The Mote in God's Eye

First Jump was routine. The transfer point to Murcheson’s Eye was well located. New Caledonia was a magnificent white point source in the moment before MacArthur Jumped. Then Murcheson’s Eye was a wide red glare the size of a baseball held at arm’s length.

The fleet moved inward.

Gavin Potter had traded hammocks with Horst Staley.

It had cost him a week’s labor doing two men’s laundry, but it had been worth it. Staley’s hammock had a view port.

Naturally the port was beneath the hammock, in the cylindrical spin floor of the gun room. Potter lay face down in the hammock to look through the webbing, a gentle smile on his long face.

Whitbread was face up in his own hammock directly across the spin floor from Potter. He had been watching Potter for several minutes before he spoke.

“Mr. Potter.”

The New Scot turned only his head. “Yes, Mr. Whitbread?”

Whitbread continued to watch him, contemplatively, with his arms folded behind his head. He was quite aware that Potter’s infatuation with Murcheson’s Eye was none of his damned business. Incomprehensible, Potter remained polite. How much needling would he take?

Entertaining things were happening aboard MacArthur, but there was no way for midshipmen to get to them. An off-duty middie must make his own entertainment.

“Potter, I seem to remember you were transferred aboard Old Mac on Dagda, just before we went to pick up the probe.” Whitbread’s voice was a carrying one. Horst Staley, who was also off duty, turned over in what had been Potter’s bunk and gave them his attention. Whitbread noticed without seeming to.

Potter turned and blinked. “Yes, Mr. Whitbread. That’s right.”

“Well, somebody has to tell you, and I don’t suppose anyone else has thought of it. Your first shipboard mission involved diving right into an F8 sun. I hope it hasn’t given you a bad impression of the Service.”

“Not at all. I found it exciting,” Potter said courteously.

“The point is, diving straight into a sun is a rare thing in the Service. It doesn’t happen every trip. I thought someone ought to tell you.”

“But, Mr. Whitbread, are we no about to do exactly that?”

“Hah?” Whitbread hadn’t expected that.

“No ship of the First Empire ever found a transfer point from Murcheson’s Eye to the Mote. They may no have wanted it badly, but we can assume they tried somewhat,” Potter said seriously. “Now, I have had verra little experience in space, but I am not uneducated, Mr. Whitbread. Murcheson’s Eye is a red supergiant, a big, empty star, as big as the orbit of Saturn in Sol System. It seems reasonable that the Alderson Point to the Mote is within yon star if it exists. Does it not?”

Horst Staley rose up on an elbow. “I think he’s right. It would explain why nobody ever plotted the transfer point. They all knew where it was—”

“But nobody wanted to go look. Yes, of course he’s right,” Whitbread said in disgust. “And that’s just where we’re going. Whee! Here we go again.”

“Exactly,” said Potter; and smiling gently, he turned on his face again.

“It’s most unusual,” Whitbread protested. “Doubt me if you must, but I assure you we don’t go diving into stars more than two out of three trips.” He paused. “And even that’s too many.”

The fleet slowed to a halt at the fuzzy edge of Murcheson’s Eye. There was no question of orbits. At this distance the supergiant’s gravity was so feeble that have taken years for a ship to fall into it.

The tankers linked up and began to transfer fuel.

An odd, tenuous friendship had grown between Horace Bury and Buckman, the astrophysicist. Bury had sometimes wondered about it. What did Buckman want with Bury?

Buckman was a lean, knobby, bird-boned man. From the look of him he sometimes forgot to eat for days at a time. Buckman seemed to care for nobody and nothing in what Bury considered the real universe. People, time, power, money, were only the means Buckman used to explore the inner workings of the stars. Why would he seek the company of a merchant?

But Buckman liked to talk, and Bury at least had the time to listen. MacArthur was a beehive these days, frantically busy and crowded as hell. And there was room to pace in Bury’s cabin.

Or, Bury speculated cynically, he might like Bury’s coffee. Bury had almost a dozen varieties of coffee beans, his own grinder, and filter cones to make it. He was quite aware of how his coffee compared with that in the huge percolators about the ship.

Nabil served them coffee while they watched the fuel transfer on Bury’s screen. The tanker fueling MacArthur was hidden, but Lenin and the other tanker showed as two space-black elongated eggs, linked by a silver umbilicus, silhouetted against a backdrop of fuzzy scarlet.