The Mote in God's Eye

“This one, Jonathon. It matches the one in the Motie probe. Or does it? The forehead slope is wrong… but of course they’d pick the most intelligent person they could find as emissary to New Caledonia. This is a first contact with aliens for them too.”

There was a small, small-headed mummy, only a meter long, with large, fragile hands. The long fingers on all three hands were broken. There was a dry hand which Cargill had found floating free, different from anything yet found: the bones strong and straight and thick, the joints large. “Arthritis?” Sally wondered. They packed it carefully away and went on to the next box, the remains of a foot which had also been floating free. It had a small, sharp thorn on the heel, and the front of the foot was as hard as a horse’s hoof, quite sharp and pointed, unlike the other Motie foot structures.

“Mutations?” Sally said. She turned to Midshipman Staley, who had also been drafted for striking the cargo below. “You say the radiation was all gone?”

“It was dead cold, uh—Sally,” said Staley. “But it must have been a hell of radiation at one time.”

Sally shivered. “I wonder just now much time we’re talking about. Thousands of years? It would depend on how clean those bombs they used to propel the asteroid were.”

“There was no way of telling,” Staley answered. “But that place felt old, Sally. Old, old. The most ancient thing I can compare it to is the Great Pyramid on Earth. It felt older than that.”

“Um,” she said. “But that’s no evidence, Horst.”

“No. But that place was old. I know it.”

Analysis of the finds would have to wait. Just unloading and storing took them well into the first watch, and everyone was tired. It was 0130, three bells in the first watch, when Sally went to her cabin and Staley to the gun room. Jonathon Whitbread was left alone.

He had drunk too much coffee in the Captain’s cabin and he was not tired. He could sleep later. In fact he would have to, since the Motie ship would pull alongside MacArthur

during the forenoon watch, but that was nine hours away, and Whitbread was young.

MacArthur’s corridors glowed with half the lights of the ship’s day. They were nearly empty, with the stateroom doors all closed. The ever present human voices that drifted in every corridor during MacArthur’s day, interfering with each other until no single voice could be heard, had given way to—silence.

The tension of the day remained, though. MacArthur would never be at rest while in the alien system. And out there, invisible, her screens up and her crew standing double watches, was the great cylindrical bulk of Lenin. Whitbread thought of the huge laser cannon on the battleship: many would be trained on MacArthur right now.

Whitbread loved night watches. There was room to breathe, and room to be alone. There was company too, crewmen on watch, late-working scientists—only this time everyone seemed to be asleep. Oh, well, he could watch the miniatures on the intercom, have a final drink, read a little, and go to sleep. The nice thing about the first watch was that there would be unoccupied labs to sit in.

The intercom screen was blank when he dialed the Moties. Whitbread scowled for a second—then grinned and strolled off toward the petty officers’ lounge.

Be it admitted: Whitbread was expecting to find two miniature Moties engaged in sexual congress. A midshipman must find his own entertainment, after all.

He opened the door—and something shot between his feet and out, a flash of yellow and brown. Whitbread’s family had owned dogs. It gave him certain trained reflexes. He jumped back, fast, slammed the door to keep anything else from getting out, then looked down the corridor.

He saw it quite clearly in the instant before it dodged into the crew galley area. One of the miniature Moties; and the shape above its shoulders had to be the pup.

The other adult must still be in the petty officers’ lounge. For a moment Whitbread hesitated. He had caught dogs by moving after them immediately

. It was in the galley—but it didn’t know him, wasn’t trained to his voice—and damn it, it wasn’t a dog. Whitbread scowled. This would be no fun at all. He went to an intercom and called the watch officer.

“Jee Zuss Christ,” said Crawford. “All right, you say one of the goddamn things is still in the lounge? Are you sure?”

“No, sir. I haven’t actually looked in there, but I only spotted one.”

“Don’t look in there,” Crawford ordered. “Stay by the door and don’t let anyone in there. I’ll have to call the Captain.” Crawford. scowled. The Captain might well bite his head off, being called out of bed because a pet had got loose, but the standing orders said any activities by aliens must be reported to the Captain immediately.

Blaine was one of those fortunate people who can come awake instantly without transition. He listened to Crawford’s report.