"GUNNERY STATIONS REPORT CONDITION RED ONE."
"MARINE COMMANDER REPORTS CONDITION RED ONE."
"Staley, have the Marines not on sentry duty continue the search for those missing aliens," Blaine ordered.
"Aye aye, sir."
"DAMAGE CONTROL REPORTS CONDITION RED ONE."
The Motie ship decelerated toward MacArthur, the fusion flame of its drive a blaze on the battle cruiser's screens. Rod watched nervously. "Sandy, how much of that drive could we take?"
"It's nae too hot, Captain," Sinclair reported through the intercom. "The Field can handle all of that for twenty minutes or more. And 'tis nae focused, Skipper, there'd be nae hot spots."
Blaine nodded. He'd reached the same conclusion, but it was wise to check when possible. He watched the light grow steadily.
"Peaceful enough," Rod told Renner. "Even if it is a warship."
"I'm not so sure it is one, Captain." Renner seemed very much at ease. Even if the Motie should attack he'd be more a spectator than a participant. "At least they've aimed their drive flame to miss. Courtesy counts."
"The hell it does. That flame spreads. Some of it is spilling onto our Langston Field, and they can observe what it does to us."
"I hadn't thought of that."
"MARINES REPORT CIVILIANS IN CORRIDORS, B DECK BULKHEAD TWENTY."
"God damn it!" Blaine shouted. "That's astronomy. Get those corridors cleared!"
"It'll be Buckman," Renner grinned. "And they'll have their troubles getting him to his stateroom. . ."
"Yeah. Mr. Staley, tell the Marines to put Buckman in his cabin even if they have to frogmarch him there."
Whitbread grinned to himself. MacArthur was in free fall, all her spin gone. Now how would the Marines frogmarch the astrophysicist in that?
"TORPEDO ROOMS REPORT CONDITION RED ONE. TORPEDOES ARMED AND READY."
"One of the leading cooks thinks he saw a miniature," Staley said. "The Marines are on the way."
The alien ship drew closer, her drive a steady white blaze. She was cutting it very fine, Blaine thought. The deceleration hadn't changed at all. They obviously trusted everything—their drives, their computers, sensors . . .
"ENGINE ROOM REPORTS CONDITION RED ONE. FIELD AT MAXIMUM STRENGTH."
"The Marines have Dr. Buckman in his stateroom," Staley said. "Dr. Horvath is on the intercom. He wants to complain."
"Listen to him, Staley. But not for long."
"GUNNERY REPORTS ALL BATTERIES LOCKED ONTO ALIEN CRAFT. LOCKED ON AND TRACKING."
MacArthur was at full alert. All through the ship her crew waited at action stations. All nonessential equipment located near the ship's hull had been sent below.
The tower containing Blaine's patrol cabin stuck out of the battle cruiser's hull like an afterthought. For spin gravity it was conveniently far from the ship's axis, but in a battle it would be the first thing shot off. Blaine's cabin was an empty shell now, his desk and the more important gear long since automatically raised into one of the null-gravity recreation areas.
Every idle compartment at the ship's core was jammed, while the outer decks were empty, cleared to make way for damage-control parties.
And the Motie ship was approaching fast. She was still no more than a brightening light, a fusion jet fanning out to splash MacArthur's Langston Field.
"GUNNERY REPORTS ALIEN SHIP DECELERATING AT POINT EIGHT SEVEN ZERO GRAVITIES."
"No surprises," said Renner sotto voce.
The light expanded to fill the screen—and then dimmed. Next moment the alien ship was sliding precisely alongside the battle cruiser, and its drive flame was already off.
It was as if the vessel had entered an invisible dock predetermined six days ago. The thing was at rest relative to MacArthur. Rod saw shadows moving within the inflated rings at its fore end.
Renner snarled, an ugly sound. His face contorted. "Goddamn show-offs!"
"Mr. Renner, control yourself."
"Sorry, sir. That's the most astounding feat of astrogation I've ever heard of. If anyone tried to tell me about it, I'd call him a liar. Who do they think they are?" Renner was genuinely angry. "Any astrogator-in-training that tried a stunt like that would be out on his tail, if he lived through the crash."
Blaine nodded. The Motie pilot had left no margin of error at all. And— "I was wrong. That couldn't possibly be a warship. Look at it."
"Yah. It's as fragile as a butterfly. I could crush it in my hand."
Rod mused a moment, then gave orders. "Ask for volunteers. To make first contact with that ship, alone, using an unarmed taxi. And . . . keep Condition Red One."
There were a good many volunteers.
Naturally Mr. Midshipman Whitbread was one of them. And Whitbread had done it before.
Now he waited in the taxi. He watched the hangar doors unfolding through his polarized plastic faceplate.
He had done this before. The Motie miner hadn't killed him, had she? The black rippled. Sudden stars showed through a gap in the Langston Field.
"That's big enough," Cargill's voice said in his right ear. "You may launch, Mr. Whitbread. On your way—and Godspeed."
Whitbread fired thruster clusters. The taxi rose, floated through the opening into starry space and the distant glare of Murcheson's Eye. Behind him the Langston Field closed. Whitbread was sealed outside.
MacArthur was a sharply bounded region of supernatural blackness. Whitbread circled it at leisure. The Mote flashed bright over the black rim, followed by the alien ship.
Whitbread took his time. The ship grew slowly. Its core was as slender as a spear. Functional marking showed along its sides: hatch covers, instrument ports, antennae, no way to tell. A single black square fin jutted from near the midpoint: possibly a radiator surface.
Within the broad translucent doughnuts that circled the fore end he could see moving shapes. They showed clearly enough to arouse horror: vaguely human shadows twisted out of true.
Four toroids, and shadows within them all. Whitbread reported, "They're using all their fuel tanks for living space. They can't expect to get home without our help."
The Captain's voice: "You're sure?"
"Yes, sir. There could be an inboard tank, but it wouldn't be very large."
He had nearly reached the alien craft. Whitbread slowed to a smooth stop just alongside the inhabited fuel tanks. He opened his airlock door.
A door opened immediately near the fore end of the metal core. A Motie stood in the oval opening; it wore a transparent envelope. The alien waited.
Whitbread said, "Permission to leave the—"
"Granted. Report whenever convenient. Otherwise, use your own judgment. The Marines are standing by, Whitbread, so don't yell for help unless you mean it. They'll come fast. Now good luck."
As Cargill's voice faded, the Captain came on again. "Don't take any serious risks, Whitbread. Remember, we want you back to report."
"Aye aye, sir."
The Motie stepped gracefully out of his way as Whitbread approached the air lock. It left the Motie standing comically on vacuum, its big left hand gripping a ring that jutted out from the hull. "There's stuff poking out all over," Whitbread said into his mike. "This thing couldn't have been launched from inside an atmosphere."
He stopped himself in the oval opening and nodded at the gently smiling alien. He was only half sardonic as he asked formally, "Permission to come aboard?"
The alien bowed from the waist—or perhaps it was an exaggerated nod? The joint in its back was below the shoulders. It gestured toward the ship with the two right arms.
The air lock was Motie-sized, cramped. Whitbread found three recessed buttons in a web of silvery streamers. Circuitry. The Motie watched his hesitation, then reached past him to push first one, then another.
The lock closed behind him.
The Mediator stood on emptiness, waiting for the lock to cycle. She wondered at the intruder's queer structure, at the symmetry and the odd articulation of its hone
s. Clearly the thing was not related to known life. And its home ship had appeared in what the Mediator thought of as the Crazy Eddie point.
She was far more puzzled at its failure to work out the lock circuitry without help.
It must he here in the capacity of a Mediator. It had to be intelligent. Didn't it? Or would they send an animal first? No, certainly not. They couldn't be that alien; it would be a deadly insult in any culture.
The lock opened. She stepped in and set it cycling. The intruder was waiting in the corridor, filling it like a cork in a bottle. The Mediator took time to strip off her pressure envelope, leaving her naked. Alien as it was, the thing might easily assume she was a Warrior. She must convince the creature that she was unarmed.
She led the way toward the roomier inflated sections. The big, clumsy creature had trouble moving. It did not adapt well to free fall. It stopped to peer through window panels into sections of the ship, and examined mechanisms the Browns had installed in the corridor . . . why would an intelligent being do that?
The Mediator would have liked to tow the creature, but it might take that as an attack. She must avoid that at all costs.
For the present, she would treat it as a Master.
There was an acceleration chamber: twenty-six twisted bunks stacked in three columns, all similar in appearance to Crawford's transformed bunk; yet they were not quite identical, either. The Motie moved ahead of him, graceful as a dolphin. Its short pelt was a random pattern of curved brown and white stripes, punctuated by four patches of thick white fur at the groin and armpits. Whitbread found it beautiful. Now it had stopped to wait for him—impatiently, Whitbread thought.
He tried not to think about how thoroughly he was trapped. The corridor was unlighted and claustrophobically narrow. He looked into a line of tanks connected by pumps, possibly a cooling system for hydrogen fuel. It would connect to that single black fin outside.
Light flashed on the Motie.
It was a big opening, big enough even for Whitbread. Beyond: dim sunlight, like the light beneath a thunderstorm. Whitbread followed the Motie into what had to be one of the toroids. He was immediately surrounded by aliens.
They were all identical. That seemingly random pattern of brown and white was repeated on every one of them. At least a dozen smiling lopsided faces ringed him at a polite distance. They chattered to each other in quick squeaky voices.
The chattering stopped suddenly. One of the Moties approached Whitbread and spoke several short sentences that might have been in different languages, though to Whitbread they were all meaningless.
Whitbread shrugged, theatrically, palms forward.
The Motie repeated the gesture, instantly, with incredible accuracy. Whitbread cracked up. He sprawled helplessly in free fall, arms folded around his middle, cackling like a chicken.
Blaine spoke in his ear, his voice sober and metallic. "All right, Whitbread, everyone else is laughing too. The question is—"
"Oh, no! Sir, am I on the intercom again?"
"The question is, what do the Moties think you're doing?"
"Yessir. It was the third arm that did it." Whitbread had sobered. "It's time for my strip-tease act, Captain. Please take me off that intercom . . ."
The telltale at his chin was yellow, of course. Slow poison; but this time he wasn't going to breathe it. He took a deep breath, undogged, and lifted his helmet. Still holding his breath, he took SCUBA gear from an outside patch of his suit and fitted the mouthpiece between his teeth. He turned on the air; it worked fine.
Leisurely he began to strip. First came the baggy coverall that contained the suit electronics and support gear. Then he unsnapped the cover strips that shielded the zippers, and opened the tight fabric of the pressure suit itself. The zippers ran along each limb and up the chest; without them it would take hours to get in and out of a suit, which looked like a body stocking or a leotard. The elastic fibers conformed to every curve of his musculature, as they had to, to keep him from exploding in vacuum; with their support, his own skin was in a sense his pressure suit, and his sweat glands were the temperature-regulating system.
The tanks floated free in front of him as he struggled out of the suit. The Moties moved slowly, and one—a Brown, no stripes, identical to the miner aboard MacArthur—came over to help.
He used the all-purpose goop in his tool kit to stick his helmet to the translucent plastic wall. Surprisingly it did not work. The brown Motie recognized his difficulty instantly. He (she, it) produced a tube of something and dabbed it on Whitbread's helmet; now it stuck. Jonathon faced the camera toward him, and stuck the rest of his suit next to it.
Humans would have aligned themselves with their heads at the same end, as if they must define an up direction before they could talk comfortably. The Moties were at all angles. They clearly didn't give a damn. They waited, smiling.
Whitbread wriggled the rest of the way out of his suit, until he wore nothing at all.
The Moties moved in to examine him.
The Brown was startling among all the brown-and-white patterns. It was shorter than the others, with slightly bigger hands and an odd look to the head; as far as Whitbread could tell, it was identical to the miner. The others looked like the dead one in the Motie light-sail probe.
The brown one was examining his suit, and seemed to be doing things to the tool kit; but the others were prodding at him, seeking the musculature and articulations of his body, looking for places where prodding would produce reflex twitching and jumping.
Two examined his teeth, which were clenched. Others traced his bones with their fingers: his ribs, his spine, the shape of his head, his pelvis, the bones of his feet. They palpated his hands and moved the fingers in ways they were not meant to go. Although they were gentle enough, it was all thoroughly unpleasant.
The chattering rose to a crescendo. Some of the sounds were so shrill they were nearly inaudible shrieks and whistles, but behind them were melodious mid-range tones. One phrase seemed to be repeated constantly in high tenor. Then they were all behind him, showing each other his spine. They were very excited about Whitbread's spine. A Motie signaled him by catching his eye and then hunching back and forth. The joints jutted as if its back were broken in two places. Whitbread felt queasy watching it, but he got the idea. He curled into fetal position, straightened, then curled up again. A dozen small alien hands probed his back.
Presently they backed away. One approached and seemed to invite Whitbread to explore his (her, its?) anatomy. Whitbread shook his head and deliberately looked away. That was for the scientists.
He retrieved his helmet and spoke into the mike. "Ready to report, sir. I'm not sure what to do next. Shall I try to get some of them to come back to MacArthur with me?"
Captain Blaine's voice sounded strained. "Definitely not. Can you get outside their ship?"
"Yes, sir, if I have to."
"We'd rather you did. Report on a secure line, Whitbread."
"Uh—yes, sir." Jonathon signaled the Moties, pointed to his helmet and then to the air lock. The one who had been conducting him around nodded. He climbed back into his suit with help from the brown Motie, dogged the fastenings and attached his helmet. A Brown-and-white led him to the air lock.
There was no convenient place outside to attach the safety line, but after a glance his Motie escort glued a hook onto the ship's surface. It did not look substantial, that hook. Jonathon worried about it briefly. Then he frowned. Where was the ring the Motie had held when Whitbread first approached? It was gone. Why?
Oh, well. MacArthur was close. If the hook broke off they would come get him. Gingerly he pushed away from the Motie ship until he hung in empty space. He used his helmet sights to line up exactly with the antenna protruding from MacArthur's totally black surface. Then he touched the security stud with his tongue.
A thin beam of coherent light stabbed out from his helmet. Another came in from MacArthur, following his own into a tiny receptacle set into the helmet. A rin
g around that receptacle stayed in darkness; if there were any spillover the tracking system on MacArthur would correct it or, if the spill touched still a third ring around Whitbread's receiving antenna, cut off communication entirely.
"Secure, sir," he reported. He let an irritated but puzzled note creep into his voice. After all, he thought, I'm entitled to a little expression of opinion. Aren't I?
Blaine answered immediately. "Mr. Whitbread, the reason for this security is not merely to make you uncomfortable. The Moties do not understand our language now, but they can make recordings; and later they will understand Anglic. Do you follow me?"
"Why—yes sir." Ye gods, the Old Man was really thinking ahead.
"Now, Mr. Whitbread, we cannot allow any Motie aboard MacArthur until we have disposed of the problem of the miniatures, and we will do nothing to let the Moties know we have such a problem. Is that understood?"
"Yes, sir."
"Excellent. I am sending a boatload of scientists your way—now that you've broken the ground, so to speak. By the way, well done. Before I send the others, have you further comments?"
"Um. Yes, sir. First, there are two children aboard. I saw them clinging to the backs of adults. They're bigger than miniatures, and colored like the adults."
"More evidence of peaceful intent," Blaine said. “What else?"
"Well, I didn't get a chance to count them, but it looks like twenty-three Brown-and-whites and two brown asteroid-miner types. Both of the children were with the Browns. I've been wondering why."
"Eventually we'll be able to ask them. All right, Whitbread, we'll send over the scientists. They'll have the cutter. Renner, you on?"
"Yes, sir."
"Work out a course. I want MacArthur fifty kilometers from the Motie ship. I don't know what the Moties will do when we move, but the cutter'll be over there first."
"You're moving the ship, sir?" Renner asked incredulously. Whitbread wanted to cheer but restrained himself.
The Mote In God's Eye Page 20