The Mote in God's Eye

“That’s all, gentlemen. Thank you, Mr. Whitbread,” Rod said. “Mr. Staley, inform Dr. Hardy that he can get aboard the cutter any time.”

“Well, you’re on,” Chaplain Hardy thought to himself. He was a round, vague man, with dreamy eyes and red hair just beginning to turn gray. Except for conducting the Sunday worship services he had deliberately stayed in his cabin during most of the expedition.

David Hardy was not unfriendly. Anyone could come to his cabin for coffee, a drink, a game of chess, or a long talk, and many did. He merely disliked people in large numbers. He could not get to know them in a crowd.

He also retained his professional inclination not to discuss his work with amateurs and not to publish results until enough evidence was in. That, he told himself, would be impossible now. And what were the aliens? Certainly they were intelligent. Certainly they were sentient. And certainly they had a place in the divine scheme of the universe. But what?

Crewmen moved Hardy’s equipment aboard the cutter. A tape library, several stacks of children’s books, reference works (not many; the cutter’s computer would be able draw on the ship’s library; but David still liked books, impractical as they were). There was other equipment: two display screens with sound transducers, pitch reference electronic filters to shape speech sounds, raise or low pitch, change timbre and phase. He had tried to stow the gear himself, but First Lieutenant Cargill had talked him out of it. Marines were expert at the task, and Hardy’s worries about damage were nothing compared to theirs; if anything broke they’d have Kelley to contend with.

Hardy met Sally in the air lock. She was not traveling light either. Left to herself, she’d have taken everything

, even the bones and mummies from the Stone Beehive; but the Captain would only allow her holographs, and even those were hidden until she could learn the Moties attitude toward grave robbers. From Cargill’s description of the Beehive, the Moties had no burial customs, but that was absurd. Everyone had burial customs, even the most primitive humans.

She could not take the Motie miner, either, or the remaining miniature, which had become female again. And the ferrets and Marines were searching for the other miniature and the pup (and why had it run away with the other miniature, not its mother?). She wondered if the fuss she had made about Rod’s orders to the Marines might be responsible for the ease with which she won her place on the cutter. She knew she wasn’t really being fair to Rod. He had his orders from the Admiral. But it was wrong. The miniatures weren’t going to hurt anyone. It took a paranoid to fear them.

She followed Chaplain Hardy into the cutter’s lounge. Dr. Horvath was already there. The three of them would be the first scientists aboard the alien ship, and she felt a surge of excitement. There was so much to learn!

An anthropologist—she thought of herself as fully qualified now, and certainly there was no one to dispute it—a linguist, and Horvath, who had been a competent physicist before going into administration. Horvath was the only useless one in the group, but with his rank he was entitled to the seat if he demanded it. She did not think the same description applied to herself, although half the scientists aboard MacArthur did.

Three scientists, a coxswain, two able spacers, and Jonathon Whitbread. No Marines, and no weapons aboard. Almost, the excitement was enough to cover the fear that welled up from somewhere in her insides. They had to be unarmed, of course; but she would have felt better, all the same, if Rod Blaine had been aboard. And that was impossible.

Later there would be more people on the cutter. Buckman with a million questions once Hardy cracked the communications problem. The biologists would come in force. A Navy officer, probably Crawford, to study the Motie weapons. An engineering officer. Anyone, but not the Captain. It was unlikely that Kutuzov would allow Rod Blaine to leave his ship no matter how peaceful they might find the Moties.

She was suddenly homesick. On Sparta she had a home, Charing Close, and within minutes was the Capital. Sparta was the center of civilization—but she seemed to be living in a series of space craft of diminishing sizes, with the prison camp thrown in for variety. When she graduated from the university she had made a decision: she would be a person, not an ornament to some man’s career. Right now, though, there was much to be said for being an ornament, especially for the right man, only—No. She must be her own woman.

There was a crash couch and a curved instrument board at one end of the cutter’s lounge. It was the fire-control bridge—some lounge! But there were also couches and recessed tables for games and dining.

“Have you been through this boat?” Horvath was asking her.

“I beg your pardon?” Sally answered.