—dead. He stared at them, and they stared back. Finally Sally said it. “Rod, what’s happening?”

Blaine looked her in the eyes, then looked away. His expression hadn’t changed. He reminded Sally of something pickled in a bottle at the Imperial Museum. “Mr. Renner,” the image said. “Send all personnel over the line to Lenin’s boat. Clear the cutter. Now all of you, you’re going to get some funny orders from the boat’s pilot. Obey them, exactly as given. You won’t have a second chance, so don’t argue. Just do as you’re told.”

“Now, just a minute,” Horvath bellowed. “I—”

Rod cut him off. “Doctor, for reasons you will understand later, we are not going to explain a damned thing. Just do as you’re told.” He looked back to Sally. His eyes changed, just a little. Perhaps there was concern in them. Something, a tiny spark of life, came into them for a moment, anyway. She tried to smile, but failed. “Please, Sally,” he said. “Do exactly as Lenin’s pilot instructs you. All right. Out. Now.”

They stood immobile. Sally took a deep breath and turned toward the air lock. “Let’s go,” she said. She tried again to smile, but it only made her look more nervous.

The starboard air lock had been reconnected to the embassy ship. They left by the port side. Lenin’s boat crew had already rigged lines from the auxiliary vessel to the cutter. The boat was almost a twin for MacArthur’s cutter, a flat-topped lifting body with a shovel-blade reentry shield hanging below the nose.

Sally pulled herself gently along the cable to Lenin’s cutter, then cautiously moved through the hatch, She was halted when she entered the airlock. The mechanism cycled, and she felt pressure again.

Her suit was a woven fabric that fitted like an extra skin. A baggy protective garment covered that. The only space inside her suit that she didn’t fill was the helmet that joined the skintight body stocking with a neck seal.

“It will be necessary to search you, my lady,” a guttural-voiced officer said. She looked around: two armed Marines stood in the air lock with her. Their weapons weren’t aimed at her—not quite. But they stood alertly, and they were afraid.

“What is this?” she demanded.

“All in good time, my lady,” the officer said. He assisted her in detaching the air-bottle backpack from her suit. It was thrust into a transparent plastic container. The officer looked into her helmet after he took that off, then put it in with the backpack and her coveralls. “Thank you,” he muttered. “You will please now go aft. The others will join you there.”

Renner and the other military personnel were treated differently. “Strip,” the officer said. “Everything, if you please.” The Marines did not even do them the courtesy of pointing their weapons slightly away. When they had removed everything—Renner even had to put his signet ring into the plastic container—they were sent forward. Another Marine officer indicated battle armor, and two Marines helped them into it. There were no weapons in sight now.

“Damnedest strip-tease act I ever saw,” Renner said to the pilot. The coxswain nodded. “Mind telling me what it’s about?”

“Your captain will explain, sir,” the coxswain said.

“More Brownies!” Renner exclaimed.

“Is that it, Mr. Renner?” Whitbread asked from behind him. The midshipman was climbing into battle armor as instructed. He hadn’t dared ask anyone else, but Renner was easy to talk to.

Renner shrugged. There was an air of unreality about the situation. The cutter was packed with Marines and armor—many were MacArthur’s Marines. Gunner Kelley watched impassively from near the air lock, and he held his weapon trained at its door.

“That’s all of them,” a voice announced.

“Where is Chaplain Hardy?” Renner asked.

“With the civilians, sir,” the coxswain said. “A minute, please.” He worked at the communications gear. The screen lit with Blaine’s face.

“Secure circuit, sir,” the coxswain announced.

“Thank you. Staley.”

“Yes, Captain?” the senior midshipman answered.

“Mr. Staley, this cutter will shortly come alongside Lenin. The civilians and cutter crew except Cox’n Lafferty will transfer to the battleship, where they will be inspected by security personnel. After they have left, you will take command of Lenin’s number-one cutter and proceed to MacArthur. You will board MacArthur from the starboard side immediately aft of the starboard petty officers’ lounge. Your purpose is to create a diversion and engage any surviving enemies in that area in order to assist a group of civilians and Marines trapped in the lounge to escape. You will send Kelley and his Marines into that lounge with pressure suits and battle armor for twenty-five men. The equipment is already aboard. Send that party forward. Commander Cargill has secured the way forward of bulkhead one six zero.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Staley sounded incredulous. He stood at near-rigid attention despite the absence of gravity in the cutter.

Blaine almost smiled. At least there was a twitch to his lips. “The enemy, Mister, is several hundred miniature Moties. They are armed with hand weapons. Some have gas masks. They are not well organized, but they are quite deadly. You will satisfy yourself that there are no other passengers or crew in the midships starboard section of MacArthur. After that mission is accomplished, you will lead a party into the midships crew mess and send out the coffeepot. But be damned sure that pot is empty, Mr. Staley.”

“Coffeepot?” Renner said incredulously. Behind him Whitbread shook his head and murmured something to Potter.

“Coffeepot, Mr. Renner. It has been altered by the aliens, and the technique used could be of great value to the Empire. You will see other strange objects, Mr. Staley. Use your judgment about bringing them out—but under no circumstances will you send out anything that might contain a live alien. And watch the crewmen. The miniatures have killed several people, used their heads as decoys, and inhabited their battle armor. Be sure that a man in armor is a man, Mr. Staley. We haven’t seen them try that trick with a skintight pressure suit yet, but be damned careful.”

“Yessir,” Staley snapped. “Can we regain control of the ship, sir?”

“No.” Blaine fought visibly for control of himself. “You will not have long, Mister. Forty minutes after you enter MacArthur, activate all conventional destruct systems, then start the timer on that torpedo we rigged. Report to me in the main port entryway when you’ve got it done. Fifty-five minutes after you enter, Lenin will commence firing on MacArthur in any event. You have that?”

“Yes, sir,” Horst Staley said quietly. He looked at the others. Potter and Whitbread looked back uncertainly.

“Captain,” Renner said. “Sir, I remind you that I’m senior officer here.”

“I know that, Renner. I have a mission for you too. You will take Chaplain Hardy back aboard MacArthur’s cutter and assist him in recovering any equipment or notes that might be required. Another of Lenin’s boats will come for that, and you will see that everything is packed into a sealed container the boat will bring.”

“But—sir, I should be leading the boarding party!”

“You’re not a combat officer, Renner. Do you recall what you told me at lunch yesterday?”

Renner did. “I did not tell you I was a coward,” he grated.

“I’m aware of that. I am also aware that you are probably the most unpredictable officer I have. The Chaplain has been told only that there is a plague epidemic aboard MacArthur, and that we’re going back to the Empire before it spreads to everybody. That will be the official story to the Moties. They may not believe it, but Hardy’ll have a better chance of selling it to them if he believes it himself. I have to have somebody who knows the real situation along too.”

“One of the midshipmen—”

“Mr. Renner, get back aboard MacArthur’s cutter. Staley, you have your orders.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Renner departed, seething.

Three midshipmen and a dozen Marines hung from crash webbing in the main cabin of Lenin’s cutter. The civilians and regular crew were gone, and the boat moved away from Lenin’s black bulk.

“All right, Lafferty,” Staley said. “Take us to MacArthur’s starboard side. If nothing attacks us, you will ram, aiming for the tankage complex aft of bulkhead 185.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Lafferty did not react noticeably. He was a big-boned man, a plainsman from Tabletop. His hair was ash-blond and very short, and his face was all planes and angles.

The crash webbing was designed for high impacts. The midshipmen hung like flies in some monstrous spider web. Staley glanced at Whitbread. Whitbread looked at Potter.

Both looked away from the Marines behind them. “OK. Go,” Staley ordered. The drive roared.

The real defensive hull of any warship is the Langston Field. No material object could withstand the searing heat of fusion bombs and high energy lasers. Since anything that can get past the Field and the ship’s defensive fire will evaporate anything below, the hull of a warship is a relatively thin skin. It is, however, only relatively thin. A ship must be rigid enough to withstand high acceleration and jolt.

Some compartments and tanks, however, are big, and in theory can be crushed by enough impact momentum. In practice nobody had ever taken a combat party aboard a ship that way as far as Staley’s frantically searching memory could tell him. It was in the Book, though. You could get aboard a crippled ship with her Field intact by ramming. Staley wondered what damn fool had first tried it.

The long black blob that enclosed MacArthur became a solid black wall without visible motion. Then the shovel blade reentry shield went up. Horst watched blackness grow on the forward view screen as he peered over Lafferty’s shoulder.

The cutter surged backward. An instant of cold as they passed through the Field, then the screaming of grinding metal. They stopped.

Staley unclasped his crash webbing. “Get moving,” he ordered. “Kelley, cut our way through those tanks.”

“Yes, sir.” The Marines swept past. Two aimed a large cutting laser at the buckled metal that had once been the interior wall of a hydrogen tank. Cables stretched from the weapon back into the mangled cutter.

The tank wall collapsed, a section blown outward and narrowly missing the Marines. More air whistled out, and dead miniature Moties blew about like autumn leaves.

The corridor walls were gone. Where there had been a number of compartments there was a heap of ruins, cutoff bulkheads, surrealistic machinery, and everywhere dead miniatures. None seemed to have had pressure suits.

“Christ Almighty,” Staley muttered. “OK, Kelley, get moving with those suits. Let’s go.” He charged forward across the ruins to the next airtight compartment door. “Shows pressure on the other side,” he said. He reached into the communications box on the bulkhead and plugged in his suit mike. “Anybody there?”

“Corporal Hasner here, sir,” a voice answered promptly. “Be careful back there, that area’s full of miniatures.”

“Not now,” Staley answered. “What’s your status in there?”

“Nine civilians without no suits in here, sir. Three Marines left alive. We don’t know how to get them scientist people out without suits.”

“We’ve got suits,” Staley said grimly. “Can you protect the civilians until we can get through this door? We’re in vacuum.”

“Lord, yes, sir. Wait a minute.” Something whirred. Instruments showed the pressure falling beyond the bulkhead companionway. Then the dogs turned. The door opened to reveal an armored figure inside the petty officers’ mess room. Behind Hasner two other Marines trained weapons on Staley as he entered. Behind them—Staley gasped.

The civilians were at the other end of the compartment. They wore the usual white coveralls of the scientific staff. Staley recognized Dr. Blevins, the veterinarian. The civilians were chattering among themselves— “But there’s no air in here!” Staley yelled.

“Not here, sir,” Hasner said. He pointed. “Some kind of box thing there, makes like a curtain, Mr. Staley. Air can’t get through it but we can.”

Kelley growled and moved his squad into the mess room. The suits were flung to the civilians.

Staley shook his head in wonder. “Kelley. Take charge here. Get everybody forward—and take that box with you if it’ll move!”

“It moves,” Blevins said. He was speaking into the microphone of the helmet Kelley had passed him, but he wasn’t wearing the helmet. “It can be turned on and off, too. Corporal Hasner killed some miniatures who were doing things to it.”

“Fine. We’ll take it,” Staley snapped. “Get ‘em moving, Kelley.”

“Sir!” The Marine Gunner stepped gingerly through the invisible barrier. He had to push. “Like—maybe kind of like the Field, Mr. Staley. Only not so thick.”

Staley growled deep in his throat and motioned to the other midshipmen. “Coffeepot,” he said. He sounded as if he didn’t believe it. “Lafferty. Kruppman. Janowitz. You’ll come with us.” He went back through the companionway to the ruins beyond.

There was a double-door airtight companionway at the other end, and Staley motioned Whitbread to open it. The dogs turned easily, and they crowded into the small air lock to peer through the thick glass into the main starboard connecting corridor.

“Looks normal enough,” Whitbread whispered.

It seemed to be. They went through the air lock in two cycles and pulled themselves along the corridor walls by hand holds to the entryway into the main crew mess room.

Staley looked through the thick glass into the mess compartment. “God’s teeth!”

“What is it, Horst?” Whitbread asked. He crowded his helmet against Staley’s.

There were dozens of miniatures in the compartment. Most were armed with laser weapons—and they were firing at each other. There was no order to the battle. It seemed that every miniature was fighting every other, although that might have been only a first impression. The compartment drifted with a pinkish fog: Motie blood. Dead and wounded Moties flopped in an insane dance as the room winked with green-blue pencils of light.

“Not in there,” Staley whispered. He remembered he was speaking through his suit radio and raised his voice. “We’d never get through that alive. Forget the coffeepot.” They moved on through the corridor and searched for other human survivors.

There were none, Staley led them back toward the crew messroom. “Kruppman,” he barked. “Take Janowitz and get this corridor into vacuum. Burn out bulkheads, use grenades—anything, but get it into vacuum. Then get the hell off this ship.”

“Aye aye, sir.” When the Marines rounded a turn in the steel corridor the midshipmen lost contact with them. The suit radios were line-of-sight only. They could still hear, though. MacArthur was alive with sound. High-pitched screams, the sounds of tearing metal, hums and buzzes—none of it was familiar.

“She’s not ours any more,” Potter murmured.

There was a whoosh. The corridor was in vacuum. Staley tossed a thermite grenade against the mess-room bulkhead and stepped back around a turn. Light flared briefly, and Staley charged back to fire his hand laser at the still-glowing spot on the bulkhead. The others fired with him.

The wall began to bulge, then broke through. Air whistled into the corridor, with a cloud of dead Moties. Staley turned the dogs on the companionway but nothing happened. Grimly they burned at the bulkhead until the hole was large enough to crawl into.

There was no sign of live miniatures. “Why can’t we do that all over the ship?” Whitbread demanded. “We could get back in control of her…”

“Maybe,” Staley answered. “Lafferty. Get the coffee maker and take it port side. Move, we’ll cover you.”

The plainsman waved and dove down the corridor in the direction the Marines had vanished. “Had we nae best be goin’wi’ him?” Potter asked.

“Torpedo,” Staley barked. “We’ve got to detonate the torpedo.”

“But, Horst,” Whitbread protested. “Can’t we get control of the ship? I haven’t seen any miniatures with vacuum suits.”

“They can build those magic pressure curtains,” Staley reminded him. “Besides, we’ve got our orders.” He pointed aft, and they moved ahead of him. Now that MacArthur was clear of humans they hurried, burning through airtight compartments and grenading the corridors beyond. Potter and Whitbread shuddered at the damage they were doing to the ship. Their weapons were not meant to be used aboard a working spacecraft.

The torpedoes were in place: Staley and Whitbread had been part of the work crew that welded them on either side of the Field generator. Only—the generator was gone. A hollow shell remained where it had been.

Potter was reaching for the timers that would trigger the torpedo. “Wait,” Staley ordered. He found a direct wire intercom outlet and plugged his suit in. “Anyone, this is Midshipman Horst Staley in the Field generator compartment. Anyone there?”

“Aye aye, Mr. Staley,” a voice answered. “A moment, sir, here’s the Captain.” Captain Blaine came on the line.

Staley explained the situation. “The Field generator’s gone, sir, but the Field seems strong as ever…”

There was a long pause. Then Blaine swore viciously, but cut himself off. “You’re overtime, Mr. Staley. We’ve orders to close the holes in the Field and get aboard Lenin’s boats in five minutes. You’ll never get out before Lenin opens fire.”

“No, sir. What should we do?”

Blaine hesitated a moment. “I’ll have to buck that one up to the Admiral. Stay right where you are.”

A sudden roaring hurricane sent them scurrying for cover. There was silence, then Potter said unnecessarily, “We’re under pressure. You Brownies must have repaired one or another door.”

“Then they’ll soon be here.” Whitbread cursed. “Damn them anyway.”

They waited. “What’s keeping the Captain?” Whitbread demanded. There was no possible answer, and they crouched tensely, their weapons drawn, while around them they heard MacArthur coming back to life. Her new masters were approaching.

“I won’t leave without the middies,” Rod was saying to the Admiral.

“You are certain they cannot reach after port air lock?” Kutuzov said.

“Not in ten minutes, Admiral. The Brownies have control of that part of the ship. The kids would have to fight all the way.”

“Then what do you suggest?”

“Let them use the lifeboats, sir,” Rod said hopefully. There were lifeboats in various parts of the ship, with a dozen not twenty meters from the Field generator compartment. Basically solid-fuel motors with inflatable cabins, they were meant only to enable a refugee to survive for a few hours in the event that the ship was damaged beyond repair—or about to explode. Either was a good description of MacArthur’s present status.

“The miniatures may have built recording devices and transmitters into lifeboats,” Kutuzov said. “A method of giving large Moties all of MacArthur’s secrets.” He spoke to someone else. “Do you think that possible, Chaplain?”

Blaine heard Chaplain Hardy speaking in the background. “No, sir. The miniatures are animals. I’ve always thought so, the adult Moties say so, and all the evidence supports the hypothesis. They would be capable of that only if directly ordered—and, Admiral, if they’ve been that anxious to communicate with the Moties, you can be certain they’ve already done it.”

“Da,” Kutuzov muttered. “There is no point in sacrificing these officers for nothing. Captain Blaine, you will instruct them to use lifeboats, but caution them that no miniatures must come out with them. When they leave, you will immediately come aboard Lenin.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Rod sighed in relief and rang the intercom line to the generator compartment. “Staley: the Admiral says you can use the lifeboats. Be careful there aren’t any miniatures in them, and you’ll be searched before you board one of Lenin’s boats. Trigger the torpedoes and get away. Got that?”

“Aye aye, sir.” Staley turned to the other middies. “Lifeboats,” he snapped. “Let’s—”

Green light winked around them. “Visors down!” Whitbread screamed. They dove behind the torpedoes while the beam swung wildly around the compartment. It slashed holes in the bulkheads, then through compartment walls beyond, finally through the hull itself. Air rushed out and the beam stopped swinging, but it remained on, pouring energy through the hull into the Field beyond.

Staley swung his sun visor up. It was fogged with silver metal deposits. He ducked carefully under the beam to look at its source.

It was a heavy hand laser. Half a dozen miniatures had been needed to carry it. Some of them, dead and dry, clung to the double hand hold.

“Let’s move,” Staley ordered. He inserted a key into the lock on the torpedo panel. Beside him Potter did the same thing. They turned the keys—and had ten minutes to live. Staley rushed to the intercom. “Mission accomplished, sir.”

They moved through the airtight open compartment’s door into the main after corridor and rushed sternward, flinging themselves from hand hold to hand hold. Null-gee races were a favorite if slightly non-regulation game with midshipmen, and they were glad of the practice they’d had. Behind them the timer would be clicking away—

“Should be here,” Staley said. He blasted through an airtight door, then fired a man-sized gap through the outer hull itself. Air whistled out—the miniatures had somehow again enclosed them in the stinking atmosphere of Mote Prime even as they had come aft. Wisps of ice-crystal fog hung in the vacuum.

Potter found the lifeboat inflation controls and smashed the glass cover with his pistol butt. They stepped out of the way and waited for the lifeboats to inflate.

Instead the flooring swung up. Stored beneath the deck was a line of cones, each two meters across at the base, each about eight meters long.

“The Midnight Brownie strikes again,” said Whitbread.

The cones were all identical, and fabricated from scratch. The miniatures must have worked for weeks beneath the deck, tearing up the lifeboats and other equipment to replace them with—these things. Each cone had a contoured crash chair in the big end and a flared rocket nozzle in the point.

“Look at the damn things, Potter,” Staley ordered. “See if there’s anywhere Brownies could hide in them.” There didn’t seem to be. Except for the conical hull, which was solid, everything was open framework. Potter tapped and pried while his friends stood guard.

He was looking for an opening in the cone when he caught a flicker of motion in the corner of his eye. He snatched a grenade from his belt and turned. A space suit floated out of the corridor wall. It held a heavy laser in both hands.

Staley’s nerves showed in his voice. “You! Identify yourself!”

The figure raised its weapon. Potter threw the grenade.

Intense green light lashed out through the explosion, lighting the corridor weirdly and tearing up one of the conical lifeboats. “Was it a man?” Potter cried. “Was it? The arms bent wrong! Its legs stuck straight out—what was it?”

“An enemy,” Staley said. “I think we’d better get out of here. Board the boats while we’ve still got ‘em.” He climbed into the reclined contour seat of one of the undamaged cones. After a moment the others each selected a seat.

Horst found a control panel on a bar and swung it out in front of him. There were no labels anywhere. Sentient or nonsentient, all Moties seemed to be expected to solve the workings of a machine at a glance.

“I’m going to try the big square button,” Staley said firmly. His voice sounded oddly hollow through the suit radio. Grimly he pushed the button.

A section of the hull blew away beneath him. The cone swung out as on a sling. Rockets flared briefly. Cold and blackness—and he was outside the Field.

Two other cones popped out of the black sea. Frantically Horst directed his suit radio toward the looming black hulk of Lenin no more than a kilometer away. “Midshipman Staley here! The lifeboats have been altered. There are three of us, and we’re alone aboard them.”

A fourth cone popped from the blackness. Staley turned in his seat. It looked like a man— Three hand weapons fired simultaneously. The fourth cone glowed and melted, but they fired for a long time. “One of the—uh—” Staley didn’t know what to report. His circuit might not be secure.

“We have you on the screens, Midshipman,” a heavily accented voice said. “Move away from MacArthur, and wait for pickup. Did you complete your mission?”

“Yes, sir.” Staley glanced at his watch. “Four minutes to go, sir.”

“Then move fast, Mister,” the voice ordered.

But how? Staley wondered. The controls had no obvious function. While he searched frantically, his rocket fired. But what—he hadn’t touched anything.

“My rocket’s firing again,” said Whitbread’s voice. He sounded calm—much calmer than Staley felt.

“Aye, and mine,” Potter added. “Never look a gift horse in the mouth. We’re movin’ away from you ship.”

The rumble continued. They were accelerating together at nearly a standard gee, with Mote Prime a vast green crescent to one side. On the other was the deep black of the Coal Sack, and the blacker mass of Lenin. The boats accelerated for a long time.

32. Lenin

The young Russian midshipman carried himself proudly. His battle armor was spotless, and all his equipment arranged properly by the Book. “The Admiral requests that you come to the bridge,” he chirped in flawless Anglic.

Rod Blaine followed listlessly. They floated through the air lock from Lenin’s number-two hangar deck to a flurry of salutes from Kutuzov’s Marines. The full honors of a visiting captain only stirred his grief. He’d given his last orders, and he’d been the last man to leave his ship. Now he was an observer, and this was probably the last time anyone would render him boarding honors.

Everything aboard the battleship seemed too large, yet he knew it was only an illusion. With few exceptions the compartments and corridors of capital ships were standardized, and he might as well have been aboard MacArthur. Lenin was at battle stations, with all her airtight doors closed and dogged. Marines were posted at the more important passageway controls, but otherwise they saw no one, and Rod was glad of that. He could not have faced any of his former crew. Or passengers.

Lenin’s bridge was enormous. She was fitted out as a flagship, and in addition to the screens and command posts for the ship herself there were a dozen couches for the Admiral’s battle staff. Rod woodenly acknowledged the Admiral’s greeting and sank gratefully into the flag Captain’s chair. He didn’t even wonder where Commander Borman, Kutuzov’s flag lieutenant and chief of staff, had gone. He was alone with the Admiral at the flag command station.

MacArthur was displayed from half a dozen views on the screens above him. The last of Lenin’s boats were pulling away from her. Staley must have accomplished his mission, Rod thought. Now she has only a few minutes to live. When she’s gone I’ll really be finished. A newly promoted captain who lost his ship on her first mission—even the Marquis’ influence would not overcome that. Blind hatred for the Mote and all its inhabitants welled up inside him.

“Dammit, we ought to be able to get her back from a bunch of—of goddamn animals!” he blurted.

Kutuzov looked up in surprise. His craggy eyebrows came closer together in a frown, then relaxed slightly. “Da. If that is all they are. But suppose they are more than that? In any event is too late.”

“Yes, sir. They triggered the torpedoes.” Two hydrogen bombs. The Field generator would vaporize in milliseconds, and MacArthur would— He writhed in pain at the thought. When the screens flared, she’d be gone. He looked up suddenly. “Where are my midshipmen, Admiral?”

Kutuzov grunted. “They have decelerated to a lower orbit and are beyond the horizon. I will send a boat for them when everything is clear.”

Strange, Rod thought. But they couldn’t come directly to Lenin by the Admiral’s orders, and the boats wouldn’t provide any real protection when MacArthur exploded. What they had done was unnecessary caution since the torpedoes did not give off a large fraction of their energy in x-rays and neutrons, but it was understandable caution.

The timers twirled noiselessly to zero. Kutuzov watched grimly as another minute, and another, went past. “The torpedoes did not fire,” he said accusingly.

“No, sir.” Rod’s misery was complete. And now—

“Captain Mikhailov. You will please prepare main battery to fire on MacArthur.” Kutuzov turned his dark gaze to Rod. “I dislike this, Captain. Not so much as you. But I dislike it. Do you prefer to give order yourself? Captain Mikhailov, you permit?”

“Da, Admiral.”

“Thank you, sir.” Rod took a deep breath. A man ought to kill his own dog. “Shoot!”

Space battles are lovely to see. The ships approach like smooth black eggs, their drives radiating dazzling light. Scintillations in the black flanks record the explosions of torpedoes that have escaped destruction from the stabbing colors of the secondary lasers. The main batteries pour energy into each other’s Fields, and lines of green and ruby reflect interplanetary dust.

Gradually the Fields begin to glow. Dull red, brighter yellow, glaring green, as the Fields become charged with energy. The colored eggs are linked by red and green threads from the batteries, and the colors change.

Now three green threads linked Lenin and MacArthur. Nothing else happened. The battle cruiser did not move and made no attempt to fight back. Her Field began to glow red, shading to yellow where the beams converged amidships. When it became white it would overload and the energy stored in it would be released—inward and out. Kutuzov watched in growing puzzlement.

“Captain Mikhailov. Please take us back a klick.” The lines on the Admiral’s brow deepened as Lenin’s drive moved her gently away from MacArthur.

MacArthur shaded green with faintly bluish spots. The image receded on the screens. Hot spots vanished as the lasers spread slightly. A thousand kilometers away she glowed richly in the telescopes.

“Captain, are we at rest with respect to MacArthur?” Kutuzov asked.

“Da, Admiral.”

“She appears to move closer.”

“Da, Admiral. Her Field is expanding.”

“Expanding?” Kutuzov turned to Rod. “You have explanation?”

“No, sir.” He wanted nothing more than oblivion. Speaking was pain, awareness agony. But he tried to think. “The Brownies must have rebuilt the generator, sir. And they always improve anything they work on.”

“It seems pity to destroy it,” Kutuzov muttered. “Expanded like that, with that great radiating surface, MacArthur would be match for any vessel in Fleet…”

MacArthur’s Field was violet now, and huge. It filled the screens, and Kutuzov adjusted his to drop the magnification by a factor of ten. She was a great violet balloon tethered by green threads. They waited, fascinated, as ten minutes went by. Fifteen.

“No ship has ever survived that long in violet,” Kutuzov muttered. “Are you still convinced we deal only with animals, Captain Blaine?”

“The scientists are convinced, sir. They convinced me,” he added carefully. “I wish Dr. Horvath were here now.”

Kutuzov grunted as if struck in the belly. “That fool. Pacifist. He would not understand what he saw.” They watched in silence for another minute.

The intercom buzzed. “Admiral, there is a signal from the Mote embassy ship,” the communications officer announced.

Kutuzov scowled. “Captain Blaine. You will take that call.”

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“Answer the call from the Moties. I will not speak to any alien directly.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Its face was any Motie’s face, but it sat uncomfortably erect, and Rod was not surprised when it announced, “I am Dr. Horvath’s Fyunch(click). I have distressing news for you, Captain Blaine. And by the way, we appreciate the warning you gave us—we don’t understand why you wish to destroy your ship, but if we had been alongside—”

Blaine rubbed the bridge of his nose. “We’re fighting a plague. Maybe killing MacArthur stopped it. We can hope. Listen, we’re a little busy now. What’s your message?”

“Yes, of course. Captain, the three small craft which escaped from MacArthur have attempted reentry to Mote Prime. I am sorry, but none survived.”

Lenin’s bridge seemed to fog. “Reentry with lifeboats? But that’s plain silly. They wouldn’t—”

“No, no, they tried to land. We tracked them part way— Captain, we have recordings of them, They burned up, completely—”

“God damn it to hell! They were safe!”

“We’re terribly sorry.”

Kutuzov’s face was a mask. He mouthed: “Recordings.”

Rod nodded. He felt very tired. He told the Motie, “We would like those recordings. Are you certain that none of my young officers survived?”

“Quite certain, Captain. We are very distressed by this. Naturally, we had no idea they would attempt such a thing, and there was absolutely nothing we could do under the circumstances.”

“Of course not. Thank you.” Rod turned off the screen and looked back at the battle display in front of him.

Kutuzov muttered, “So there are no bodies and no wreckage. Very convenient.” He touched a button on the arm of his command couch and said, “Captain Mikhailov, please send cutter to look for the midshipmen.” He turned back to Rod. “There will be nothing, of course.”

“You don’t believe the Moties, do you, sir?” Rod asked.

“Do you, Captain?”

“I—I don’t know, sir. I don’t see what we can do about it.”

“Nor I, Captain. The cutter will search, and will find nothing. We do not know where they attempted reentry. The planet is large. Even if they survive and are free, we could search for days and not find them. And if they are captives—they will never be found.” He grunted again and spoke into his command circuit. “Mikhailov, see that the cutter searches well. And use torpedoes to destroy that vessel, if you please.”

“Yes, sir.” Lenin’s captain spoke quietly at his post on the opposite side of the big bridge. A score of torpedoes arced out toward MacArthur. They couldn’t go through the Field; the stored energy there would fuse them instantly. But they exploded all at once, a perfect time-on-target salvo, and a great ripple of multicolored light swept around MacArthur’s violet-glowing surface. Bright white spots appeared and vanished.

“Burn-through in nine places,” the gunnery officer announced.

“Burn-through into what?” Rod asked innocently. She was still his ship, and she was fighting valiantly for her life…

The Admiral snarled. The ship was five hundred meters inward from that hellish violet surface—the bright flashes might never have reached her, or might have missed entirely.

“Guns will continue to fire. Launch another torpedo attack,” Kutuzov ordered.

Another fleet of glowing darts arced out. They exploded all across the violet shimmering surface. More white spots rippled across, and there was an expanding ripple of violet flame.

And then MacArthur was as she was. A violet fire balloon a full kilometer in diameter, tethered by threads of green light.

A mess steward handed Rod a cup of coffee. Absently he sipped. It tasted terrible.

“Shoot!” Kutuzov commanded. He glared at the screens in hatred. “Shoot!”

And suddenly it happened. MacArthur’s Field expanded enormously, turned blue, yellow—and vanished. Automatic scanners whirred and the magnification of the screens increased. The ship was there.

She glowed red, and parts had melted. She should not have been there at all. When a Field collapses, everything inside it vaporizes…

“They must have fried in there,” Rod said mechanically.

“Da. Shoot!”

The green lights stabbed out. MacArthur changed, bubbled, expanded, fuming air into space. A torpedo moved almost slowly to her and exploded. Still the laser batteries fired. When Kutuzov finally ordered them off, there was nothing left but vapor.

Rod and the Admiral watched the empty screen for a long time. Finally the Admiral turned away. “Call in the boats, Captain Mikhailov. We are going home.”

33. Planetfall

Three smallish cones, falling. A man nested in each, like an egg in an egg cup.

Horst Staley was in the lead. He could see forward on a small square screen, but his rear view was all around him. Except for his pressure suit he was naked to space. He turned gingerly, to see two other flame-tipped cones behind him. Somewhere, far beyond the horizon, were MacArthur and Lenin. There was no chance that his suit radio would carry that far, but he turned to the hailing frequency and called anyway. There was no answer.

It had all happened so fast. The cones had fired retrorockets and by the time he had called Lenin it had been too late. Perhaps the signal crew had been busy with something else, perhaps he had been slow— Horst felt suddenly alone.

They continued to fall. The rockets cut off.

“Horst!” It was Whitbread’s voice. Staley answered.

“Horst, these things are going to reenter!”

“Yeah. Stick with it. What else can we do?”

That did not call for an answer. In lonely silence three small cones fell toward the bright green planet below. Then: reentry.

It was not the first time for any of them. They knew the colors of the plasma field that builds before a ship’s nose, colors differing according to the chemistry of the ablation shield. But this time they were practically naked to it. Would there be radiation? Heat?

Whitbread’s voice reached Staley through the static. “I’m trying to think like a Brownie, and it isn’t easy. They knew about our suits. They’d know how much radiation they’d stop. How much do they think we can take? And heat?”

“I’ve changed my mind,” Staley heard Potter say. “I am not going down.”

Staley tried to ignore their laughter. He was in charge of three lives, and he took it seriously. He tried to relax his muscles as he waited for heat, turbulence, unfelt radiation, tumbling of the cone, discomfort and death.

Landscape streamed past him through plasma distortions. Circular seas and arcs of river. Vast stretches of city. Mountains cased in ice and cityscape, the continuous city engulfing the slopes to the snowy peaks. A long stretch of ocean; would the damn cones float? More land. The cones slowing, the features getting larger. Air whipping around them now. Boats on a lake, tiny specks, hordes of them. A stretch of green forest, sharply bounded, laced by roads.

The rim of Staley’s cone opened and a ring of parachute streamed back. Staley sagged deep into the contoured seat. For a minute he saw only blue sky. Then came a bone-jarring thump. He cursed in his mind. The cone teetered and toppled on its side.

Potter’s voice rang in Staley’s ears. “I hae found the hover controls! Look for a sliding knob near the center, if the beasties hae done the same to all. That is the thrust control, and moving the whole bloody control panel on its support tilts the rocket.”

Too bad he hadn’t found it sooner! Staley thought. He said, “Get near the ground and hover there. The fuel may burn out. Did you find a parachute release, Potter?”

“No. ‘Tis hanging under me. Yon rocket flame must hae burned it away by now. Where are you?”

“I’m down. Let me just get loose—” Staley opened the crash webbing and tumbled out on his back. The seat was 30 cm lower within the cone. He drew his weapon and burned out a hole to examine the space below. Compressible foam filled the compartment. “When you get down, make sure there are no Brownies aboard the lifeboat,” he ordered crisply.

“Damn! I nearly flipped over,” came Whitbread’s voice. “These things are tricky—”

“I see you, Jonathon!” Potter shouted. “Just hover and I’ll come to you.”

“Then look for my parachute,” Staley ordered.

“I don’t see you. We could be twenty kilometers apart. Your signal is none too strong,” Whitbread answered.

Staley struggled to his feet. “First things first,” he muttered. He looked the lifeboat over carefully. There was no place a miniature might have hidden and lived through reentry, but he looked again to be sure. Then he switched to hailing frequency and tried to call Lenin—expected no answer and got none. Suit radios operate on line of sight only and they are intentionally not very powerful, otherwise all of space would be filled with the chatter of suited men. The redesigned lifeboats had nothing resembling a radio. How did the Brownies intend for survivors to call for help?

Staley stood uncertainly, not yet adjusted to gravity. There were cultivated fields all around him, alternating rows of purple eggplant-looking bushes with chest-high crowns of dark leaves, and low bushes bright with grain. The rows went on forever in all directions.

“Still haven’t spotted you yet, Horst,” Whitbread reported. “This is getting us nowhere. Horst, do you see a big, low building that gleams like a mirror? It’s the only building in sight.”

Staley spotted it, a metal-gleaming thing beyond the horizon. It was a long walk away, but it was the only landmark in sight. “Got it.”

“We’ll make for that and meet you there,”

“Good. Wait for me.”

“Head that way, Gavin,” Whitbread’s voice said.

“Right,” came the reply. There was more chatter between the other two, and Horst Staley felt very much alone.

“Wup! My rocket’s out!” Potter shouted.

Whitbread watched Potter’s cone drop toward the ground. It hit point first, hesitated, and toppled into the plants. Whitbread shouted, “Gavin, are you all right?”

There were rustling sounds. Then Whitbread heard: “Oh, sometimes I get a twinge in my right elbow when the weather’s nasty… old football injury. Get as far as you can, Jonathon. I’ll meet you both at the building.”

“Aye aye.” Whitbread tilted the cone forward on his rocket The building was large ahead of him.

It was large. At first there had been nothing to give it scale; now he had been flying toward it for ten minutes or more.

It was a dome with straight sides blending into a low, rounded roof. There were no windows, and no other features except a rectangular break that might have been a door, ridiculously small in the enormous structure. The gleam of sunlight on the roof was more than metallic; it was mirror-bright.

Whitbread flew low, traveling quite slowly. There was something awesome about the building set in the endless croplands. That more than the fear that his motor might burn out checked his first impulse to rush to the structure.

The rocket held. The miniatures might have changed the chemicals in the solid motor; no two things built by Moties were ever quite identical. Whitbread landed just outside the rectangular doorway. This close the door loomed over him. It had been dwarfed by the building.

“I’m here,” he almost whispered, then laughed at himself. “There’s a doorway. It’s big and closed. Funny—there aren’t any roads leading here, and the crops grow right up to the edge of the dome.”

Staley’s voice: “Perhaps planes land on the roof.”

“I don’t think so, Horst. The roof is rounded; I don’t think there are ever many visitors. Must be some kind of storage. Or maybe there’s a machine inside that runs itself.”

“Best not fool with it. Gavin, are you all right too?”

“Aye, Horst. I’ll be at yon building in half an hour. See you there.”

Staley prepared for a longer hike. There were no emergency rations that he could see in the lifeboat. He thought for a while before removing his combat armor and the pressure suit under it. There weren’t any secrets there. He took the helmet and dogged it onto the neck seal, then rigged it as an air filter. Then he took the radio out of the suit and slung it on his belt, first making one last attempt to contact Lenin. There was no answer. What else? Radio, water bag, sidearm. It would have to do.

Staley looked carefully around the horizon. There was only the one building—no chance of walking toward the wrong one. He started out toward it, glad of the low gravity, and swung easily into stride.

A half-hour later he saw the first Motie. He was practically alongside before he noticed it: a creature different from any he’d seen before, and just the height of the plants. It was working between the rows, smoothing soil with its hands, pulling out weeds to lay between the careful furrows. It watched him approach. When he came alongside it turned back to work.

The Motie was not quite a Brown. The fur patches were thicker, and more thick fur encased all three arms and the legs. The left hand was about the same as a Brown’s but the right hands had five fingers each, plus a bud, and the fingers were square and short. The legs were thick and the feet large and flat. The head was a Brown’s with drastically back-sloping forehead.

If Sally Fowler was right, that meant that the parietal area was almost nil. “Hello,” Horst said anyway. The Motie looked back at him for a second, then pulled out a weed.

Afterwards he saw many of them. They watched him just long enough to be sure he wasn’t destroying plants; then they lost interest. Horst hiked on in the bright sunshine toward the mirror-bright building. It was much farther than he had thought.

Mr. Midshipman Jonathon Whitbread waited. He had done enough of that since joining, the Navy; but he was only seventeen standard years old, and at that age waiting is never really easy.

He sat near the tip of the reentry cone, high enough to bring his head above the plants. In the city the buildings had blocked his view of this world. Here he saw the entire horizon. The sky was brown all the way around, shading to something that might have had blue tinges directly overhead. Clouds roiled to the east in thick patches, and a few dirty-white cumulus scudded overhead.

The sun was just overhead too. He decided he must be near the equator, and remembered that Castle City was far to the north. He could not sense the greater width of the sun’s disc, because he could not look directly at it; but it was more comfortable to look at near than the small sun of New Scotland. The sense of an alien world was on him, but there was nothing to see. His eyes kept straying to the mirror-surfaced building. Presently he got up to examine the door.

It was a good ten meters high. Impressively tall to Whitbread, a gigantic thing for a Motie. But were Moties impressed by size? Whitbread thought not. The door must be functional—what was ten meters high? Heavy machinery? There was no sound at all when he put his pickup microphone against the smooth metallic surface.

At one side of the alcove containing the door was a panel mounted on a stout spring. Behind the panel was what seemed to be a combination lock. And that was that—except that Moties expected each other to solve such puzzles at a glance. A key lock would have been a NO TRESPASSING sign. This was not.

Probably it was intended to keep out—what? Browns? Whites? Laborers and the nonsentient classes? Probably all of them. A combination lock could be thought of as a form of communication.

Potter arrived panting, his helmet nearly awash with sweat, a water bag hanging from his belt. He turned his helmet mike to activate a small speaker and cut off his radio. “I had to try the Mote Prime air for myself,” he said. “Now I know. Well, what hae you found?”

Whitbread showed him. He also adjusted his own mike. No point in broadcasting everything they said.

“Um. I wish Dr. Buckman were here. Those are Motie numbers—aye, and the Mote solar system, with the dial where the Mote ought to be. Let me see…”

Whitbread watched interestedly as Potter stared at the dial. The New Scot pursed his lips, then said, “Aye. The gas giant is three point seven two times as far from the Mote as Mote Prime. Hmmm.” He reached into his shirt pocket and took out the ever-present computer box. “Umm… three point eight eight, base twelve. Now which way does the dial go?”

“Then again, it might be somebody’s birthday,” said Whitbread. He was glad to see Gavin Potter. He was glad to see anyone human here. But the New Scot’s meddling with the dials was—disturbing. Left, right, left, right, Gavin Potter turned the dials…

“I seem to remember Horst gave us orders concerning this building.” Whitbread was uneasy.

“Best not fool with it. Hardly orders. We came to learn about Moties, did we not?”

“Well…” It was an interesting puzzle. “Try left again,” Whitbread suggested. “Hold it.” Whitbread pushed the symbol representing Mote Prime. It depressed with a click. “Keep going left.”

“Aye. The Motie astronomical maps show the planets going counterclockwise.”

On the third digit the door began to slide upward. “It works!” Whitbread shouted.

The door slid up to a height of one and a half meters. Potter looked at Whitbread and said, “Now what?”

“You’re kidding.”

“We have our orders,” Potter said slowly. They sat down between the plants and looked at each other. Then looked at the dome. There was light inside, and they could easily see under the door. There were buildings in there…

Staley had been walking for three hours when he saw the plane. It was high up and moving fast, and he waved at it, not expecting to be seen. He was not and he walked on.

Presently he saw the plane again. It was behind him, much lower, and he thought it had spread wings. It settled lower and vanished behind the low rolling hills where he had come down. Staley shrugged. It would find his parachute and lifeboat and see his tracks leading away. The direction should be obvious. There was nowhere else to go.

In a few minutes the plane was higher and coming straight toward him. It was moving slowly now, obviously searching. He waved again, although he had a momentary impulse to hide, which was plainly silly. He needed to be found, although what he would say to a Motie was not at all clear.

The plane moved past him and hovered. Jet pipes curved down and forward, and it dropped dangerously fast to settle into the plants. There were three Moties inside, and a Brown-and-white emerged quickly.

“Horst!” it called in Whitbread’s voice. “Where are the others?”

Staley waved toward the rounded dome. It was still an hour’s march away.

Whitbread’s Motie seemed to sag. “That’s torn it. Horst, are they there yet?”

“Sure. They’re waiting for me. They’ve been there about three hours.”

“Oh, my God. Maybe they couldn’t get inside. Whitbread couldn’t get inside. Come on, Horst.” She gestured toward the plane. “You’ll have to squeeze in somehow.”

Another Brown-and-white was inside and the pilot was a Brown. Whitbread’s Motie sang something ranging through five octaves and using at least nine tones. The other Brown-and-white gestured wildly. They made room for Staley between the contoured seats, and the Brown did things to the controls. The plane rose and shot toward the building ahead. “Maybe they didn’t get in,” Whitbread’s Motie repeated. “Maybe.”

Horst crouched uncomfortably in the speeding jet and wondered. He didn’t like this at all. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

Whitbread’s Motie looked at him strangely. “Maybe nothing.” The other two Moties said nothing at all.

34. Trespassers

Whitbread and Potter stood alone within the dome. They stared in wonder.

The dome was only a shell. A single light source very like an afternoon sun blazed halfway down its slope. Moties used that kind of illumination in many of the buildings Whitbread had seen.

Underneath the dome it was like a small city—but not quite. Nobody was home. There was no sound, no motion, no light in any of the windows. And the buildings…

There was no coherency to this city. The buildings jarred horribly against each other. Whitbread winced at two—clean-lined many-windowed pillars framing what might have been an oversized medieval cathedral, all gingerbread, a thousand cornices guarded by what Bury’s Motie had said were Motie demons.

Here were a hundred styles of architecture and at least a dozen levels of technology. Those geodesic forms could not have been built without prestressed concrete or something more sophisticated, not to mention the engineering mathematics. But this building nearest the gate was of sun-baked mud bricks. Here a rectangular solid had walls of partly silvered glass; there the walls were of gray stone, and the tiny windows had no glass in them, only shutters to seal them from the elements.

“Rain shutters. It must have been here before the dome,” Potter said.

“Anyone can see that. The dome is almost new. That cathedral, it might be, that cathedral in the center is so old it’s about to fall apart.”

“Look there. Yon parabolic-hyperboloid structure has been cantilevered out from a wall. But look at the wall!”

“Yah, it must have been part of another building. God knows how old that is.” The wall was over a meter thick, and ragged around the edges and the top. It was made of dressed stone blocks that must have massed five hundred kilos each. Some vinelike plant had invaded it, surrounded it, permeated it to the extent that by now it must be holding the wall together.

Whitbread leaned close and peered into the vines. “No cement, Gavin. They’ve fitted the blocks together. And still it supports the rest of the building—which is concrete. They built to last.”

“Do ye remember what Horst said about the Stone Beehive?”

“He said he could feel the age in it. Right. Right…”

“It must be of all different ages, this place. I think we’ll find that it’s a museum. A museum of architecture? And they’ve added to it, century after century. Finally they threw up that dome to protect it from the elements.”

“Yah…”

“Ye sound dubious.”

“That dome is two meters thick, and metal. What kind of elements…”

“Asteroid falls, it may be. No, that’s nonsense. The asteroids were moved away eons ago.”

“I think I want to have a look at that cathedral. It looks to be the oldest building here.”

The cathedral was a museum right enough. Any civilized man in the Empire would have recognized it. Museums are all alike.

There were cases faced in glass, and old things within, marked by plaques with dates and printing on them. “I can read the numbers,” said Potter. “Look, they’re in four and five figures. And this is base twelve!”

“My Motie asked me once how old our recorded civilization is. How old is theirs, Gavin?”

“Well, their year is shorter… Five figures. Dating backward from some event; that’s a minus sign in front of each of them. Let me see…” He took out his computer and scrawled quick, precise figures. “That number would be seventy-four thousand and some-odd. Jonathon, the plaques are almost new.”

“Languages change. They must translate the plaques every so often.”

“Yes… yes, I know this sign. ‘Approximately.’ ” Potter moved swiftly from exhibit to exhibit. “Here it is again. Not here… but here. Jonathon, come look at this one.”

It was a very old machine. Once iron, it must be rust now, all the way through. There was a sketch of what it must have looked like once. A howitzer cannon.

“Here on the plaque. This double-approximation sign means educated guesswork. I wonder how many times that legend has been translated.”

Room after room. They found a wide staircase leading up, the steps shallow but broad enough for human feet. Above, more rooms, more exhibits. The ceilings were low. The lighting came from lines of bulbs of incandescent filaments that came on when they entered, went out when they left. The bulbs were mounted carefully so they wouldn’t mar the ceiling. The museum itself must be an exhibit.

The plaques were all alike, but the cases were all different. Whitbread did not think it strange. No two Motie artifacts were ever precisely alike. But one… he almost laughed.

A bubble of glass several meters long and two meters wide rested on a free-form sculpted frame of almost beach-colored metal. Both looked brand-new. There was a plaque on the frame. Inside was an ornately carved wooden box, coffin sized, bleached white by age, its lid the remains of a rusted wire grille. It had a plaque. Under the rusted wire, a selection of wonderfully shaped, eggshell-thin pottery, some broken, some whole. Each piece in the set had a dated plaque. “It’s like nested exhibits,” he said.

Potter did not laugh. “That’s what it is. See here? The bubble case is about two thousand years old… that can’t be right, can it?”

“Not unless…” Whitbread rubbed his class ring along the glass bubble. “They’re both scratched. Artificial sapphire.” He tried it on the metal. The metal scratched the stone. “I’ll accept two thousand.”

“But the box is around twenty-four hundred, and the pottery goes from three thousand up. Look you how the style changes. ‘Tis a depiction of the rise and fall of a particular school of pottery styling.”

“Do you think the wooden case came out of another museum?”

“Aye.”

Whitbread did laugh then. They moved on. Presently Whitbread pointed and said, “Here, that’s the same metal, isn’t it?” The small two-handed weapon—it had to be a gun—carried the same date as the sapphire bubble.

Beyond that was a puzzling structure near the wall of the great dome. It was made of a vertical lacework of hexagons, each formed from steel members two meters long. There were thick plastic frames in some of the hexagons, and broken fragments in others.

Potter pointed out the gentle curve of the structure. “ ’Twas another dome. A spherical dome with geodesic bracing. Not much left of it—and it wouldn’t hae covered all of the compound anyway.”

“You’re right. It didn’t weather away, though. Look at how these members near the edge are twisted. Tornadoes? This part of the country seems flat enough.”

It took Potter a moment to understand. There were no tornadoes in the rough terraformed New Scotland. He remembered his meteorology lessons and nodded. “Aye. Maybe. Maybe.” Beyond the fragments of the earlier dome Potter found a framework of disintegrating metal within what might have been a plastic shell. The plastic itself looked frayed and motheaten. There were two dates on the plaque, both in five figures. The sketch next to the plaque showed a narrow ground car, primitive looking, with three seats in a row. The motor hood was open.

“Internal combustion,” said Potter. “I had the idea that Mote Prime was short on fossil fuels.”

“Sally had an idea on that too. Their civilization may have gone downhill when they used up all their fossil fuels. I wonder.”

But the prize was behind a great glass picture window in one wall. They found themselves looking into the “steeple” past an ancient, ornately carved bronze plaque that had a smaller plaque on it.

Within the “steeple” was a rocket ship. Despite the holes in the sides and the corrosion everywhere, it still held its shape: a long, cylindrical tank, very thin-walled, with a cabin showing behind a smoothly pointed nose.

They made for the stairs. There must be another window on the first floor…

And there was. They knelt to look into the motor.

Potter said, “I don’t quite…”

“NERVA style,” said Whitbread. His voice was almost a whisper. “Atomic. Very early type. You send some inert fuel through a core of uranium or plutonium or the like. Fission pile, prefusion…”

“Are you sure?”

Whitbread looked again before he nodded. “I’m sure.”

Fission had been developed after internal combustion; but there were still places in the Empire that employed internal combustion engines. Fission power was very nearly a myth, and as they stared the age of the place seemed to fail from the walls like a cloak and wrap them in silence.

The plane landed near the orange rags of a parachute and the remains of a cone. The open doorway was an accusing mouth just beyond.

Whitbread’s Motie jumped from the plane and rushed over to the cone. She twittered, and the pilot bounded from the ship to join her. “They opened it,” Whitbread’s Motie said. “I never thought Jonathon would solve it. It must have been Potter. Horst, is there any chance at all they didn’t go inside?”

Staley shook his head.

The Motie twittered to the Brown again. “Watch for aircraft, Horst,” Whitbread’s Motie said. She spoke to the other Brown-and-white, who left the airplane and stared at the skies.

The Brown picked up Whitbread’s empty pressure suit and armor. She worked rapidly, shaping something to take the place of the missing helmet and closing the suit top. Then she worked on the air regenerator, picking at the insides with tools from a belt pouch. The suit inflated and was set upright. Presently the Brown closed the panel and the suit was taut, like a man in vacuum. She tied lengths of line to constrict the shoulders and punched a hole at each wrist.

The empty man raised his arms to the sound of hissing air blowing out the wrist holes. The pressure dropped and the arms fell. Another spurt of hissing, and the arms rose again…

“That ought to do it,” Whitbread’s Motie said. “We set your suit up the same way, and raised the temperature to your body normal. With luck they may blast it without checking to see if you’re in it.”

“Blast it?”

“We sure can’t count on it, though. I wish there were some way to make it fire on an aircraft…”

Staley shook the Motie’s shoulder. The Brown stood by watching with the tiny half-smile that meant nothing at all. The equatorial sun was high overhead. “Why would anyone want to kill us?” Staley demanded.

“You’re all under death sentence, Horst.”

“But why? Is it the dome? Is there a taboo?”

“The dome, yes. Taboo, no. What do you take us for, primitives? You know too much, that’s all. Dead you-name-its tell no tales. Now come on, we’ve got to find them and get out of here.”

Whitbread’s Motie stooped to get under the door. Needlessly: but Whitbread would have stooped. The other Brown-and-white followed silently, leaving the Brown standing outside, her face a perpetual gentle smile.

35. Run Rabbit Run

They saw the other midshipmen near the cathedral. Horst Staley’s boots clumped hollowly as they approached. Whitbread looked up, noticed the Motie’s walk, and said “Fyunch(click)?”

“Fyunch(click).”

“We’ve been exploring your—”

“Jonathon, we don’t have time,” the Motie said. The other Brown-and-white eyed them with an air of impatience.

“We’re under a death sentence for trespassing,” Staley said flatly. “I don’t know why.”

There was silence. Whitbread said, “Neither do I. This is nothing but a museum—”

“Yes,” Whitbread’s Motie said. “You would have to land here. It’s not even bad luck. Your dumb animal miniatures must have programmed the reentry cones not to hit water or cities or mountain peaks. You were bound to come down in farm lands. Well, that’s where we put museums.”

“Out here? Why?” Potter asked. He sounded as if he already knew. “There are nae people here—”

“So they won’t get bombed.”

The silence was part of the age of the place. The Motie said, “Gavin, you aren’t showing much surprise.”

Potter attempted to rub his jaw. His helmet prevented it. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance of persuading you that we hae learned nothing?”

“Not really. You’ve been here three hours.”

Whitbread broke in. “More like two. Horst, this place is fantastic! Museums within museums; it goes back incredibly far—is that the secret? That civilization is very old here? I don’t see why you’d hide that.”

“You’ve had a lot of wars,” Potter said slowly.

The Motie bobbed her head and shoulder. “Yah.”

“Big wars.”

“Right. Also little wars.”

“How many?”

“God’s sake, Potter! Who counts? Thousands of Cycles. Thousands of collapses back to savagery. Crazy Eddie eternally trying to stop it. Well, I’ve had it. The whole decision-maker caste has turned Crazy Eddie, to my mind. They think they’ll stop the pattern of Cycles by moving into space and settling other solar systems.”

Horst Staley’s tone was flat. As he spoke he looked carefully around the dome and his hand rested on his pistol butt. “Do they? And what is it we know too much of?”

“I’m going to tell you. And then I’m going to try to get you to your ship, alive—” She indicated the other Motie, who had stood impassively during the conversation. Whitbread’s Motie whistled and hummed. “Best call her Charlie,” she said. “You can’t pronounce the name. Charlie represents a giver of orders who’s willing to help you. Maybe. It’s your only chance, anyway—”

“So what do we do now?” Staley demanded.

“We try to get to Charlie’s boss. You’ll be protected there. (Whistle, click, whistle.) Uh, call him King Peter. We don’t have kings, but he’s male now. He’s one of the most powerful givers of orders, and after he talks to you he’ll probably be willing to get you home.”

“Probably,” Horst said slowly. “Look, just what is this secret you’re so afraid of?”

“Later. We’ve got to get moving.”

Horst Staley drew his pistol. “No. Right now. Potter, is there anything in this museum that could communicate with Lenin? Find something.”

“Aye aye—do ye think ye must hae the pistol?”

“Just find us a radio!”

“Horst, listen,” Whitbread’s Motie insisted. “The decision makers know you landed near here somewhere. If you try to communicate from here, they’ll cut you off. And if you do get a message through, they’ll destroy Lenin.” Staley tried to speak, but the Motie continued insistently. “Oh, yes, they can do it. It wouldn’t be easy. That Field of yours is pretty powerful. But you’ve seen what our Engineers can come up with, and you’ve never seen what the Warriors can do. We’ve seen one of your best ships destroyed now. We know how it can be done. Do you think one little battleship can survive against fleets from both here and the asteroid stations?”

“Jesus, Horst, she may be right,” Whitbread said.

“We’ve got to let the Admiral know.” Staley seemed uncertain, but the pistol never wavered. “Potter, carry out your orders.”

“You’ll get a chance to call Lenin as soon as it’s safe,” Whitbread’s Motie insisted. Her voice was almost shrill for a moment, then fell to a modulated tone. “Horst, believe me, it’s the only way. Besides, you’ll never be able to operate a communicator by yourself. You’ll need our help, and we aren’t going to help you do anything stupid. We’ve got to get out of here!”

The other Motie trilled. Whitbread’s Motie answered, and they twittered back and forth. Whitbread’s Motie translated. “If my own Master’s troops don’t get here, the Museum Keeper’s Warriors will. I don’t know where the Keeper stands on this. Charlie doesn’t know either. Keepers are sterile, and they’re not ambitious, but they’re very possessive of what they already have.”

“Will they bomb us?” Whitbread asked.

“Not as long as we’re in here. It would wreck the museum, and museums are important. But the Keeper will send troops—if my own Master’s don’t get here first.”

“Why aren’t they here yet?” Staley demanded. “I don’t hear anything.”

“For God’s sake, they may be coming already! Look, my Master—my old Master—won jurisdiction over human studies. She won’t give that up, so she won’t invite anybody else in. She’ll try to keep the locals out of this, and since her holdings are around the Castle it’ll take a while to get Warriors here. It’s about two thousand kilometers.”

“That plane of yours was a fast one,” Staley said flatly.

“An emergency Mediator’s vehicle. Masters forbid each other to use them. Your coming to our system almost started a war over jurisdiction anyway, and putting Warriors in one of those could certainly do it…”

“Don’t your decision makers have any military planes at all?” Whitbread asked.

“Sure, but they’re slower. They might drive you to cover anyway. There’s a subway under this building—”

“Subway?” Staley said carefully. Everything was happening too fast. He was in command here, but he didn’t know what to do.

“Of course. People do visit museums sometimes. And it’ll take a while to get here by subway from the Castle. Who knows what the Keeper will be doing meantime? He might even forbid my Master’s invasion. But if he does, you can be sure he’ll kill you, to keep any other Masters from fighting here.”

“Find anything, Gavin?” Staley shouted.

Potter appeared at the doorway of one of the modernistic glass-and-steel pillars. “Nothing I can operate as a communicator. Nothing I can even be sure is one. And this is all the newer stuff, Horst. Anything in the older buildings may be rusted through.”

“Horst, we’ve got to get out of here!” Whitbread’s Motie insisted again. “There’s no time for talk—”

“Those Warriors could come in planes to the next station and then take the subway from there,” Whitbread reminded them. “We’d better do something, Horst.”

Staley nodded slowly. “All right. How do we leave? In your plane?”

“It won’t hold all of us,” Whitbread’s Motie said. “But we can send two with Charlie and I could—”

“No.” Staley’s tone was decisive. “We stay together. Can you call a larger plane?”

“I can’t even be sure that one would escape. You’re probably right. It would be better to stay together. Well, there’s nothing left but the subway.”

“Which might be full of enemies right now.” Staley thought for a moment. The dome was a bomb shelter and the mirror was a good defense against lasers. They could hole up here—but for how long? He began to feel the necessary paranoia of a soldier in enemy territory.

“Where do we have to go to get a message through to Lenin?” he demanded. That was obviously the first thing.

“King Peter’s territory. It’s a thousand kilometers, but that’s the only place you could get equipment to send a message that couldn’t be detected. Even that might not do it, but there’s certainly nowhere else.”

“And we can’t go by plane—OK. Where’s the subway? We’ll have to set up an ambush.”

“Ambush?” The Motie nodded agreement. “Of course. Horst, I’m not good at tactics. Mediators don’t fight. I’m just trying to get you to Charlie’s Master. You’ll have to worry about them trying to kill us on the way. How good are your weapons?”

“Just hand weapons. Not very powerful.”

“There are others in the museum. It’s part of what museums are for. I don’t know which ones still work.”

“It’s worth a try. Whitbread. Potter. Get to looking for weapons. Now where’s that subway?”

The Moties looked around. Charlie evidently understood what was said, although she attempted no word of Anglic. They twittered for a moment, and Whitbread’s Motie pointed. “In there.” She indicated the cathedral-like building. Then she pointed at the statues of “demons” along the cornices. “Anything you see is harmless except those. They’re the Warrior class, soldiers, bodyguards, police. They’re killers, and they’re good at it. If you see anything like that, run.”

“Run, hell,” Staley muttered. He clutched his pistol. “See you below,” he called to the others. “Now what about your Brown?”

“I’ll call her,” Whitbread’s Motie said. She trilled.

The Brown came inside carrying several somethings, which she handed to Charlie. The Moties inspected them for a moment, and Whitbread’s Motie said, “You’ll want these. Air filters. You can take off the helmets and wear these masks.”

“Our radios—” Horst protested.

“Carry them. The Brown can work on the radios later, too. Do you really want your ears inside those damn helmets? The air bottles and filters can’t last anyway.”

“Thanks,” Horst said. He took the filter and strapped it on. A soft cup covered his nose, and a tube led to a small cannister that attached to his belt. It was a relief to get the helmet off, but he didn’t know what to do with it. Finally he tied it to his belt, where it bobbled along uncomfortably. “OK, let’s get moving.” It was easier to speak without the helmet, but he’d have to remember not to breathe through his mouth.

The ramp was a spiral leading down. Far down. Nothing big moved in the shadowless lighting, but Staley pictured himself as a target to anyone below. He wished for grenades and a troop of Marines. Instead there was only himself and his two brother midshipmen. And the Moties. Mediators. “Mediators don’t fight,” Whitbread’s Motie had said. Have to remember that. She acted so like Jonathon Whitbread that he had to count arms to be sure whom he was talking to, but she didn’t fight. Browns didn’t fight either.

He moved cautiously, leading the aliens down the spiral ramp with his pistol drawn. The ramp ended at a doorway and he paused for a moment. There was silence beyond it. Hell with it, he thought and moved through.

He was alone in a wide cylindrical tunnel with tracks along the bottom and a smoothed ramp to one side. To his left the tunnel ended in a wall of rock. The other end seemed to stretch on forever into darkness. There were scars in the tunnel rock where ribs would have been in a giant whale.

The Motie came up behind him and saw where he was looking. “There was a linear accelerator here, before some rising civilization robbed it for metal.”

“I don’t see any cars. How do we get one?”

“I can call one. Any Mediator can.”

“Not you, Charlie,” Horst said. “Or do they know she’s in the conspiracy too?”

“Horst, if we wait for a car, it’ll be full of Warriors. The Keeper knows you opened his building. I don’t know why his people aren’t here yet. Probably a jurisdictional fight between him and my Master. Jurisdiction is a big thing with decision makers… and King Peter will be trying to keep things confused too.”

“We can’t escape by plane. We can’t walk across the fields. And we can’t call a car,” Staley said. “OK. Sketch a subway car for me.”

She drew it on Staley’s hand computer screen. It was a box on wheels, the universal space-filling shape of vehicles that must hold as many as possible and must be parked in limited space. “Motors here on the wheels. Controls may be automatic—”

“Not on a war car.”

“Controls here at the front, then. And the Browns and Warriors may have made all kinds of changes. They do that, you know…”

“Like armor. Armored glass and sides. Bow guns.” The three Moties stiffened and Horst listened. He heard nothing.

“Footsteps,” the Motie said, “Whitbread and Potter.”

“Maybe.” Staley moved catlike toward the entrance.

“Relax, Horst. I recognize the rhythms.”

They had found weapons. “This one’s the prize,” said Whitbread. He held up a tube with a lens in the business end and a butt clearly meant for Motie shoulders. “I don’t know how long the power lasts, but it cut a hole all the way through a thick stone wall. Invisible beam.”

Staley took it. “That’s what we need. Tell me about the others later. Now get into the doorway and stay there.” Staley positioned himself where the passenger ramp ended, just to one side of the tunnel entrance. Nothing would see him until it was coming out of that tunnel. He wondered how good Motie armor was. Would it stop an x-ray laser? There was no sound, and he waited, impatiently.

This is silly, he told himself. But what else is there? Suppose they come in planes and land outside the dome? Should have closed the door and left somebody. Not too late for that, either.

He started to turn toward the others behind him, but then he heard it; a low humming from far down the track. It actually relaxed him. There were no more choices to make. Horst moved cautiously and took a better grip on the unfamiliar weapon. The car was coming fast…

It was much smaller than Staley had expected: a toy of a streetcar, whistling past him. Its wind buffeted his face. The car stopped with a jerk, while Staley waved the gun like a magician’s wand, back and forth across it. Was anything coming out the other side? No. The gun was working properly. The beam was invisible, but crisscross lines of red-hot metal lined the vehicle. He swiped the beam across the windows, where nothing showed, and along the roof, then stepped quickly out into the tunnel and fired down its length.

There was another car there. Staley ducked back to cover most of his body but continued to fire, aiming the gun at the oncoming car. How the hell would he know when the battery—or whatever it used for power—quit? A museum piece, for God’s sake! The second car was past, and there were cherry-red lines across it. He swept the weapon along it, then stepped out to fire down the tunnel again. There was nothing there.

No third car. Good. Systematically he fired at the second car. Something had stopped it just behind the first—some kind of collision avoidance system? He couldn’t know. He ran toward the two cars. Whitbread and Potter came out to join him.

“I told you to stay put!”

Whitbread said, “Sorry, Horst.”

“This is a military situation, Mr. Whitbread. You can call me Horst when people aren’t shooting at us.”

“Yes, sir. I wish to point out that nobody has fired except you.”

There was a smell from the car: burning meat. The Moties came out from hiding. Staley carefully approached the cars and looked inside. “Demons,” he said.

They examined the bodies with interest. Except for statues they’d never seen the type before. Compared to the Mediators and Engineers they seemed wire-thin and agile, like greyhounds next to pugs. The right arms were long, with short thick fingers and only one thumb; the other edge of the right hand was smooth with callus. The left arm was longer, with fingers like sausages. There was something under the left arm.

The demons had teeth, long and sharp, like true monsters from childhood books and half-forgotten legends.

Charlie twittered to Whitbread’s Motie. When there was no answer she twittered again, more shrill, and waved at the Brown. The Engineer approached the door and began to examine it closely. Whitbread’s Motie stood petrified, staring at the dead Warriors.

“Look out for booby traps!” Staley yelled. The Brown paid no attention and began to feel cautiously at the door.

“Watch out!”

“They will have traps, but the Brown will see them,” Charlie said very slowly. “I will tell her to be careful.” The voice was precise and had no accent at all.

“You can talk,” Staley said.

“Not well. It is difficult to think in your language.”

“What’s wrong with my Fyunch(click)?” Whitbread demanded.

Instead of answering, Charlie twittered again. The tones rose sharply. Whitbread’s Motie seemed to jerk and turned toward them.

“Sorry,” she said. “Those are my Master’s Warriors. Damn, damn, what am I doing?”

“Let’s get in there,” Staley said nervously. He raised his gun to cut through the side of the car. The Brown was still inspecting the door, very carefully, as if afraid of it.

“Allow me, sir.” Whitbread must have been kidding. He was holding a thick-handled short sword. Horst watched him cut a square doorway in the metal side of the subway car with one continuous smooth, slow sweep of the blade.

“It vibrates,” he said. “I think.”

A few smells got through their air filters. It must have been worse for the Moties, but they didn’t seem to mind. They crawled inside the second car.

“You better look these over,” Whitbread’s Motie said. She sounded much better now. “Know your enemy.” She twittered at the Brown, and it went to the controls of the car and examined them carefully, then sat in the driver’s seat. She had to toss a Warrior out to do it.

“Have a look under the left arm,” Whitbread’s Motie said. “That’s a second left arm, vestigial in most Mote subspecies. Only thing is, it’s all one nail, like a—” She thought for a moment. “A hoof. It’s a gutting knife. Plus enough muscle to swing it.”

Whitbread and Potter grimaced. At Staley’s direction they began to heave demon bodies out the hole in the side of the car. The Warriors were like twins of each other, all identical except for the cooked areas where the x-ray laser had swept through them. The feet were sheathed in sharp horn at toe and heel. One kick, backward or forward, and that would be all. The heads were small.

“Are they sentient?” Whitbread asked.

“By your standards, yes, but they aren’t very inventive,” Whitbread’s Motie said. She sounded like Whitbread reciting lessons to the First Lieutenant, her voice very precise but without feelings. “They can fix any weapon that ever worked, but they don’t tend to invent their own. Oh, and there’s a Doctor form, a hybrid between the real Doctor and the Warrior. Semisentient. You should be able to guess what they look like. You’d better have the Brown look at any weapons you keep—”

Without warning the car began to move. “Where are we going?” Staley asked.

Whitbread’s Motie twittered. It sounded a little like a mockingbird whistle. “That’s the next city down the line…”

“They’ll have a roadblock. Or an armed party waiting for us,” Staley said. “How far is it?”

“Oh—fifty kilometers.”

“Take us halfway and stop,” Staley ordered.

“Yes, sir.” The Motie sounded even more like Whitbread. “They’ve underestimated you, Horst. That’s the only way I can explain this. I’ve never heard of a Warrior killed by anything but another Warrior. Or a Master, sometimes, not often. We fight the Warriors against each other. It’s how we keep their population down.”

“Ugh,” Whitbread muttered. “Why not just—not breed them?”

The Motie laughed. It was a peculiarly bitter laugh, very human, and very disturbing. “Didn’t any of you ever wonder what killed the Engineer aboard your ship?”

“Aye.” “Of course.” “Sure.” They all answered together. Charlie twittered something.

“They may as well know,” Whitbread’s Motie said. “She died because there was nobody to get her pregnant.”

There was a long silence. “That’s the whole secret. Don’t you get it yet? Every variant of my species has to be made pregnant after she’s been female for a while. Child, male, female, pregnancy, male, female, pregnancy, ‘round and ‘round. If she doesn’t get pregnant in time, she dies. Even us. And we Mediators can’t get pregnant. We’re mules, sterile hybrids.”

“But—” Whitbread sounded like a kid just told the truth about Santa. “How long do you live?”

“About twenty-five of your years. Fifteen years after maturity. But Engineers and Farmers and Masters—especially Masters!—have to be pregnant within a couple of our years. That Engineer you picked up must have been close to the deadline already.”

They drove on in silence. “But—good Lord,” Potter said carefully. “That’s terrible.”

“ ‘Terrible.’ You son of a bitch. Of course it’s terrible. Sally and her—”

“What’s eating you?” Whitbread demanded.

“Birth control pills. We asked Sally Fowler what a human does when she doesn’t want children just yet. She uses birth control pills. But nice girls don’t use them. They just don’t have sex,” she said savagely.

The car was speeding down the tracks. Horst sat at the rear, which was now the front, staring out with his weapon poised. He turned slightly. The Moties were both glaring at the humans, their lips parted slightly to show teeth, enlarging their smile, but the bitterness of the words and tones belied the friendly looks. “They just don’t have sex!” Whitbread’s Motie said again. “Fyoofwuffle(whistle)! Now you know why we have wars. Always wars…”

“Population explosion,” Potter said.

“Yeah. Whenever a civilization rises from savagery, Moties stop dying from starvation! You humans don’t know what population pressure is! We can keep the numbers down in the lesser breeds, but what can the givers of orders do about their own numbers? The closest thing we’ve got to a birth control pill is infanticide!”

“And you can nae do that,” Potter said. “Any such instinct would be bred out o’ the race. So presently everyone is fighting for what food is left.”

“Of course.” Whitbread’s Motie was calmer now. “The higher the civilization, the longer the period of savagery. And always there’s Crazy Eddie in there pitching, trying to break the pattern of the Cycles, fouling things up worse. We’re pretty close to a collapse now, gentlemen, in case you didn’t notice. When you came there was a terrible fight over jurisdiction. My Master won—”

Charlie whistled and hummed for a second.

“Yeah. King Peter tried for that, but he couldn’t get enough support. Wasn’t sure he could win a fight with my Master… What we’re doing now will probably cause that war anyway. It doesn’t matter. It was bound to start soon.”

“You’re so crowded you grow plants on the rooftops,” said Whitbread.

“Oh, that’s just common sense. Like putting strips of cropland through the cities. Some always live, to start the Cycles over.”

“It must be tough, carving out a civilization without even radioactives,” said Whitbread. “You’d have to go direct to hydrogen fusion every time?”

“Sure. You’re getting at something.”

“I’m not sure what.”

“Well, it’s been that way for all of recorded history, a long time by your standards. Except for one period when they found radioactives in the Trojan asteroids. There were a few alive up there and they brought civilization here. The radioactives had been pretty thoroughly mined by some older civilization, but there were still some there.”

“God’s eyes,” said Whitbread. “But—”

“Stop the car, please,” Staley ordered. Whitbread’s Motie twittered and the car came smoothly to a halt. “I’m getting nervous about what we’re running into,” Staley explained. “They must be waiting for us. Those soldiers we killed haven’t reported in—and if those were your Master’s men, where are the Keeper’s? Anyway, I want to test the Warriors’ weapons.”

“Have the Brown look them over,” Whitbread’s Motie said. “They may be rigged.”

They looked deadly, those weapons. And no two were identical. The most common type was a slug thrower, but there were also hand lasers and grenades. The butt of each weapon had been individualized. Some balanced only against the upper right shoulder, some squared against both. The gun sights differed. There were two left-handed models. Staley dimly remembered heaving out a lefthanded body.

There was a rocket launcher with a fifteen-centimeter aperture. “Have her look at this,” Staley said.

Whitbread’s Motie handed the weapon to the Brown, accepting a slug thrower in return which she put under a bench. “This was rigged.” The Brown looked at the rocket launcher and twittered. “OK,” Whitbread’s Motie said.

“How about the loads?” Staley passed them over. There were several different kinds, and none exactly alike. The Brown twittered again.

“The biggest rocket would explode if you tried to load it,” Whitbread’s Motie said. “They may have figured you right at that. Anyway, they certainly prepared enough traps. I’ve been assuming that the Masters think you’re a kind of inept Mediator. It was what we thought, at first. But these traps mean they think you could kill Warriors.”

“Great. I’d rather they thought we were stupid. We’d still be dead without the museum weapons. Come to that, why keep live guns in a museum?”

“You don’t see the point of a museum, Horst. It’s for the next rise in the Cycles. Savages come to put together another civilization. The faster they can do it, the longer it’ll be before another collapse because they’ll be expanding their capabilities faster than the population. See? So the savages get their choice of a number of previous civilizations, and the weapons to put a new one into action. You noticed the lock?”

“I did,” said Potter. “You need some astronomy to solve it. I presume that’s to keep the savages from getting the goods before they’re ready.”

“Right.” The Brown handed over a big-nosed rocket with a twitter. “She fixed this one. It’s safe. What are you planning to do with it, Horst?”

“Pick me some more. Potter, you carry that x-ray laser. How close are we to the surface?”

“Oh. Hm. The—” (Bird Whistle) “—terminus is only one flight of stairs below the surface. The ground is pretty level in that region. I’d say we’re three to ten meters underground.”

“How close to other transportation?”

“An hour’s walk to—” (Bird Whistle). “Horst, are you going to damage the tunnel? Do you know how long this subway has been in use?”

“No.” Horst slid through the makeshift hatch in the side of the car. He walked a score of meters back the way they had come, then doubled that. The weapons could still be booby-trapped.

The tunnel was infinitely straight ahead of him. It must have been trued with a laser, then dug with something like a hot rock boring machine.

Whitbread’s Motie’s voice carried down the tunnel. “Eleven thousand years!”

Staley fired.

The projectile touched the roof of the tunnel, far down. Horst curled up against the shock wave. When he raised his eyes there was considerable dirt in the tunnel.

He chose another projectile and fired it.

This time there was reddish daylight. He walked down to look at the damage. Yes, they could climb that slope.

Eleven thousand years.

36. Judgment

“Send the car on without us,” Horst said. Whitbread’s Motie twittered and the Brown opened the control panel. She worked at blinding speed. Whitbread remembered a Brown asteroid miner who had lived and died eons ago, when MacArthur was home and Moties were a friendly, fascinating unknown.

The Brown leaped off. The car hesitated a second, then accelerated smoothly. They turned to the ramp Horst had created and climbed silently.

The world was all the shades of red as they emerged. Endless rows of crops were folding their leaves against the night. An irregular ring of plants leaned drunkenly around the hole.

Something moved among the plants. Three guns came up. The twisted thing plodded toward them… and Staley said, “At ease. It’s a Farmer.”

Whitbread’s Motie moved up beside the midshipmen. She brushed dirt off her fur with all her hands. “There’ll be more of those here. They may even try to smooth out the hole. Farmers aren’t too bright. They don’t have to be. What now, Horst?”

“We walk until we can ride. If you see planes—hmm.”

“Infrared detectors,” said the Motie.

“Do you have tractors in these fields? Could we grab one?” Staley asked.

“They’ll be in the shed by now. They don’t usually work in the dark… of course the Farmers may bring one to smooth out that hole.”

Staley thought a moment. “Then we don’t want one. Too conspicuous. Let’s hope we look like Farmers on an infrared screen.”

They walked. Behind them the Farmer began straightening plants and smoothing the soil around their roots. She twittered to herself, but Whitbread’s Motie didn’t translate. Staley idly wondered if Farmers ever said anything, or if they merely cursed, but he didn’t want to talk just yet. He had to think.

The sky darkened. A red point glowed overhead: Murcheson’s Eye. Ahead of them was the yellow city-glow of (Bird Whistle). They walked on in silence, the midshipmen alert, weapons ready, the Moties following with their torsos swiveling periodically.

By and by Staley said to the Motie, “I’ve been wondering what’s in this for you.”

“Pain. Exertion. Humiliation. Death.”

“That’s the point. I keep wondering why you came.”

“No, you don’t, Horst. You keep wondering why your Fyunch(click) didn’t.”

Horst looked at her. He had wondered that. What was his twin mind doing while demons hunted her own Fyunch(click) across a world? It brought dull pain.

“We’re both duty oriented, Horst, your Fyunch(click) and I. But your Fyunch(click)’s duty is to her, let us say, her superior officer. Gavin—”

“Aye.”

“I tried to talk your Fyunch(click) into coming down, but she’s got this Crazy Eddie idea that we can end the Cycles by sending our surplus population to other stars. At least neither will help the others find us.”

“Could they?”

“Horst, your Motie must know exactly where you are, assuming I got here; and she’ll know that when she finds out about the dead Warriors.”

“We’d better flip a coin the next time we get a choice. She can’t predict that.”

“She won’t help. Nobody would expect a Mediator to help hunt down her own Fyunch(click).”

“But don’t you have to obey your Master’s orders?” Staley asked.

The Motie swiveled her body rapidly. It was a gesture they hadn’t seen before, obviously not copied from anything human. She said, “Look. Mediators were bred to stop wars. We represent the decision makers. We speak for them. To do our job we have to have some independence of judgment. So the genetic engineers work at the balance. Too much independence and we don’t represent the Masters properly. We get repudiated. Wars start.”

“Aye,” Potter broke in. “And too little independence makes for inflexible demands, and you hae the wars anyway.” Potter trudged in silence for a moment. “But if obedience is a species-specific thing, then ye’ll be unable simply to help us alone. Ye’ll be taking us to another Master because ye hae nae choice.”

Staley gripped the rocket launcher tighter. “Is this true?”

“Some,” Whitbread’s Motie admitted. “Not as completely as you think. But, yes, it’s easier to choose among many orders than try to act with none at all.”

“And what does King Peter believe should be done?” Staley demanded. “Just what are we walking into?”

The other Motie twittered. Whitbread’s Motie answered. The conversation went on for many seconds, very long for Moties. The sunset light died, and Murcheson’s Eye blazed a hundred times brighter than Earth’s full Moon. There were no other stars in the Coal Sack. Around them the fields of plants were dark red, with sharp black shadows of infinite depth.

“Honesty,” Charlie said at last. “My Master believes we must be honest with you. It is better to live by the ancient pattern of the Cycles than chance total destruction and the doom of all our descendants.”

“But…” Potter stammered in confusion. “But why is it nae possible to colonize other stars? The Galaxy is big enough for all. You would nae attack the Empire?”

“No, no,” Whitbread’s Motie protested. “My own Master wants only to buy land as bases on Empire worlds, then move outside the Empire entirely. Eventually we’d be colonizing worlds around the edges of the Empire. There’d be commerce between us. I don’t think we’d try to share the same planets.”

“Then why—” Potter asked.

“I don’t think you could build that many space craft,” Whitbread interrupted.

“We’d build them on colony worlds and send them back,” the Motie answered. “Hire commercial shipping from men like Bury. We could pay more than anyone else. But look—it couldn’t last. The colonies would secede, so to speak. We’d have to start over with new colonies farther away. And on every world we settled there’d be population problems. Can you imagine what it would be like three hundred years from now?”

Whitbread tried. Ships like flying cities, millions of them. And Secession Wars, like the one that wrecked the First Empire. More and more Moties.

“Hundreds of Motie worlds, all trying to ship our expanding population out to newer worlds! Billions of Masters competing for territory and security! It takes time to use your Crazy Eddie Drive. Time and fuel to move around in each system looking for the next Crazy Eddie point. Eventually the outer edge of the Mote Sphere wouldn’t be enough. We’d have to expand inward, into the Empire of Humanity.”

“Um.” said Whitbread. The others only looked at the Motie, then plodded onward toward the city. Staley held the big rocket launcher cradled in his arms, as if the bulk gave him comfort. Sometimes he put his hand to his holster to touch the reassuring butt of his own weapon as well.

“It’d be an easy decision to reach,” Whitbread’s Motie said. “There’d be jealousy.”

“Of us? Of what? Birth control pills?”

“Yes.”

Staley snorted.

“Even that wouldn’t be the end. Eventually there would be a huge sphere of Motie-occupied systems. The center stars couldn’t even reach the edge. They’d fight among themselves. Continual war, continually collapsing civilizations. I suspect a standard technique would be to drop an asteroid into an enemy sun and figure on resettling the planet when the flare dies down. And the sphere would keep expanding, leaving more systems in the center.”

Staley said, “I’m not so sure you could whip the Empire.”

“At the rate our Warriors breed? Oh, skip it. Maybe you’d wipe us out. Maybe you’d save some of us for zoos; you sure wouldn’t have to worry about us not breeding in captivity. I don’t really care. There’s a good chance we’d bring on a collapse just by converting too much of our industrial capacity to building space craft.”

“If you’re not planning war with the Empire,” Staley said, “why are the three of us under death sentence?”

“Four. My Master wants my head as much as yours… well, maybe not. You’ll be wanted for dissection.”

Nobody showed surprise.

“You’re under death sentence because you now have enough information to have worked this out yourselves, you and MacArthur’s biologists. A lot of the other Masters support the decision to kill you. They’re afraid that if you escape now, your government will see us as a spreading plague, expanding through the Galaxy, eventually wiping out the Empire.”

“And King Peter? He doesn’t want us killed?” Staley asked. “Why not?”

The Moties twittered again. Whitbread’s Motie spoke for the other one. “He may decide to kill you. I have to be honest about that. But he wants to put the djinn back in the bottle—if there’s any way that humans and Moties can go back to where we were before you found our Crazy Eddie probe, he’ll try it. The Cycles are better than—a whole Galaxy of Cycles!”

“And you?” Whitbread asked. “How do you see the situation?”

“As you do,” the Motie said carefully. “I am qualified to judge my species dispassionately. I am not a traitor.” There was a plea in the alien voice. “I am a judge. I judge that association between our species could only result in mutual envy, you for your birth control pills, us for our superior intelligence. Did you say something?”

“No.”

“I judge that spreading my species across space would involve ridiculous risks and would not end the pattern of the Cycles. It would only make each collapse more terrible. We would breed faster than we could spread, until collapse came for hundreds of planets at a stroke, routinely…”

“But,” said Potter, “ye’ve reached your dispassionate judgment by adopting our viewpoint—or rather, Whitbread’s. You act so much like Jonathon the rest of us have to keep counting your arms. What will happen when you give up the human viewpoint? Might not your judgment— Ugh!”

The alien’s left arm closed on the front of Potter’s uniform, painfully tight, and drew him down until his nose was an inch from the Motie’s sketched-in face. She said, “Never say that. Never think that. The survival of our civilization, any civilization, depends entirely on the justice of my class. We understand all viewpoints, and judge between them. If other Mediators come to a different conclusion from mine, that is their affair. It may be that their facts are incomplete, or their aims different. I judge on the evidence.”

She released him, Potter stumbled backward. With the fingers of a right hand the Motie picked Staley’s gunpoint out of her ear.

“That wasna’ necessary,” said Potter.

“It got your attention, didn’t it? Come on, we’re wasting time.”

“Just a minute.” Staley spoke quietly, but they all heard him easily in the night silence. “We’re going to find this King Peter, who may or may not let us report to Lenin. That’s not good enough. We’ve got to tell the Captain what we know.”

“And how will you do that?” Whitbread’s Motie asked. “I tell you, we won’t help you, and you can’t do it without us. I hope you don’t have something stupid in mind, like threatening us with death? If that scared me, do you think I’d be here?”

“But—”

“Horst, get it through that military mind of yours that the only thing keeping Lenin alive is that my Master and King Peter agree on letting it live! My Master wants Lenin to go back with Dr Horvath and Mr. Bury aboard. If we’ve analyzed you right, they’ll be very persuasive. They’ll argue for free trade and peaceful relationships with us—”

“Aye,” Potter said thoughtfully. “And wi’out our message, there’ll be nae opposition … why does this King Peter no call Lenin himself?”

Charlie and Whitbread’s Motie twittered. Charlie answered. “He is not sure that the Empire will not come in strength to destroy the Mote worlds once you know the truth. And until he is sure…”

“How in God’s name can he be sure of anything like that from talking to us?” Staley demanded. “I’m not sure myself. If His Majesty asked me, right now, I don’t know what I’d advise—for God’s sake, we’re only three midshipmen from one battle cruiser. We can’t speak for the Empire.”

“Could we do it?” Whitbread asked. “I’m beginning to wonder if the Empire would be able to wipe you out.”

“Jesus, Whitbread,” Staley protested.

“I mean it. By the time Lenin gets back and reports to Sparta, they’ll have the Field. Won’t you?”

Both Moties shrugged. The gestures were exactly alike—and exactly like Whitbread’s shrug. “The Engineers will work on it now that they know it exists,” Whitbread’s Motie said. “Even without it, we’ve got some experience in space wars. Now come on. God’s teeth, you don’t know how close to war we are right now! If my Master thinks you’ve told all this to Lenin she’ll order an attack on the ship. If King Peter isn’t convinced there’s a way to make you leave us alone, he might order it.”

“And if we do no hurry, the Admiral will already hae taken Lenin back to New Caledonia,” Potter added. “Mr. Staley, we hae nae choices at all. We find Charlie’s Master before the other Masters find us. ‘Tis as simple as that.”

“Jonathon?” Staley asked.

“You want advice? Sir?” Whitbread’s Motie clucked in disapproval. Jonathon Whitbread looked at her irritably, then grinned. “Yes, sir. I agree with Gavin. What else can we do? We can’t fight a whole goddamn planet, and we’re not going to build secure communications out of anything we’ll find around here.”

Staley lowered his weapon. “Right. Lead on, then.” He looked at his small command. “We’re a damn sorry lot to be the ambassadors of the human race.”

They struck out across the darkened fields toward the brightly lit city beyond.

37. History Lesson

There was a three-meter-high wall around (Bird Whistle) city. It might have been stone, or a hard plastic; the structure was difficult to see in the red-black light of Murcheson’s Eye. Beyond it they could see great oblong buildings. Yellow windows loomed over their heads.

“The gates will be guarded,” Whitbread’s Motie said.

“I’m sure,” Staley muttered. “Does the Keeper live here too?”

“Yes. At the subway terminal. Keepers aren’t allowed farm lands of their own. The temptation to exploit that kind of self-sufficiency might be too much even for a sterile male.”

“But how do you get to be a Keeper?” Whitbread asked. “You’re always talking about competition among Masters, but how do they compete?”

“God’s eyes, Whitbread!” Staley exploded. “Look, what do we do about that wall?”

“We’ll have to go through it,” Whitbread’s Motie said. She twittered to Charlie for a moment. “There are alarms and there’ll be Warriors on guard.”

“Can we go over it?”

“You’d pass through an x-ray laser, Horst.”

“God’s teeth. What are they so afraid of?”

“Food riots.”

“So we go through it. Any one place better than another?”

The Moties shrugged with Whitbread’s gestures. “Maybe half a kilometer farther. There’s a fast road there.”

They walked along the wall. “Well, how do they compete?” Whitbread insisted. “We’ve got nothing better to talk about.”

Staley muttered something, but stayed close to listen.

“How do you compete?” Whitbread’s Motie asked. “Efficiency. We have commerce, you know. Mr. Bury might be surprised at just how shrewd some of our Traders are. Partly, Masters buy responsibilities—that is, they show they can handle the job. They get other powerful givers of orders to support them. Mediators negotiate it. Contracts—promises of services to be delivered, that kind of thing—are drawn up and published. And some givers of orders work for others, you know. Never directly. But they’ll have a job they take care of, and they’ll consult a more powerful Master about policy. A Master gains prestige and authority when other givers of orders start asking her for advice. And of course her daughters help.”

“It sounds complex,” Potter said. “I think o’ nae time or place similar in human history.”

“It is complex,” said Whitbread’s Motie. “How could it be anything else? How can a decision maker be anything but independent? That’s what drove Captain Blaine’s Fyunch(click) insane, you know. Here was your Captain, Absolute Master on that ship—except that when whoever it was on Lenin croaked frog, Captain Blaine hopped around the bridge.”

“Do you really talk about the Captain that way?” Staley asked Whitbread.

“I refuse to answer on the grounds that it might tend to get me dumped into the mass converter,” Whitbread said. “Besides, we’re coming to a bend in the wall.”

“About here, Mr. Staley,” Whitbread’s Motie said. “There’s a road on the other side.”

“Stand back.” Horst raised the rocket launcher and fired. At the second explosion light showed through the wall. More lights rippled along its top. Some shone out into the fields, showing crops growing to the edge of the wall. “OK, get through fast,” Staley ordered.

They went through the gap and onto a highway. Cars and larger vehicles whizzed past, missing them by centimeters as they cowered against the wall. The three Moties walked boldly into the road.

Whitbread shouted and tried to grab his Fyunch(click). She shook him off impatiently and strolled across the street. Cars missed her narrowly, cunningly dodging past the Moties without slowing at all.

On the other side the Brown-and-whites waved their left arms in an unmistakable sign: Come on!

Light poured through the gap in the wall. Something was out there in the fields where they’d been. Staley waved the others into the street and fired back through the gap. The rocket exploded a hundred meters away, and the light went out.

Whitbread and Potter walked across the highway.

Staley loaded the last round into the rocket launcher, but saved it. Nothing was coming through the gap yet. He stepped out into the street and began to walk. Traffic whizzed past. The urge to run and dodge was overwhelming, but he moved slowly, at constant speed. A truck whipped past in a momentary hurricane. Then others.

After a lifetime he reached the other side, alive.

No sidewalks. They were still in traffic, huddled against a grayish concrete-like wall.

Whitbread’s Motie stepped into the street and gave a curious three-armed gesture. A long rectangular truck stopped with screeching brakes. She twittered to the drivers and the Browns immediately got out, went to the back of the truck, and began removing boxes from the cargo compartment. The traffic streamed past without slowing at all.

“That ought to do it,” Whitbread’s Motie said briskly. “The Warriors will be coming to investigate the hole in the wall—”

The humans got in quickly. The Brown who’d followed them patiently from the museum climbed into the right-hand driver’s seat. Whitbread’s Motie started for the other driver’s seat, but Charlie twittered at her. The two Brown-and-whites whistled and chirped, and Charlie gestured vehemently. Finally Whitbread’s Motie climbed into the cargo compartment and closed the doors. As she did the humans saw the original drivers walking slowly down the street away from the truck.

“Where are they going?” Staley asked.

“Better than that, what was the argument about?” Whitbread demanded.

“One at a time, gentlemen,” Whitbread’s Motie began. The truck started. It jolted hard, and there was humming from the motors and the tires. Sounds of myriads of other vehicles filtered in.

Whitbread was jammed between hard plastic boxes, with about as much room as a coffin. It reminded him unpleasantly of his situation. The others had no more room, and Jonathon wondered if they had thought of the analogy. His nose was only centimeters from the roof.

“The Browns will go to a transport pool and report that their vehicle was commandeered by a Mediator,” Whitbread’s Motie said. “And the argument was over who’d stay up front with the Brown. I lost.”

“Why was it an argument?” Staley demanded. “Don’t you trust each other?”

“I trust Charlie. She doesn’t really trust me—I mean, how could she? I’ve walked out on my own Master. As far as she’s concerned, I’m Crazy Eddie. Best to see to things herself.”

“But where are we going?” Staley asked.

“To King Peter’s territory. Best available way.”

“We can’t stay in this vehicle long,” Staley said. “Once those Browns report, they’ll be looking for it—you must have police. Some way to trace a stolen truck. You do have crime, don’t you?”

“Not the way you think of it. There aren’t really any laws—but there are givers of orders who have jurisdiction over missing property. They’ll find the truck for a price. It’ll take time for my Master to negotiate with them, though. First she’ll have to show that I’ve gone insane.”

“I don’t suppose there’s a space port here?” Whitbread asked.

“We couldn’t use it anyway,” Staley said flatly.

They listened to the hum of traffic for awhile. Potter said, “I thought of that too. A spacecraft is conspicuous. If a message would bring an attack on Lenin, ‘tis certain we’d nae be allowed to return ourselves.”

“And how are we going to get home?” Whitbread wondered aloud, He wished he hadn’t asked.

“ ’Tis a twice-told tale,” Potter said unhappily. “We know aye more than can be allowed. And what we ken is more important than our lives, is it nae so, Mr. Staley?”

“Right.”

“You never know when to give up, do you?” Whitbread’s voice said from the dark. It took a moment for them to realize it was the Motie speaking. “King Peter may let you live. He may let you return to Lenin. If he’s convinced that’s best, he can arrange it. But there’s no way you will send a message to that battleship without his help.”

“The hell we won’t,” Staley said. His voice rose. “Get this through your ear flap. You’ve been square with us—I think. I’ll be honest with you. If there’s a way to get a message out I’m going to send it.”

“And after that, ‘tis as God wills,” Potter added.

They listened to the humming of the traffic. “You won’t have the chance, Horst,” Whitbread’s voice said. “There’s no threat you can make that would get Charlie or me to have a Brown build you the equipment you’d need. You can’t use our transmitters if you could find one—even I couldn’t use strange gear without a Brown to help. There might not even be the proper communications devices on this planet, for that matter.”

“Come off it,” Staley said. “You’ve got to have space communications, and there are only so many bands in the electromagnetic spectrum.”

“Sure. But nothing stays idle here. If we need something, the Browns put it together. When it’s not needed any more, they build something else out of the parts. And you want something that’ll reach Lenin without letting anyone know you’ve done that.”

“I’ll take the chance. If we can broadcast a warning to the Admiral, he’ll get the ship home.” Horst was positive. Lenin might be only one ship, but President Class battlewagons had defeated whole fleets before. Against Moties without the Field she’d be invincible. He wondered why he’d ever believed anything else. Back at the museum there’d been electronics parts, and they could have put together a transmitter of some kind. Now it was too late; why had he listened to the Motie?

They drove on for nearly an hour. The midshipmen were cramped, jammed between hard boxes, in the dark. Staley felt his throat tighten and was afraid to talk any more. There might be a catch in his voice, something to communicate his fears to the others, and he couldn’t let them know he was as afraid as they were. He wished for something to happen, a fight, anything— There were starts and stops. The truck jerked and turned, then came to a halt. They waited. The sliding door opened and Charlie stood framed in light.

“Don’t move,” she said. There were Warriors behind her, weapons ready. At least four.

Horst Staley growled in hatred. Betrayed! He reached for his pistol, but the cramped position prevented him from drawing it.

“No, Horst!” Whitbread’s Motie shouted. She twittered. Charlie hummed and clacked in reply. “Don’t do anything,” Whitbread’s Motie said. “Charlie has commandeered an aircraft. The Warriors belong to its owner. They won’t interfere as long as we go straight from here to the plane.”

“But who are they?” Staley demanded. He kept his grip on the pistol. The odds looked impossible—the Warriors were poised and ready, and they looked deadly and efficient.

“I told you,” Whitbread’s Motie said. “They’re a bodyguard. All Masters have them. Nearly all, anyway. Now get out, slowly, and keep your hands off your weapons. Don’t make them think you might try to attack their Master. If they get that idea, we’re all dead.”

Staley estimated his chances. Not good. If he had Kelley and another Marine instead of Whitbread and Potter— “OK,” he said. “Do as she says.” He climbed slowly out of the van.

They were in a luggage-handling area. The Warriors stood in easy postures, leaning slightly forward on the balls of their wide, horned feet. It looked, Staley thought, like a karate stance. He caught a glimpse of motion near the wall. There were at least two more Warriors over there, under cover. Good thing he hadn’t tried to fight.

The Warriors watched them carefully, falling in behind the strange procession of a Mediator, three humans, another Mediator, and a Brown. Their weapons were held at the ready, not quite pointing at anyone, and they fanned out, never bunching up.

“Will nae yon decision maker call your Master when we are gone?” Potter asked.

The Moties twittered together. The Warriors seemed to pay no attention at all. “Charlie says yes. She’ll notify both my Master and King Peter. But it gets us an airplane, doesn’t it?”

The decision maker’s personal aircraft was a streamlined wedge attended by several Browns. Charlie twittered at them and they began removing seats, bending metal, working at almost blinding speed. Several miniatures darted through the plane. Staley saw them and cursed, but softly, hoping the Moties wouldn’t know why. They stood waiting near the plane, and the Warriors watched them the whole time.

“I find this slightly unbelievable,” said Whitbread. “Doesn’t the owner know we’re fugitives?”

Whitbread’s Motie nodded. “But not his fugitives. He only runs the (Bird Whistle) airport baggage section. He wouldn’t assume the prerogatives of my Master. He’s also talked to the (Bird Whistle) airport manager, and they both agree they don’t want my Master and King Peter fighting here. Best to have us all out of here, fast.”

“Ye’re the strangest creatures I hae ever imagined,” Potter said. “I can no see why such anarchy does nae end in—” he stopped, embarrassed.

“It does,” Whitbread’s Motie said. “Given our special characteristics, it has to. But industrial feudalism works better than some things we’ve tried.”

The Browns beckoned. When they entered the airplane there was a single Motie-shaped couch starboard aft. Charlie’s Brown went to it. Forward of that were a pair of human seats, then a human seat next to a Motie seat. Charlie and another Brown went through the cargo compartment to the pilot’s section. Potter and Staley sat together without conversation, leaving Whitbread and his Motie side by side. It reminded the midshipman of a more pleasant trip that had not been very long ago.

The plane unfolded an unbelievable area of wing surface. It took off slowly, straight up. Acres of city dwindled beneath them, square kilometers of more city lights rose above the horizon. They flew over the lights, endless city stretching on and on with the great dark sweep of farm land falling far behind. Staley peered through the view port and thought he could see, away to the left, the edge of the city: beyond it was nothing, darkness, but level. More farm lands.

“You say every Master has Warriors,” Whitbread said. “Why didn’t we ever see any before?”

“There aren’t any Warriors in Castle City,” the Motie said with obvious pride.

“None?”

“None at all. Everywhere else, any holder of territory or important manager goes about with a bodyguard. Even the immature decision maker is guarded by his mother’s troops. But the Warriors are too obviously what they are. My Master and the decision makers concerned with you and this Crazy Eddie idea got the others in Castle City to agree, so that you wouldn’t know just how warlike we are.”

Whitbread laughed. “I was thinking of Dr. Horvath.”

His Motie chuckled. “He had the same idea, didn’t he? Hide your paltry few wars from the peaceful Moties. They might be shocked. Did I tell you the Crazy Eddie probe started a war all by itself?”

“No. You haven’t told us about any of your wars.”

“It was worse than that, actually. You can see the problem. Who gets put in charge of the launching lasers? Any Master or coalition of them will eventually use the lasers to take over more territory for his clan. If Mediators run the installation, some decision maker will take it away from them.”

“You’d just give it up to the first Master who ordered you to?” Whitbread asked incredulously.

“For God’s sake, Jonathon! Of course not. She’d have been ordered not to to begin with. But Mediators aren’t good at tactics. We can’t handle battalions of Warriors.”

“Yet you govern the planet…”

“For the Masters. We have to. If the Masters meet to negotiate for themselves, it always ends up in a fight. Anyway. What finally happened was that a coalition of Whites was given command of the lasers and their children held as hostages on Mote Prime. They were all pretty old and had an adequate number of children. The Mediators lied to them about how much thrust the Crazy Eddie probe would need. From the Masters’ point of view the Mediators blew up the lasers five years early. Clever, huh? Even so…”

“Even so, what?”

“The coalition managed to salvage a couple of lasers. They had Browns with them. They had to. Potter, you’re from the system the probe was aimed at, aren’t you? Your ancestors must have records of just how powerful those launching lasers were.”

“Enough to outshine Murcheson’s Eye. There was even a new religion started about them. We had our own wars, then—”

“They were powerful enough to take over civilization, too. What it amounts to is that the collapse came early that time, and we didn’t fall all the way back to savagery. The Mediators must have planned it that way from the beginning.”

“God’s teeth,” Whitbread muttered. “Do you always work that way?”

“What way, Jonathon?”

“Expecting everything to fall apart at any minute. Using the fact.”

“Intelligent people do. Everyone but the Crazy Eddies. I think the classic case of the Crazy Eddie syndrome was that time machine. You saw it in one of the sculptures.”

“Right.”

“Some historian decided that a great turning point in history had come about two hundred years earlier. If he could interfere with that turning point, all of Mote history from that point on would be peaceful and idyllic. Can you believe it? And he could prove it, too. He had dates, old memoranda, secret treaties…”

“What was the event?”

“There was an Emperor, a very powerful Master. All of her siblings had been killed and she inherited jurisdiction over an enormous territory. Her mother had persuaded the Doctors and Mediators to produce a hormone that must have been something like your birth control pills. It would stimulate a Master’s body into thinking she was pregnant. Massive shots, and after that she would turn male. A sterile male. When her mother died, the Mediators had the hormone used on the Emperor.”

“But you do have birth control pills then!” Whitbread said. “You can use them to control the population—”

“That’s what this Crazy Eddie thought. Well, they used the hormone for something like three generations in the Empire. Stabilized the populations, all right. Not very many Masters there. Everything peaceful. Meanwhile, of course, the population explosion was happening on the other continents. The other Masters got together and invaded the Emperor’s territory. They had plenty of Warriors—and plenty of Masters to control them. End of Empire. Our time machine builder had the idea she could set things up so that the Empire would control all of Mote Prime.” Whitbread’s Motie snorted in disgust. “It never works. How are you going to get the Masters to become sterile males? Sometimes it happens anyway, but who’d want to before having children? That’s the only time the hormone can work.”

“Oh.”

“Right. Even if the Emperor had conquered all of Mote Prime and stabilized the population—and think about it, Jonathon, the only way to do that would be for the rulers to pass control on to breeders while never having any children themselves—even if they did, they’d have been attacked by the asteroid civilizations.”

“But man, it’s a start!” said Whitbread. “There’s got to be a way—”

“I am not a man, and there doesn’t got to be a way. And that’s another reason I don’t want contact between your species and mine. You’re all Crazy Eddies. You think every problem has a solution.”

“All human problems hae at least one final solution,” Gavin Potter said softly from the seat behind them.

“Human, perhaps,” the alien said. “But do Moties have souls?”

“ ’Tis nae for me to say,” Potter answered. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I am no a spokesman for the Lord.”

“It isn’t for your chaplain to say either. How can you expect to find out? It would take revealed knowledge—a divine inspiration, wouldn’t it? I doubt if you’ll get it.”

“Hae ye nae religion at all, then?” Potter asked incredulously.

“We’ve had thousands, Gavin. The Browns and other semisentient classes don’t change theirs much, but every civilization of Masters produces something else. Mostly they’re variants of transmigration of souls, with emphasis on survival through children. You can see why.”

“You didn’t mention Mediators,” Whitbread said.

“I told you—we don’t have children. There are Mediators who accept the transmigration idea. Reincarnation as Masters. That sort of thing. The closest thing to ours I’ve heard of in human religions is Lesser-Way Buddhism. I talked to Chaplain Hardy about this. He says Buddhists believe they can someday escape from what they call the Wheel of Life. That sounds an awful lot like the Cycles. I don’t know, Jonathon. I used to think I accepted reincarnation, but there’s no knowing, is there?”

“And you hae nothing like Christianity?” Potter demanded.

“No. We’ve had prophecies of a Savior who’d end the Cycles, but we’ve had everything, Gavin. It’s for damn sure there’s been no Savior yet.”

The endless city unrolled beneath them. Presently Potter leaned back in his chair and began to snore softly. Whitbread watched in amazement.

“You should sleep too,” said the Motie. “You’ve been up too long.”

“I’m too scared. You tire easier than we do—you ought to sleep.”

“I’m too scared.”

“Brother, now I’m really scared.” Did I really call him brother? No, I called her brother. Hell with it. “There was more to your museum of art than we understood, wasn’t there?”

“Yeah. Things we didn’t want to go into detail about. Like the massacre of the Doctors. A very old event, almost legend now. Another Emperor, sort of, decided to wipe the entire Doctor breed off the planet. Damn near succeeded, too.” The Motie stretched. “It’s good to talk to you without having to lie. We weren’t made to lie, Jonathon.”

“Why kill off the Doctors?”

“To keep the population down, you idiot! Of course it didn’t work. Some Masters kept secret stables, and after the next collapse they—”

“—were worth their weight in iridium.”

“It’s thought that they actually became the foundation of commerce. Like cattle on Tabletop.”

The city fell behind at last, and the plane moved over oceans dark beneath the red light of Murcheson’s Eye. The red star was setting, glowing balefully near the horizon, and other stars rose in the east below the inky edge of the Coal Sack.

“If they’re going to shoot us down, this is the place,” Staley said. “Where the crash won’t hit anything. Are you sure you know where we’re going?”

Whitbread’s Motie shrugged. “To King Peter’s jurisdiction. If we can get there.” She looked back at Potter. The midshipman was curled into his seat, his mouth slightly open, gently snoring. The lights in the plane were dim and everything was peaceful, the only jarring note the rocket launcher that Staley clutched across his lap. “You ought to get some sleep too.”

“Yeah.” Horst leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. His hands never relaxed their tight grip on the weapon.

“He even sleeps at attention,” Whitbread said. “Or tries to. I guess Horst is as scared as we are.”

“I keep wondering if any of this does any good,” the alien said. “We’re damned close to falling apart anyway. You missed a couple of other things in that zoo, you know. Like the food beast. A Motie variant, almost armless, unable to defend itself against us but pretty good at surviving. Another of our relatives, bred for meat in a shameful age, a long time ago.”

“My God.” Whitbread took a deep breath. “But you wouldn’t do anything like that now.”

“Oh, no.”

“Then why bring it up?”

“A mere statistical matter, a coincidence you may find interesting. There isn’t a zoo on the planet that doesn’t have breeding stock of Meats. And the herds are getting larger…”

“God’s teeth! Don’t you ever stop thinking about the next collapse?”

“No.”

Murcheson’s Eye had long since vanished. Now the east was blood-red in a sunrise that still startled Whitbread. Red sunrises were rare on inhabitable worlds. They passed over a chain of islands. Ahead to the west lights glowed where it was still dark. There was a cityscape like a thousand Spartas set edge to edge, crisscrossed everywhere by dark strips of cultivated land. On man’s worlds they would be parks. Here they were forbidden territory, guarded by twisted demons.

Whitbread yawned and looked at the alien beside him. “I think I called you brother, some time last night.”

“I know. You meant sister. Gender is important to us, too. A matter of life and death.”

“I’m not sure I mean that either. I meant friend,” Whitbread said with some awkwardness.

“Fyunch(click) is a closer relationship. But I am glad to be your friend,” said the Motie. “I wouldn’t have given up the experience of knowing you.”

The silence was embarrassing. “I better wake up the others,” Whitbread said softly.

The plane banked sharply and turned northwards. Whitbread’s Motie looked out at the city below, across to the other side to be sure of the location of the sun, then down again. She got up and went forward into the pilot’s compartment, and twittered. Charlie answered and they twittered again.

“Horst,” Whitbread said. “Mr. Staley. Wake up.”

Horst Staley had forced himself to sleep. He was still as rigid as a statue, the rocket launcher across his lap, his hands gripping it tightly.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t know. We changed course, and now—listen,” Whitbread said. The Moties were still chattering. Their voices grew louder.

38. Final Solution

Whitbread’s Motie came back to her seat. “It’s started,” she said. She didn’t sound like Whitbread now. She sounded like an alien. “War.”

“Who?” Staley demanded.

“My Master and King Peter. The others haven’t joined in yet, but they will.”

“War over us?” Whitbread asked incredulously. He was ready to cry. The transformation in his Fyunch(click) was too much to bear.

“Over jurisdiction over you,” the Motie corrected. She shivered, relaxed, and suddenly Whitbread’s voice spoke to them from the half-smiling alien lips. “It’s not too bad yet. Just Warriors, and raids. Each one wants to show the other what she could do, without destroying anything really valuable. There’ll be a lot of pressure from the other decision makers to keep it that way. They don’t want to be in a fallout pattern.”

“God’s teeth,” said Whitbread. He gulped. “But—welcome back, brother.”

“Where does that leave us?” Staley demanded. “Where do we go now?”

“A neutral place. The Castle.”

“Castle?” Horst shouted. “That’s your Master’s territory!” His hand was very near his pistol again.

“No. Think the others would give my Master that much control over you? The Mediators you met were all part of my clan, but the Castle itself belongs to a sterile decision maker. A Keeper.”

Staley looked distrustful. “What do we do once we’re there?”

The Motie shrugged. “Wait and see who wins. If King Peter wins he’s going to send you back to Lenin. Maybe this war will convince the Empire that it’s better to leave us alone. Maybe you can even help us.” The Motie gestured disgustedly. “Help us. He’s Crazy Eddie too. There’ll never be an end to the Cycles.”

“Wait?” Staley muttered. “Not me, damn it. Where is this Master of yours?”

“No!” the Motie shouted. “Horst, I can’t help you with something like that. Besides, you’d never get past the Warriors. They’re good, Horst, better than your Marines; and what are you? Three junior officers with damn little experience and some weapons you got from an old museum.”

Staley looked below. Castle City was ahead. He saw the space port, an open space among many, but gray, not green. Beyond it was the Castle, a spire circled by a balcony. Small as it was, it stood out among the industrial ugliness of the endless cityscape.

There was communications gear in their baggage. When Renner and the others came up, the Sailing Master had left everything but their notes and records in the Castle. He hadn’t said why, but now they knew: he wanted the Moties to think they would return.

There might even be enough to build a good transmitter. Something that would reach Lenin. “Can we land in the street?” Staley asked.

“In the street?” The Motie blinked. “Why not? If Charlie agrees. This is her aircraft.” Whitbread’s Motie trilled. There were answering hums and clicks from the cockpit.

“You’re sure the Castle is safe?” Staley asked. “Whitbread, do you trust the Moties?”

“I trust this one. But I may be a little prejudiced, Hor—Mr. Staley. You’ll have to make your own judgment.”

“Charlie says the Castle is empty, and the ban on Warriors in Castle City still holds,” Whitbread’s Motie said. “She also says King Peter’s winning, but she’s only hearing reports from her side.”

“Will she land near to the Castle?” Staley asked.

“Why not? We have to buzz the street first, to warn the Browns to look up.” The Motie trilled again.

The grumble of motors died to a whisper. Wings spread again, and the plane dipped lower, falling almost straight down to pull level with a swoop. It whizzed past the Castle, giving them a view of its balconies. Traffic moved below, and Staley saw a White on the pedestrian walkway across from the Castle. The Master ducked quickly into a building.

“No demons,” Staley said. “Anybody see Warriors?”

“No.” “Nae.” “Me neither.”

The plane banked sharply and fell again. Whitbread stared wide-eyed at the hard concrete sides of skyscrapers whipping past. They watched for Whites—and Warriors—but saw neither.

The plane slowed and leveled off two meters above the ground. They glided toward the Castle like a gull above waters. Staley braced himself at the windows and waited. Cars came at them and swerved around.

They were going to hit the Castle, he realized. Was the Brown trying to ram their way through like the cutter into MacArthur? The plane dropped joltingly and surged against brakes and thrust reverses. They were just beneath the Castle wall.

“Here, trade with me, Potter.” Staley took the x-ray laser. “Now move out.” The door wouldn’t work for him and he waved at the Motie.

She threw the door wide. There was a two-meter space between wingtip and wall, making twenty-five meters in all. That wing of the aircraft had folded somehow. The Motie leaped into the street.

The humans dashed after her, with Whitbread carrying the magic sword in his left hand. The door might be locked, but it would never stand up to that.

The door was locked. Whitbread hefted the sword to hew through it, but his Motie waved him back. She examined a pair of dials set in the door, took one in each of the right hands, and as she twirled them turned a lever with her left arm. The door opened smoothly. “Meant to keep humans out,” she said.

The entryway was empty. “Any way to barricade that damn door?” Staley asked. His voice sounded hollow, and he saw that the furnishings were gone from the room.

When there was no answer, Staley handed Potter the x-ray laser. “Keep guard here. You’ll need the Moties to tell if someone coming through is an enemy. Come on, Whitbread.” He turned and ran for the stairs.

Whitbread followed reluctantly. Horst climbed rapidly, leaving Whitbread out of breath when they reached the floor where their rooms were. “You got something against elevators?” Whitbread demanded. “Sir?”

Staley didn’t answer. The door to Renner’s room stood open, and Horst dashed inside. “God damn!”

“What’s the matter?” Whitbread panted. He went through the door.

The room was empty. Even the bunks were removed.

There was no sign of the equipment Renner had left behind. “I was hoping to find something to talk to Lenin with,” Staley growled. “Help me look. Maybe they stored our stuff in here somewhere.”

They searched, but found nothing. On every floor it was the same: fixtures, beds, furniture, everything removed. The Castle was a hollow shell. They went back downstairs to the entryway.

“Are we alone?” Gavin Potter asked.

“Yeah,” Staley replied. “And we’ll starve pretty bloody quick if nothing worse. The place has been stripped.”

Both Moties shrugged. “I’m a little surprised,” Whitbread’s Motie said. The two Moties twittered for a moment. “She doesn’t know why either. It looks like the place won’t be used again—”

“Well, they damn well know where we are,” Staley growled. He took his helmet from his belt and connected the leads to his radio. Then he put the helmet on. “Lenin, this is Staley. Lenin, Lenin, Lenin, this is Midshipman Staley. Over.”

“Mr. Staley, where in hell are you?” It was Captain Blaine.

“Captain! Thank God! Captain, we’re holed up in— Wait one moment, sir.” The Moties were twittering to each other, Whitbread’s Motie tried to say something, but Staley didn’t hear it. What he heard was a Motie speaking with Whitbread’s voice— “Captain Blaine, sir. Where do you get your Irish Mist? Over.”

“Staley, cut the goddamn comedy and report! Over.”

“Sorry, sir, I really must know. You’ll understand why I ask. Where do you get your Irish Mist? Over.”

“Staley! I’m tired of the goddamn jokes!”

Horst took the helmet off. “It isn’t the Captain,” he said. “It’s a Motie with the Captain’s voice. One of yours?” he asked Whitbread’s Motie.

“Probably. It was a stupid trick. Your Fyunch(click) would have known better. Which means she’s not cooperating with my Master too well.”

“There’s no way to defend this place,” Staley said. He looked around the entryway. It was about ten meters by thirty, and there was no furniture at all. The hangings and pictures which adorned the walls were gone. “Upstairs,” Horst said. “We’ve got a better chance there.” He led them back up to the living quarters floor, and they took positions at the end of the hall where they could cover the stairwell and elevator.

“Now what?” Whitbread asked.

“Now we wait,” both Moties said in unison. A long hour passed.

The traffic sounds died away. It took them a minute to notice, then it was obvious. Nothing moved outside.

“I’ll have a look,” Staley said. He went to a room and peered carefully out the window, standing well inside so that he wouldn’t expose himself.

Demons moved on the street below. They came forward in a twisting, flickering quick run, then suddenly raised their weapons and fired down the street. Horst turned and saw another group melting for cover; they left a third of their number dead. Battle sounds filtered through the thick windows.

“What is it, Horst?” Whitbread called. “It sounds like shots.”

“It is shots. Two groups of Warriors in a battle. Over us?”

“Certainly,” Whitbread’s Motie answered. “You know what this means, don’t you?” She sounded very resigned.

When there was no answer she said, “It means the humans won’t be coming back. They’re gone.”

Staley cried, “I don’t believe it! The Admiral wouldn’t leave us! He’d take on the whole damn planet—”

“No, he wouldn’t, Horst,” Whitbread said. “You know his orders.”

Horst shook his head, but he knew Whitbread was right. He called, “Whitbread’s Motie! Come here and tell me which side is which.”

“No.”

Horst looked around. “What do you mean, no? I need to know who to shoot at!”

“I don’t want to get shot.”

Whitbread’s Motie was a coward! “I haven’t been shot, have I? Just don’t expose yourself.”

Whitbread’s voice said, “Horst, if you’ve exposed an eye, any Warrior could have shot it out. Nobody wants you dead now. They haven’t used artillery, have they? But they’d shoot me.”

“All right. Charlie! Come here and—”

“I will not.”

Horst didn’t even curse. Not cowards, but Brown-and-whites. Would his own Motie have come?

The demons had all found cover: cars parked or abandoned, doorways, the fluting along the sides of one building. They moved from cover to cover with the flickering speed of houseflies. Yet every time a Warrior fired, a Warrior died. There had not been all that much gunfire, yet two thirds of the Warriors in sight were dead. Whitbread’s Motie had been right about their marksmanship. It was inhumanly accurate.

Almost below Horst’s window, a dead Warrior lay with its right arms blown away. A live one waited for a lull, suddenly broke for closer cover—and the fallen one came to life. Then it happened too fast to follow: the gun flying, the two Warriors colliding like a pair of buzz saws, then flying away, broken dolls still kicking and spraying blood.

Something crashed below. There were sounds in the stairwell. Hooves clicked on marble steps. The Moties twittered. Charlie whistled, loudly, and again. There was an answering call from below, then a voice spoke in David Hardy’s perfect Anglic.

“You will not be mistreated. Surrender at once.”

“We’ve lost,” Charlie said.

“My Master’s troops. What will you do, Horst?”

For answer Staley crouched in a corner with the x-ray rifle aimed at the stairwell. He waved frantically at the other midshipmen to take cover.

A brown-and-white Motie turned the corner and stood in the hallway. It had Chaplain Hardy’s voice, but none of his mannerisms. Only the perfect Anglic, and the resonant tones. The Mediator was unarmed. “Come now, be reasonable. Your ship has gone. Your officers believe you are dead. There is no reason to harm you. Don’t get your friends killed over nothing, come out and accept our friendship.”

“Go to hell!”

“What can you gain by this?” the Motie asked. “We only wish you well—”

There were sounds of firing from below. The shots rebounded through the empty rooms and hallways of the Castle. The Mediator with Hardy’s voice whistled and clicked to the other Moties.

“What’s she saying?” Staley demanded. He looked around: Whitbread’s Motie was crouched against the wall, frozen. “Jesus, now what?”

“Leave her alone!” Whitbread shouted. He moved from his post to stand beside the Motie and put his arm on her shoulder. “What should we do?”

The battle noises moved closer, and suddenly two demons were in the hallway. Staley aimed and fired in a smooth motion, cutting down one Warrior. He began to swing the beam toward the other. The demon fired, and Staley was flung against the far wall of the corridor. More demons bounded into the hallway, and there was a burst of fire that held Staley upright for a second. His body was chewed by dragon’s teeth, and he fell to lie very still. Potter fired the rocket launcher. The shell burst at the end of the hallway. Part of the walls fell in, littering the floor with rubble and partly burying the Mediator and Warriors.

“It seems to me that no matter who wins yon fight below, we know aye more about the Langston Field than is safe,” Potter said slowly. “What do ye think, Mr. Whitbread? ‘Tis your command now.”

Jonathon shook himself from his reverie. His Motie was stock-still, unmoving— Potter drew his pistol and waited. There were scrabbling sounds in the hallway. The sounds of battle died away.

“Your friend is right, brother,” Whitbread’s Motie said. She looked at the unmoving form of Hardy’s Fyunch(click). “That one was a brother too…”

Potter screamed. Whitbread jerked around.

Potter stood unbelieving, his pistol gone, his arm shattered from wrist to elbow. He looked at Whitbread with eyes dull with just realized pain and said, “One of the dead ones threw a rock.”

There were more Warriors in the hall, and another Mediator. They advanced slowly.

Whitbread swung the magic sword that would cut stone and metal. It came up in a backhanded arc and cut through Potter’s neck—Potter, whose religion forbade suicide, as did Whitbread’s. There was a burst of fire as he swung the blade at his own neck, and two clubs smashed at his shoulders. Jonathon Whitbread fell and did not move.

They did not touch him at first except to remove the weapons from his belt. They waited for a Doctor, while the rest held off King Peter’s attacking forces. A Mediator spoke quickly to Charlie and offered a communicator—there was nothing left to fight for. Whitbread’s Motie remained by her Fyunch(click).

The Doctor probed at Whitbread’s shoulders. Although she had never had a human to dissect, she knew everything any Motie knew about human physiology, and her hands were perfectly formed to make use of a thousand Cycles of instincts. The fingers moved gently to the pulverized shoulder joints, the eyes noted that there was no spurting blood. Hands touched the spine, that marvelous organ she’d known only through models.

The fragile neck vertebrae had been snapped. “High velocity bullets,” she hummed to the waiting Mediator. “The impact has destroyed the notochord. This creature is dead.”

The Doctor and two Browns worked frantically to build a blood pump to serve the brain. It was futile. The communication between Engineer and Doctor was too slow, the body was too strange, and there was too little equipment in time.

They took the body and Whitbread’s Motie to the space port controlled by their Master. Charlie would be returned to King Peter, now that the war was finished. There were payments to be made, work in cleaning up after the battle, every Master who had been harmed to be satisfied; when next the humans came, there must be unity among Moties.

The Master never knew, nor did her white daughters ever suspect. But among her other daughters, the brown-and-white Mediators who served her, it was whispered that one of their sisters had done that which no Mediator had ever done throughout all the Cycles. As the Warriors hurried toward this strange human, Whitbread’s Motie had touched it, not with the gentle right hands, but with the powerful left.

She was executed for disobedience; and she died alone. Her sisters did not hate her, but they could not bring themselves to speak to one who had killed her own Fyunch(click).