by Larry Niven
"They're inhabited?"
"Definitely. Both Trojan points are seething with microwave frequencies. We should have guessed from the high albedos of the larger bodies. Polished surfaces are a natural product of civilization-I'm afraid Dr. Buckman's people think too much in terms of a dead universe."
"Thank you, Doctor. Is any of that message traffic for us?"
"I don't think so, Captain. But the nearest Trojan point is below us in this system's plane-about three million kilometers away. I suggest we go there. From the apparent density of civilization in the Trojan points it may be that the inhabited planet is not the real nexus of Motie civilization. Perhaps it is like Earth. Or worse."
Rod was shocked. He had found Earth herself shocking, not all that many years ago. New Annapolis was kept on Manhome so that Imperial officers would know just how vital was the great task of the Empire.
And if men had not had the Alderson Drive before Earth's last battles, and the nearest star had been thirty-five light years away instead of four- "That's a horrible thought."
"I agree. It's also only a guess, Captain. But in any event there is a viable civilization nearby, and I think we should go to it."
"I-just a moment." Chief Yeoman Lud Shattuck was at the bridge companionway gesturing frantically at Rod's number-four screen.
"We used the message-sending locator scopes, Skipper," Shattuck shouted across the bridge. "Look, sir."
The screen showed black space with pinhole dots of stars and a blue-green point circled by an indicator lightring. As Rod watched, the point blinked, twice.
"We've found the inhabited planet," Rod said with satisfaction. He couldn't resist. "We beat you to it, Doctor."
After all the waiting, it was as if everything broke at once. The light was first. There might have been an Earth-like world behind it; there probably was, for it was in the doughnut locus Horvath was searching. But the light hid whatever was behind it, and it wasn't surprising that the communications people had found it first. Watching for signals was their job.
Cargill and Horvath's team worked together to answer the pulses. One, two, three, four blinked the light, and Cargill used the forward batteries to send five, six, seven. Twenty minutes later the light sent three one eight four eleven, repeated, and the ship's brain ground out: P1, base twelve. Cargill used the computer to find e to the same base and replied with that.
But the true message was, We want to talk to you. And MacArthur's answer was, Fine. Elaborations would have to wait.
And the second development was already in.
"Fusion light," said Sailing Master Renner. He bent close over his screen. His fingers played strange, silent music on his control board. "No Langston Field. Naturally. They're just enclosing the hydrogen, fusing it and blasting it out. A plasma bottle. It's not as hot as our drives, which means lower efficiency. Red shift, if I'm reading the impurities right... it must be aimed away from us."
"You think it's a ship coming to meet us?"
"Yessir. A small one. Give us a few minutes and I'll tell you its acceleration. Meanwhile, we assume an acceleration of one gee...Renner's fingers had been tapping all the while "... and get a mass of thirty tons. Later we'll readjust that."
"Too big to be a missile," Blaine said thoughtfully. "Should we meet him halfway, Mr. Renner?"
Renner frowned. "There's a problem. He's aiming at where we are now. We don't know how much fuel he's got, or how bright he is."
"Let's ask, anyway. Eyes! Get me Admiral Kutuzov." The Admiral was on his bridge. Blurs out of focus behind him showed activity aboard Lenin. "I've seen it, Captain," Kutuzov said. "What do you want to do about it?"
"I want to go meet that ship. But in case it can't change course or we can't catch it, it will come here, sir. Lenin could wait for it."
"And do what, Captain? My instructions are clear, Lenin is to have nothing to do with aliens."
"But you could send out a boat, sir. A gig, which we'll pick up with your men. Sir."
"How many boats do you think I have, Blaine? Let me repeat my instructions. Lenin is here to protect secret of Alderson Drive and Langston Field. To accomplish task we will not only not communicate with aliens, we will not communicate with you when message might be intercepted."
"Yes, sir." Blaine stared at the burly man on the screen. Didn't he have a shred of curiosity? Nobody could be that much of a machine... or could he? "We'll go to the alien ship, sir. Dr. Horvath wants to anyway."
"Very good, Captain. Carry on."
"Yes, sir." Rod cut off the screen with relief, then tuned to Renner. "Let's go make first contact with an alien, Mr. Renner."
"I think you just did that," said Renner. He glanced nervously at the screens to be sure the Admiral was gone.
Horace Bury was just leaving his cabin-on the theory that he might be less bored somewhere else-when Buckman's head popped out of a companionway.
Bury changed his mind at once. "Dr. Buckman! May I offer you coffee?"
Protuberant eyes turned, blinked, focused. "What? Oh. Yes, thank you, Bury. It might wake me. There's been so much to do-I can only stay a moment-"
Buckman dropped into Bury's guest chair, limp as a physician's display skeleton. His eyes were red; his eyelids drooped at half-mast. His breathing was too loud. The stringy muscle tissue along his bare arm drooped. Bury wondered what an autopsy would show if Buckman were to die at this moment: exhaustion, malnutrition, or both?
Bury made a difficult decision. "Nabil, some coffee. With cream, sugar, and brandy for Dr. Buckman."
"Now, Bury, I'm afraid that during working hours-Oh, well. Thank you, Nabil." Buckman sipped, then gulped. "Ah! That's good. Thank you, Bury, that ought to wake me."
"You seemed to need it. Normally I would never adulterate good coffee with distilled spirits. Dr. Buckman, have you been eating?"
"I don't remember."
"You haven't. Nabil, food for our guest. Quickly."
"Bury, we're so busy, I really haven't time. There's a whole solar system to explore, not to mention the jobs for the Navy-tracing neutrino emissions, tracking that damned light-"
"Doctor, if you were to die at this moment, many of yours notes would never be written down, would they?"
Buckman smiled. "So theatrical, Bury. But I suppose I can spare a few minutes. All we're doing now is waiting for that signal light to go off."
"A signal from the Mote planet?"
"From Mote Prime, yes, at least it came from the right place. But we can't see the planet until they turn off the laser, and they won't. They talk and talk, and for what? What can they tell us if we don't speak a common language?"
"After all, Doctor, how can they tell us anything until they teach us their language? I presume that's what they're trying to do now. Isn't anyone working on that?"
Buckman gave a feral snarl. "Horvath has all the instruments feeding information to Hardy and the linguists. Can't get any decent observations of the Coal Sack-and no one's ever been this close to it before!" His look softened. "But we can study the Trojan asteroids."
Buckman's eye took on that look, the focus on infinity. "There are too many of them. And not enough dust. I was wrong, Bury; there's not enough dust to capture so many rocks, or to polish them either. The Modes probably did the polishing, they must be all through those rocks, the neutrino emissions are fantastic. But how did so many rocks get captured?"
"Neutrino emissions. That means a fusion technology."
Buckman smiled. "One of a high order. Thinking of trade possibilities?"
"Of course. Why else would I be here?" And I would be here even if the Navy had not made it clear that the alternative was a formal arrest...but Buckman wouldn't know that. Only Blaine did. "The higher their civilization, the more they'll have to trade," And the harder they'd be to cheat; but Buckmen wouldn't be interested in such things.
Buckman complained, "We could move so much faster if the Navy didn't use our telescopes. And Horvath lets them! Ah, good." Nabil entere
d, pushing a tray.
Buckman ate like a starved rat. Between mouthfuls he said, "Not that all the Navy's projects are totally without interest. The alien ship-"
"Ship?"
"There's a ship coming to meet us. Didn't you know?"
"No.."
"Well, its point of departure is a large, stony asteroid well outside the main cluster. The point is, it's very light. It must have a very odd shape, unless there are gas bubbles all through the rock, which would mean-"
Bury laughed outright. "Doctor, surely an alien space craft is more interesting than a stony meteorite!"
Buckman looked startled. "Why?"
The slivers turned red, then black. Clearly the things were cooling; but how had they become hot in the first place?
The Engineer had stopped wondering about that when one of the slivers came toward her. There were power sources inside the metal bulks.
And they were self-motivated. What were they? Engineers, or Masters, or senseless machinery? A Mediator on some incomprehensible task? She resented the Mediators, who could so easily and so unreasonably interfere with important work.
Perhaps the slivers were Watchmakers; but more likely they contained a Master. The Engineer considered running, but the approaching bulk was too powerful. It accelerated at 1.14 gravities, nearly the limit of her ship. There was nothing for an Engineer to do but meet it.
Besides... all that metal! In useful form, as far as she could tell. The Clusters were full of metal artifacts, but in alloys too tough to convert.
All that metal.
But it must meet her, not the other way around. She had not the fuel or the acceleration. She worked out turnover points in her head. The other would do the same, of course. Luckily the solution was unique, assuming constant acceleration. There would be no need for communication.
Engineers were not good at communication.
14 The Engineer
The alien ship was a compact bulk, irregular of shape and dull gray in color, like modeling clay molded in cupped hands. Extrusions sprouted at seeming random: a ring of hooks around what Whitbread took for the aft end; a thread of bright silver girdling its waist; transparent bulges fore and aft; antennae in highly imaginative curves; and dead aft, a kind of stinger: a spine many times the length of the hull, very long and straight and narrow.
Whitbread coasted slowly inward. He rode a space-to-space taxi, the cabin a polarized plastic bubble, the short hull studded with "thruster clusters"-arrays of attitude jets. Whitbread had trained for space in such a vehicle. Its field of view was enormous; it was childishly easy to steer; it was cheap, weaponless, and expendable.
And the alien could see him inside. We come in peace, with nothing hidden-assuming its alien eyes could see through clear battle plastic.
"That spine generates the plasma fields for the drive," his communicator was saying. There was no screen, but the voice was Cargill's. " We watched it during deceleration. That spiggot device beneath the spine probably feeds hydrogen into the fields."
"I'd better stay out of its way," said Mr. Whitbread.
"Right. The field intensity would probably wreck your instruments. It might affect your nervous systems too."
The alien ship was very close now. Whitbread fired bursts to slow himself. The attitude jets sounded like popcorn popping.
"See any signs of an air lock?"
"No, sir."
"Open your own air lock. Maybe that will get the idea across."
"Aye aye, sir." Whitbread could see the alien through the forward bubble. It was motionless, watching him, and it looked very like the photographs he had seen of the dead one in the probe. Jonathon Whitbread saw a neckless, lopsided head, smooth brown fur, a heavy left arm gripping something, two slender right arms moving frantically fast, doing things out of his field of vision.
Whitbread opened his air lock. And waited.
At least the Motie hadn't started shooting yet.
The Engineer was captivated. She hardly noticed the tiny vehicle nearby. There were no new principles embodied there. But the big ship!
It had a strange field around it, something the Engineer had never believed possible. It registered on half a dozen of the Engineer's instruments. To others the force envelope was partly transparent. The Engineer knew enough about the warship already to scare the wits out of Captain Blaine if he'd known. But it was not enough to satisfy an Engineer.
All that gadgetry! And metal!
The small vehicle's curved door was opening and closing now. It flashed lights on and off. Patterns of elect electromagnetic force radiated from both vehicles. The signals meant nothing to an Engineer.
It was the ship's gadetry that held her attention. The Field itself, its properties intriguing and puzzling, its underlying principles a matter of guesswork. The Engineer was ready to spend the rest of her life trying. For one look at the generator she would have died. The big ship's motive force was different from any fusion plant the Engineer had ever heard of; and its workings seemed to use the properties of that mysterious force envelope.
How to get aboard? How to get through that envelope? The intuition that came was rare for an Engineer. The small craft...was it trying to talk to her? It had come from the large craft. Then...
The small craft was a link to the larger ship, to the force envelope and its technology and the mystery of its sudden appearance.
She had forgotten danger. She had forgotten everything in the burning urge to know more about that field. The Engineer opened her air-lock door and waited to see what would happen.
"Mister Whitbread, your alien is trying to use probes on MacArthur," Captain Blaine was saying, "Commander Cargill says he has them blocked. If that makes the alien suspicious, it can't be helped. Has he tried any kind of probe on you?"
"No, sir."
Rod frowned and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "You're sure?"
"I've been watching the instruments, sir."
"That's funny. You're smaller, but you're close. You'd think he-"
"The air lock!" Whitbread snapped. "Sir, the Motie's opened his air lock."
"I see it. A mouth opened in the hull. Is that what you me an?"
"Yessir. Nothing coming out. I can see the whole cabin through that opening. The Motie's in his control cabin- permission to enter, sir?"
"Hmm. OK. Watch yourself. Stay in communication. And good luck; Whitbread."
Jonathon sat a moment, nerving himself. He had half hoped the Captain would forbid it as too dangerous. But of course midshipmen are expendable... Whitbread braced himself in the open air lock. The alien ship was very close. With the entire ship watching him, he launched himself into space.
Part of the alien's hull had stretched like skin, to open into a kind of funnel. A strange way to build an air lock, thought Whitbread. He used backpack jets to slow himself as he drifted straight into the funnel, straight toward the Motie, who stood waiting to receive him.
The alien wore only its soft brown fur and four thick pads of black hair, one in each armpit and one at the groin. "No sign of what's holding the air in, but there's got to be air in there," Whitbread told the mike. A moment later he knew. He had run into invisible honey.
The air lock closed against his back.
He almost panicked. Caught like a fly in amber, no forward, no retreat. He was in a cell 130 cm high, the height of the alien. It stood before him on the other side of the invisible wall, blank-faced, looking him over.
The Motie. It was shorter than the other, the dead one in the probe. Its color was different: there were no white markings through the brown fur. There was another, subtler, more elusive difference... perhaps the difference between the quick and the dead, perhaps something else.
The Motie was not frightening. Its smooth fur was like one of the Doberman pinschers Whitbread's mother used to raise, but there was nothing vicious or powerful looking about the alien. Whitbread would have liked to stroke its fur.
The face was no more than a sketch, w
ithout expression, except for a gentle upward curve of the lipless mouth, a sardonic half-smile. Small, fiat-footed, smooth-furred, almost featureless- It looks like a cartoon, Whitbread thought. How could he be afraid of a cartoon?
But Jonathon Whitbread was crouched in a space much too small for him, and the alien was doing nothing about it.
The cabin was a crowded patchwork of panels and dark crevasses, and tiny faces peered at him from the shadows.
Vermin! The ship was infested with vermin. Rats? Food supply? The Motie did not seem disturbed as one flashed into the open, then another, more dancing from cover to cover, crowding close to see the intruder.
They were big things. Much bigger than rats, much smaller than men. They peered from the corners, curious but timid. One dodged close and Whitbread got a good look. What he saw made him gasp. It was a tiny Motie!
It was a difficult time for the Engineer. The intruder's entry should have answered questions, but it only raised more.
What was it? Big, big-headed, symmetrical as an animal, but equipped with its own vehicle like an Engineer or a Master. There had never been a class like this. Would it obey or command? Could the hands be as clumsy as they looked? Mutation, monster, sport? What was it for?
Its mouth was moving now. It must be speaking into a communications device. That was no help. Even Messengers used language.
Engineers were not equipped to make such decisions; but one could always wait for more data.
Engineers had endless patience.
"There's air," Whitbread reported. He watched the telltales that showed in a mirror just above his eye level. "Did I mention that? I wouldn't want to try breathing it. Normal pressure, oxygen around 18 percent, CO2 about 2 percent, enough helium to register, and-"
"Helium? That's odd. Just how much?"
Whitbread switched over to a more sensitive scale and waited for the analyzer to work. "Around 1 percent. Just under."
"Anything else?"
"Poisons. SO2, carbon monoxide, nitrous oxides, ketones, alcohols, and some other stuff that doesn't read out with this suit. The light blinks yellow."
"Wouldn't kill you fast, then. You could breathe it a while and still get help in time to save your lungs."