The Mote In God's Eye

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 silver 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, the symmetry and the odd articulation of its bones. 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 be 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 mechanism 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 quit identical, either. The Motie moved ahead of him, graceful as a dolphin. Its short pelt was a random pattern 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 breath 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. H 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 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.