The Mote in God's Eye (24 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes?” Whitbread prompted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Uh?” Wlhitbread asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“But you think he’s still in there.”

“Yessir.”

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

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

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

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

They waited.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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