The Mote in God's Eye

“I said, ‘Have you been through this boat?’ It has gun emplacements all over it. They took out the works, but they left enough to show there were guns. Same with the torpedoes. They’re gone, but the launch ports are still there. What kind of embassy ship is this?”

Hardy looked up from a private reverie. “What would you have done in the Captain’s place?”

“I’d have used an unarmed boat.”

“There aren’t any,” Hardy replied softly. “None you could live on, as you’d know if you spent any time on hangar deck.” Chapel was held on hangar deck, and Horvath had not attended. That was his business, but no harm in reminding him.

“But it’s so obviously a disarmed warship!”

Hardy nodded. “The Moties were bound to discover our terrible secret sooner or later. We are a warlike species, Anthony. It’s part of our nature. Even so, we arrive in a completely disarmed fighting vessel. Don’t you think that’s a significant message for the Moties?”

“But this is so important to the Empire!”

David Hardy nodded assent. The Science Minister was right, although the Chaplain suspected he had the wrong reasons.

There was a slight lurch, and the cutter was on her way. Rod watched on the bridge screens and felt helpless frustration. From the moment the cutter came alongside the Motie vessel, one of Crawford’s batteries would be locked onto her—and Sally Fowler was aboard the frail, disarmed ship.

The original plan had the Moties coming aboard MacArthur, but until the miniatures were found that was impossible. Rod was glad that his ship would not be host to the aliens. I’m learning to think paranoid, he told himself. Like the Admiral.

Meanwhile, there was no sign of the miniatures, Sally wasn’t speaking to him, and everyone else was edgy.

“Ready to take over, Captain,” Renner said. “I relieve you, sir.”

“Right. Carry on, Sailing Master.”

Acceleration alarms rang, and MacArthur moved smoothly away from the alien vessel—and away from the cutter, and Sally.

22. Word Games

The shower: a plastic bag of soapy water with a young man in it, the neck of the bag sealed tight around the man’s neck. Whitbread used a long-handled brush to scratch himself everywhere he itched, which was everywhere. There was pleasure in the pulling and stretching of muscles. It was so finking small in the Motie ship! So claustrophobic-cramped!

When he was clean he joined the others in the lounge. The Chaplain and Horvath and Sally Fowler, all wearing sticky-bottomed falling slippers, all aligned in the up direction. Whitbread would never have noticed such a thing before. He said, “Science Minister Horvath, I am to place myself under your orders for the time being.”

“Very well, Mr.… Whitbread.” Horvath trailed off. He seemed worried and preoccupied. They all did.

The Chaplain spoke with effort. “You see, none of us really knows what to do next. We’ve never contacted aliens before.”

“They’re friendly. They wanted to talk,” said Whitbread.

“Good. Good, but it leaves me entirely on the hook.” The Chaplain’s laugh was all nerves. “What was it like, Whitbread?”

He tried to tell them. Cramped, until you got to the plastic toroids… fragile… no point in trying to tell the Moties apart except the Browns were somehow different from the Brown-and-whites… “They’re unarmed,” he told them. “I spent three hours exploring that ship. There’s no place aboard that they could be hiding big weapons.”

“Did you get the impression they were guiding you away from anything?”

“No-oo.”

“You don’t sound very certain,” Horvath said sharply.

“Oh it isn’t that, sir. I was just remembering the tool room. We wound up in a room that was all tools, wall and floor and ceiling. A couple of walls had simple thing on them: hand drills, ripsaws with odd handles, screw and a screwdriver. Things I could recognize. I saw nail and what I think was a hammer with a big flat head. It all looked like a hobby shop in somebody’s basement. But there were some really complex things in there too, things I couldn’t figure at all.”

The alien ship floated just outside the forward window. Inhuman shadows moved within it. Sally was watching them too… but Horvath said dryly, “You were saying that the aliens were not herding you.”

“I don’t think they led me away from anything. I’m sure I was led to that tool room. I don’t know why, but I think it was an intelligence test. If it was, I flunked.”

Chaplain Hardy said, “The only Motie we’ve questioned so far doesn’t understand the simplest gestures. Now you tell me that these Moties have been giving you intelligence tests—”

“And interpreting gestures. Amazingly quick to understand them, in fact. Yes, sir. They’re different. You saw the pictures.”