The Mote in God's Eye

“Right,” Midshipman Whitbread said. “We’re next, sir.” The red-haired middie’s grin seemed to meet at the back of his head.

Blaine sailed into the bridge without touching the companionway sides. “Take the con, Mr. Renner. The pilot ought to be at your station now.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Renner turned to Whitbread. “I relieve you.” His fingers danced across the input keys, then he hit a line of buttons even as the new data flowed onto his screen. Alarms went off in rapid succession: JUMP STATIONS, BATTLE STATIONS, HEAVY ACCELERATION WARNING.

MacArthur prepared herself for the unknown.

PART TWO

The Crazy Eddie Point

13. Look Around You

She was the first to find the intruders.

She had been exploring a shapeless mass of stony asteroid that turned out to be mostly empty space. Some earlier culture had carved out rooms and nooks and tankages and storage chambers, then fused the detritus into more rooms and chambers, until the mass was a stone beehive. It had all happened very long ago, but that was of no interest to her.

In later ages meteoroids had made dozens of holes through the construct. Thick walls had been gradually thinned so that air might be chemically extracted from the stone. There was no air now. There was no metal anywhere. Dry mummies, and stone, stone, little else and nothing at all for an Engineer.

She left via a meteoroid puncture; for all the air locks had been fused shut by vacuum welding. A long time after that someone had removed their metal working parts.

After she was outside, she saw them, very far away, a tiny glimmer of golden light against the Coal Sack. It was worth a look. Anything was worth a look.

The Engineer returned to her ship.

Telescope and spectrometer failed her at first. There were two of the golden slivers, and some bulk inside each of them, but something was shutting out her view of the masses inside. Patiently the Engineer went to work on her instruments, redesigning, recalibrating, rebuilding, her hands working at blinding speed guided by a thousand Cycles of instincts.

There were force fields to be penetrated. Presently she had something that would do that. Not well, but she could see large objects.

She looked again.

Metal. Endless, endless metal.

She took off immediately. The call of treasure was not to be ignored. There was little of free will in an Engineer.

Blaine watched a flurry of activity through a red fog as he fought to regain control of his traitor body after return to normal space. An all-clear signal flashed from Lenin, and Rod breathed more easily. Nothing threatened, and he could enjoy the view.

It was the Eye he saw first. Murcheson’s Eye was a tremendous ruby, brighter than a hundred full moons, all alone on the black velvet of the Coal Sack.

On the other side of the sky, the Mote was the brightest of a sea of stars. All systems looked this way at breakout: a lot of stars, and one distant sun. To starboard was a splinter of light, Lenin, her Langston Field radiating the overload picked up in the Eye.

Admiral Kutuzov made one final check and signaled Blaine again. Until something threatened, the scientists aboard MacArthur were in charge. Rod ordered coffee and waited for information.