The Mote in God's Eye

Whitbread paused, thinking of the whirlwind that had blown him out the Motie ship air lock. “So you tell me. What are the little ones? Pets? Children? But she killed them. Vermin? Why save two of them? Food animals? Have you tried that?”

Sally grimaced. It was almost a snarl, remarkable on her pretty face, an expression she would never have worn any social occasion. “Tried what? Fricassee one of the little beasts and offer it to the big one? Be reasonable.”

The alien in Crawford’s room poured a handful of some kind of seed—and ate it. “Popcorn,” said Sally. “We tried it on the little ones first. Maybe that’s what they were for, food testers.”

“Maybe.”

“She eats cabbage too. Well, she won’t starve, but she may die of vitamin deficiencies. All we can do is watch and wait— I suppose we’ll go to the alien’s home planet pretty soon. In the meantime, Jonathon, you’re the only man who’s seen the Motie ship. Was the pilot’s seat contoured? I only got a glimpse of it through your helmet camera.”

“It was contoured. In fact, it fitted her like a glove. I noticed something else. The control board ran along the right side of the seat. For right hands only…”

He remembered a great deal about the mining ship, it turned out. It kept him in Lady Sally’s enjoyable company until he had to go on watch. But none of it was particularly useful.

Whitbread had no sooner taken his station on the bridge than Dr. Buckman called for the Captain.

“A ship, Blaine,” Buckman said. “From the inhabited world, Mote Prime. We didn’t find it because it was hidden by that damned laser signal.”

Blaine nodded. His own screens had shown the Motie ship nine minutes before; Chief Shattuck’s crew wasn’t about to let civilians keep a better watch than the Navy.

“It will reach us in about eighty-one hours,” Buckman said. “It’s accelerating at point eight seven gees, which is the surface gravity of Mote Prime by some odd coincidence. It’s spitting neutrinos. In general it behaves like the first ship, except that it’s far more massive. I’ll let you know if we get anything else.”

“Fine. Keep an eye on it, Doctor.” Blaine nodded and Whitbread cut the circuit. The Captain turned to his exec. “Let’s compare what we know with Buckman’s file, Number One.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Cargill toyed with the computer controls for a few minutes. “Captain?”

“Yes?”

“Look at the starting time. That alien ship got under way in not much more than an hour after we broke out.”

Blaine whistled to himself. “Are you sure? That gives ten minutes to detect us, another ten for us to dee them, and forty minutes to get ready and launch. Jack, what kind of ship launches in forty minutes?”

Cargill frowned. “None I ever heard of. The Navy could do it, keep a ship with a full crew on ready alert…”

“Precisely. I think that’s a warship coming at us, Number One. You’d better tell the Admiral, then Horvath. Whitbread, get me Buckman.”

“Yes?” The astrophysicist looked harried.

“Doctor, I need everything your people can get about that Motie ship. Now. And would you give some thought to their rather strange acceleration?”

Buckman studied the numbers Blaine sent down to his screen. “This seems straightforward enough. They launched from Mote Prime or a closely orbiting moon forty minutes after we arrived. What’s the problem?”

“If they launched that fast, it’s almost certainly a warship. We’d like to believe otherwise.”

Buckman was annoyed. “Believe what you like, but you’ll ruin the math, Captain. Either they launched in forty minutes, or… well, you could start the Motie vehicle something over two million kilometers this side of Mote Prime; that would give them more time… but I don’t believe it.”

“No more do I. I want you to satisfy yourself about this, Dr. Buckman. What could we assume that would give them more time to launch?”

“Let me see… I’m not used to thinking in terms of rocketry, you know. Gravitational accelerations are more my field, if you’ll pardon the pun. Hmmm.” Buckman’s eyes went curiously blank. For a moment he looked like an idiot. “You’d have to assume a period of coasting. And a much higher acceleration in the launching mechanism. Much higher.”

“How long to coast?”

“Several hours for every hour you want to give them make up their minds. Captain, I don’t understand your problem. Why can’t they have launched a scientific survey ship in forty minutes? Why assume a warship? After all, MacArthur is both, and it took you an unreasonably long time to launch. I was ready days early.”

Blaine turned him off. I’ll break his scrawny neck, he told himself. They’ll court-martial me, but I’ll claim justifiable homicide. I’ll subpoena everyone who knew him. They’re bound to let me off. He touched keys. “Number One, what have you got?”

“They launched that ship in forty minutes.”

“Which makes it a warship.”

“So the Admiral thinks, sir. Dr. Horvath wasn’t convinced.”