The Mote in God's Eye

“I don’t know,” Renner replied. Quite honestly.

“And you do not want to know,” the Motie said. “Are you in trouble?”

“Don’t know that either,” Renner said. “You heard the Captain. Now how do I go about getting everybody moving in the middle of the night?”

“You may leave that to me,” said Renner’s Motie.

The hangar deck was normally kept in vacuum. The doors were so huge that a certain amount of leakage was inevitable. Later, Cargill would supervise as hangar deck was put under pressure; but for now he and Sinclair carried out their inspection in vacuum.

Everything seemed in order, nothing out of place as they entered. “Now,” said Cargill. “What would you fiddle with if you were a miniature Motie?”

“I would put the boats on the hull and use the hangar deck as a fuel tank.”

“There are ships like that. Be a big job for a swarm of Brownies, though.” Cargill strolled out onto the hangar doors. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, and was never sure why he looked down at his feet. It took him a moment to realize that something was wrong.

The crack that separated the two huge rectangular doors…wasn’t there.

Cargill looked about him, bewildered. There was nothing. The doors were part of the hull. The hinge motors, weighing several tons apiece, had vanished.

“Sandy?”

“Aye?”

“Where are the doors?”

“Why, y’re standing on them, ye bloody— I don’t believe it.”

“They’ve sealed us in. Why? How? How could they work in vacuum?”

Sinclair ran back to the air lock. The air-lock door controls— “The instruments read green,” said Sinclair. “Everything’s fine, as far as they know. If the Brownies can fool instruments, they could have had the hangar deck under pressure until just before we arrived.”

“Try the doors.” Cargill swung up onto one of the retractable bracings.

“The instruments show the doors opening. Still opening… complete.” Sinclair turned around. Nothing. A vast expanse of beige-painted floor, as solid as any part of the hull.

He heard Cargill curse. He saw Cargill swing down from the huge retractable brace and drop onto what had been a hangar door. He saw Cargill drop through the floor as if it had been the surface of a pond.

They had to fish Cargill out of the Langston Field. He was chest deep in formless black quicksand, and sinking, his legs very cold, his heart beating very slowly. The Field absorbed all motion.

“I should have got my head into it,” he said when he came round. “That’s what all the manuals say. Get my brain to sleep before my heart slows down. But God’s teeth! How could I think?”

“What happened?” Sinclair asked.

Cargill’s mouth opened, closed, opened again. He managed to sit up. “There aren’t words. It was like a miracle. It was like I was walking on water when they took away my sainthood. Sandy, it was really the damnedest thing.”

“It looked a mite peculiar too.”

“I bet. You see what they did, don’t you? The little bastards are redesigning MacArthur! The doors are still there, but the ships can go through them now. In an emergency you don’t even have to evacuate hangar deck.”

“I’ll tell the Captain,” Sinclair said. He turned to the intercom.

“Where the hell did they hide?” Cargill demanded. The engineering ratings who had pulled him out stared blankly. So did Sinclair. “Where? Where didn’t we look?”

His legs still felt cold. He massaged them. On the screen he could see Rod Blaine’s pained expression. Cargill struggled to his feet. As he did, alarms hooted through the ship.

“NOW HEAR THIS. INTRUDER ALERT. ALL COMBAT PERSONNEL WILL DON BATTLE ARMOR. MARINES REPORT TO HANGAR DECK WITH HAND WEAPONS AND BATTLE ARMOR.”

“The guns!” Cargill shouted.

“I beg your pardon?” Sinclair said. Blaine’s image focused on the First Lieutenant.

“The guns, Skipper! We did not look in the guns. Damn, I’m a bloody fool, did anyone think of the guns?”

“It may be,” Sinclair agreed. “Captain, I request that you send for the ferrets.”

“Too late, Chief,” Blaine said. “There’s a hole in their cage. I already checked.”

“God damn,” Cargill said. He said it reverently. “God damn them.” He turned to the armed Marines swarming onto hangar deck. “Follow me.” He was through treating the miniatures as escaped pets, or as vermin. As of now they were enemy boarders.

They rushed forward to the nearest turret. A startled rating jumped from his post as the First Lieutenant, Chief Engineer, and a squad of Marines in battle armor crammed into his control room.

Cargill stared at the instrument board. Everything seemed normal. He hesitated in real fear before he opened the inspection hatch.

The lenses and focus rings were gone from Number 3 Battery. The space inside was alive with Brownies. Cargill jumped back in horror—and a thread of laser pulse splashed against his battle armor. He cursed and snatched a tank of ciphogene from the nearest Marine and slammed it into the gap. It wasn’t necessary to open the stopcock.

The tank grew hot in his hand, and one laser beam winked through and past him. When the hissing died he was surrounded by yellow fog.