The Gripping Hand

by Larry Niven

  "To fight, or to timidly hide behind our allies? Hmm." If Glenda Ruth hadn't meant him to hear, Kevin didn't believe he would have. "Joyce, we tried to put everything we know in the message to Weigle. We even duped your tapes as a supplement."

  "'Even'?"

  "Barring that message, whether or not it went through, everything mankind knows about Moties is right here in Sinbad."

  Three enemy dots had become a spray of lights. Sinbad's Warrior fighters were dancing, an unpredictable pattern. The enemy began to dance, too. When the enemy is light-seconds away, it is possible to dodge laser beams.

  "The thing is," Glenda Ruth said, "if Sinbad has to fight, it'll be a very bad sign."

  "It's likewise true that my holos may be the most important thing to emerge from Mote system."

  "Point."

  "I've read about space-fleet engagements," Joyce said. "They all say the same thing. They'd be boring if they weren't terrifying. I didn't really believe that before."

  The weaving lights of the enemy ships had converged to one blurred point and stayed that way. Renner frowned. What did they think they were doing?

  They were withdrawing, the Warrior ships protecting the Master Sinbad's entourage were too many for them.

  Bandit Cluster Two was bigger. They went past at six hundred klicks per, firing once. Cluster One's beams impinged on Sinbad at the same time, the attack easily absorbed by Langston Fields. Cluster Two decelerated to join One.

  Atropos reached the Sister and took up station there, without incident, surrounded by East India Trading's Warriors and the remnants of the Crimean Tartar war fleet. The Medina outriders were already arriving.

  A third Bandit Cluster arrived, too. With Cluster One/Two they gathered their forces into a complex pattern half a million klicks out and forward of the Sister, then held station.

  Freddy Townsend recorded that and later played it for Renner at high speed. "Sir, it ought to make a pattern, but I can't see it."

  "Omar, who are these?"

  "Three families, one local, none of any consequence. The Khanate's contract to depart Mote system must leave enough wealth behind to back any number of alliances."

  "Okay. There aren't enough to attack us. They're expecting the Khanate to come surging back through the Sister. Then when we flee, these guys block our path."

  "What's in that direction?"

  "It doesn't matter. They're not between us and what we want. They only think they are. Freddy, how close are we to the Sister?"

  "Three hours, but we'll be going through at two hundred klicks per, unless we increase thrust. Another three hours if we miss the pass."

  Bury was asleep. His telltales seemed to have settled down: he was resting well. Give him another hour, Renner thought. "Belay thrust increase. Omar, we need a conference with our escorts and allies. Freddy, please call Commander Rawlins."

  "Let me be sure of this," Rawlins said. "We're going through the Sister. Me first, and I'm to try to protect the lot of you. What from?"

  "Whatever the Khanate has left as doorkeeper," Renner said. "Opinion is divided on just how much that will be."

  "Okay," Rawlins said. "Standard convoy escort through a Jump point. I can do that, but the Moties will have to cooperate. Shall we work out the courses, or will you?"

  "Your job," Renner said. "I've been away from it awhile. You'll do it better. Now, we're six hours behind you if Townsend's maneuver works, thirteen if it doesn't. You'd better not wait. We'll follow you."

  "Yes, sir. Okay, I go in and cover the forty-seven Motie alliance warships you're vectoring in. Then when we're all through, we make for Agamemnon at flank speed."

  "Everything that gets through," Renner said. "You've got a copy of my report to Agamemnon. Relay that if you can. The important thing is to keep the Khanate from getting out to the Empire. Don't you agree?"

  "Yes. All right. Sir. Okay, but there are too many ships for me to cover them all. I'll have to send some through in a dispersion pattern. I'll work out the course vectors and send them over within an hour. As for Sinbad, you're moving too fast, it would take hours to match velocities."

  "We don't have hours. We're too slow anyway, with Mr. Bury aboard."

  "Exactly. We'll fight what we find there while you and your escorts go right on past. They won't be expecting that."

  "That's the way I see it," Renner said.

  "Then we all go on. Commodore, I suggest you work on the message to Balasingham. He isn't going to like seeing a bunch of Motie ships coming at him."

  "Right. Thanks," Renner said. "Omar, make sure your people understand. Commander Rawlins will have his computers work out a course for every ship. It's important they follow directions exactly."

  "Understood," Omar said. "Thank you."

  "Okay, Commander, we'll wait for you to call. Thanks." Renner turned to Freddy Townsend. "So. Still think we can get through at two hundred klicks?"

  "Piece of cake."

  "Just what is happening?" Joyce asked. "Freddy?"

  "Give me a minute," Freddy said.

  "Omar," Renner said. "When you can spare a moment, we have a job for your Engineer." He tapped furiously and a series of diagrams appeared on the screen. "I need this set up."

  "The Flinger, Kevin?"

  Bury. "Yeah." Renner glanced at Bury's medical readouts. They'd settled to normal. "Glad you got a good rest. We're going through, and we don't know what's on the other side. I want to erect the Flinger."

  "Indeed." Bury sighed. "In that case-Cynthia, I believe you should open the sealed locker in Compartment Eight. We may need its contents."

  The brown Motie Engineer had been studying the screen. Now she chattered to Omar.

  "Problem?" Renner asked.

  "No, she understands the mechanism and its purpose. It will be done in less than an hour. Indeed, she says she can make considerable improvements-"

  "No!" Bury said. "My ship, and by the Prophet, no! Leave it as it was designed."

  Renner was chuckling, but stopped when he saw the medical readouts. "Omar, I think it will be best if the system works as I expect it to. We can leave the improvements for another time."

  "Very well." Omar spoke rapidly. The Engineer and Watchmakers went aft to find their pressure suits

  "Please," Joyce said. "Won't somebody tell me what's happening?"

  "What's happening, or what we think is happening?" Glenda Ruth asked.

  "Both!"

  "I would appreciate the information myself," Bury said.

  Kevin kept an ear cocked. Freddy, too, was listening, though he had his own work.

  "Not for the record, my opinion only." The screens showed a chart of the Mote system. Glenda Ruth said, "The Khanate sent its main war fleet through the Sister while the Masters and their colony ships stayed behind. East India and Medina made it too hot for them, and they fled through as well. We figure they'll be headed for the Jump to New Cal, but they'll have to find it first.

  "Meanwhile, our group is heading toward the Sister. There's another squadron of alliance ships that can work it so they get there just ahead of us. Atropos goes in with those. If there's nothing there to shoot at, they'll head directly for Agamemnon at the exit point. We'll follow at our own speed."

  "Oh," Joyce said. "Of course. We know where it is."

  "So we ought to get there first... Atropos and the Medina fleet, that is. Rawlins goes directly there, so the Khanate won't know just how strong we are."

  "But we're expecting trouble."

  "The Khanate is entirely likely to leave a sniper or six," Glenda Ruth said.

  "But they know how many ships we have. Don't they?"

  "How could they possibly know what we'll take through? Anyway, that's why Atropos goes first. He goes through and we follow, as many as we can. Some snugged up behind Atropos, the rest in a crazy-quilt pattern. The notion is that some get through. A lot get through."

  "Oh."

  "Something else they won't expect," Freddy said. "Or rather they
will expect-"

  "Jump shock," Omar said. "They will have experienced it. Eudoxus says it is formidable-but less so for you than us. They will not expect you to recover as quickly as you will. Our Warrior officers agree. It is a good plan."

  Atropos went second. First there was a fan of twenty East India warships not much larger than Imperial corvettes traveling at high but different speeds. Their mission was to distract whatever enemy waited on the other side of Crazy Eddie's Sister.

  Freddy Townsend watched in appreciation. "Any regatta commodore would be proud of that performance."

  "Or fleet admiral for that matter," Renner said. "All right, there goes Atropos." Alliance warships huddled close behind the Imperial cruiser, in what would have been called "line ahead" in wet navy days. Now they vanished one by one as Sinbad hurtled toward the Jump point.

  Sinbud's Warrior entourage would have been visible if the Field were not up. They were needed for more than protection. Freddy Townsend was using them for triangulation.

  The Sister was thirty seconds away.

  "If we make this, it'll be a record," Freddy said. "Will I be allowed to file it?"

  Kevin said, "Not my decision. And if we miss, we can try again, of course, but that's three hours down the recycler, Freddy, and I don't know how important three hours is. Give it your best."

  "Always."

  Victoria and Omar concurred: any decent Warrior pilot could do this. With twenty Warrior pilots to triangulate, even a human pilot had a chance.

  Kevin never saw Freddy hit the switch.

  7 Jump Shock

  Among other evils which being unarmed brings you, it causes you to be despised.

  Niccolo Machiavelli

  In the two days before the Khanate ships found them, Jennifer had little to do but watch Terry, and talk to Pollyanna, and pray. The God of mankind was God of the Mote, too. She prayed for solutions that would bring peace to both kinds of mind.

  When the Khanate ships approached, Jennifer looped Freddy's stored data on the Contraceptive-Longevity Worm. The Khanate Warriors found it running when they burst through the wall.

  For a time they ignored it. Two Engineers, four Watchmakers, and a Warrior searched once for booby traps, then in leisurely fashion for anything of interest. A Mediator and a Master arrived, discussed, examined. Cerberus's cabin was again infested with Moties.

  The Mediator listened to the recording Victoria had made, the notice in trade Koine that the ship was salvage but that Medina Alliance would pay well for Jennifer and Terry. The Mediator turned to the Master and spoke. The Master spoke curtly. Both ignored the humans.

  The Warrior went away. The Mediator examined Pollyanna without waking her, then took position in front of a monitor recently worked over by an Engineer. Watchmakers scurried about like big, helpful, curious spiders.

  Over the next several hours Cerberus changed again. A pity Freddy couldn't see this. The Khanate found his drive, Hecate's drive, pushing too light a load. They added a truss to hold cargo, fiddled with the drive to get yet more thrust, added nets of spheroids, as if Cerberus had sprouted clusters of tremendous grapes. More cargo . .. and weaponry? Jennifer couldn't tell. Terry would have known, but Terry wasn't talking.

  Terry dozed most of the time. Something would get his attention: Jennifer caressing his neck or ear, or a Watchmaker running across his back. His eyes would open; maybe he would smile, maybe he would drink some water or broth, speak a few words, and presently go back to sleep. He wasn't keeping good track of events. Jennifer had to keep her own counsel.

  Help would come. Jennifer waited.

  Inside, the Moties were at work. This time there was no stopping them. Their interest was in the screens, cameras, computers, communications. They didn't touch the air system. Perhaps the Tartar Engineers had sufficiently altered that.

  Pollyanna woke. She and the Khanate Mediator chattered as they watched the monitor

  The Master came back with a Doctor and another Engineer. Pallyanna jumped to her at once and began to nurse.

  The Khanate's Doctor was distinctly different from Dr. Doolittle, smaller, frail seeming. She did little to disturb Terry, though she examined Jennifer in detail.

  Pollyanna, well fed now, returned to Jennifer's shoulder and stayed there while she chatted with the Khanate Mediator. Her toes clutched Jennifer's shoulder now, while her arms waved in flamboyant gestures. The adult's answers were more concise, a flip of the wrist, right elbows rapping each other: how the hell would a human copy that? Jennifer tried to concentrate. An infant Mediator was teaching a mature one to speak Anglic! The recording would be fantastically valuable, but it would miss things, nuances...that head-and-shoulder tilt, ‘"not quite".

  Terry stirred, and Jennifer looked into his eyes. Was sense returning to him?

  And everything went blurry

  Jennifer recovered slowly. It struck her that if she were Terry Kakumi, and uninjured, she could take the ship from these wailing, kicking Moties. But lack of sleep had done Jennifer in, and the Moties were already gathering themselves. She moved hand over hand to the telescope controls.

  Cerberus had jumped, of course. The Frankenstein's monster of a spacecraft was nearly the first through to MGC-R-31. Ships were pouring through aft, accelerating, sweeping past Cerberus and leaving it behind, a crippled hybrid. Cerberus limped behind the Warrior fleet at about one Mote gravity. The drive flames of a thousand small ships retreated ahead.

  And the Mediator spoke to Jennifer for the first time. "You are Jennifer Banda? Call me Harlequin. I serve the Master Falkenberg." She must have seen Jennifer's reaction-Oh, really?-but she did not try to temper the arrogance of her claim. "We must discuss your future."

  "Surely yours, too," Jennifer said.

  "Yes. You are ours now. If all goes best, we break free from the Empire to seek our own stars. You and Terry Kakumi with us. When finally we must confront the Empire, you or your children must speak for us."

  It was hardly the future Jennifer would have chosen. But the Mediator was speaking: "Barriers wait before us. Where will the next bridging point lead us? What stands to block us?"

  "The Empire of Man," Jennifer said. Terry smiled, barely, and she saw bright glints: his eyes were open.

  "Detail," the Mediator said. "We find one tremendous ship and several much smaller."

  "There'll be more. We got the jump on you. More ships will be coming through from New Cal, any hour. You don't know what you're facing. This is the Empire."

  When Jennifer Banda was six years old, the Navy had declassified certain bob recordings. The whole school assembled to watch them.

  That was twelve years after the Empire fleet had assembled off New Washington before the final Jump to New Chicago, a world that had seceded from the Empire and renamed itself Freedom. That world had been restored to the Empire, its name restored, too. There had been battles, but what Jennifer remembered was the massed might of the Empire of Man, ships the size of islands passing at meteor speeds and higher.

  No Motie Mediator could see all that in her eyes. Still, Harlequin would see nothing to deny what Jennifer believed: that the power that held a thousand worlds in its gripping hand was coming down the Khanate's throat.

  Harlequin said, "If we could reach the new bridging point in time-"

  "You'd find our battleships just the other side. You felt the Jump shock. And they'll be waiting."

  "I will show you what we plan."

  Warrior and Engineer and Mediator huddled, and Pollyanna with them. On Cerberus's screens the gory details of an Engineer's autopsy were replaced with... something astronomical. The colors were poor, but this was MGC-R-31, there the little red star, there the blue sparks of Warriors retreating well ahead of Cerberus, there a lozenge next to concentric circles: undoubtedly Agamemnon and the Jump to New Cal. And there, popping out of the other target area aft: more ships, bigger.

  "The Masters come before it was intended," Harlequin said. "Never mind. What waits beyond"-she indicate
d the outward target-"this?"

  "Classified," Terry said.

  "Oh, good! Terry, how are you feeling?"

  "I might live. Won't like it at first. Thanks for staying."

  "Oh, no! How could I leave you?"

  "Don't tell them details. Sleep now," Terry said, and closed his eyes.

  Jennifer nodded. She'd expected him to speak earlier.

  Harlequin said, "What system lies beyond the bridge? There must be other bridges."

  "I'm going to stop talking now," Jennifer said.

  "Not a problem." Harlequin pointed at the cluster of large ships aft. "I will tell you. Twenty Master ships have come through. Our Warriors will prepare the way through to the Empire. There must be bridges to other stars. We seek the one that departs the Empire. So do you, Jennifer, for my life and yours, and to save the lives of any in our path."

  "You shouldn't be running from the Crazy Eddie Worm," Jennifer said. "You can surrender. Don't you understand, you don't have to die!"

  The Warrior made a sound, and Harlequin turned. On the screen other ships were popping through behind the Khanate Masters.

  Something big was crawling across Renner's chest. A monkey or a big spider, injured, missing limbs. "Ali Baba is sick," it said. "His Excellency is sick. So is, am I. Sick in the head, concussion, scrambled brains and wobbly eyes. Kevin?"

  "It'll be all right." Renner hugged the little Mediator. Craning his head around made him dizzy and sicker. "Just wait, it'll get better."

  Bury was on his back, toes pointing slightly apart, hands apart and palms upward, Yoga corpse position: he was calming himself the only way he knew how.

  The screens were blurred. A voice was shouting from the background, shouting for the Captain. I'm too damned old for this.

  Renner popped his restraint belts. "Townsend?" His balance was still screwy. He pulled himself around to where he could see Bury's monitors. The medic array had turned itself off at the Jump. Now it was running a self-test loop. But here came Cynthia, moving quickly on hands and knees. She crouched above Bury and began a medical inspection, pulse, tongue, eyes...

  "Townsend!"