The Mote in God's Eye

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.