The Gripping Hand (29 page)

"I don't think of a lot we can do there by ourselves. The Moties have had a quarter century to prepare for this, and we're just now realizing we have a problem. I can't think three ships will have any surprises for them.

"The pot odds say we'll get there with ten to twenty years leeway, but there are complications. Odd things happening. It might be a lot sooner. There's even a chance it happened already.

"Sis, I sure wish we had the latest the Institute has developed. So does Mr. Bury. If you can get that to us, it might change things. I've attached our best-guess coordinates for the I-point. We thought about waiting for you, but we don't know just how long we have before everything happens. Bury arranged for the ship that gave you this message to refuel yours. Let them, if you haven't done that already. Try to get to the I-point before the Moties do.

"
Sinbad
's crowded. Bury's got Nabil and three women including Cynthia, no change in the relationships. There's me, Dr. Jacob Buckman, and Joyce Mei-Ling Trujillo, the newscaster. She's interesting. Intelligent and wants to prove it, female and doesn't have to. Commander Cohen decided she was needed on New Scotland just after Trujillo was invited aboard, and that leaves Renner loose. Interesting patterns here.

"You may get here and find nothing's happening at all. Some of the blockade fleet may be en route already, but of course it'll take them months. If things last that long, maybe there won't be a problem, or maybe Mom's Crazy Eddie project will work just fine and we can think on how to use it.

"Or it may be all over before you get here. If they send through a big fleet with Warriors . . ."

If they do that, you'll talk to the Master in charge. If we have the symbiote, maybe she'll listen. If you live long enough to talk,
Glenda Ruth thought.
If.

And her brother's voice ran on: "Anyway, we're going for a look. It will probably help if you can get here pretty quick, but you do what you think best.

"Love, Chris."

She reset and heard the message through again. "Freddy?"

"Yes, my love?"

She let it pass. "Freddy, we're being given fuel so that we can go direct to"—she punched in the coordinates from Kevin Blaine's message, and the navigation screen lit up—"here, instead of going to New Scotland first."

Freddy studied the display. "That's a wretched red dwarf system. There's nothing there."

"There will be."

"Glenda Ruth, do you know what you're doing?"

"I think so. It's no trivial thing, Freddy—"

"All right." He turned to the computer.

"No trivial thing at all. I don't exaggerate, do I? So. The fate of the Empire and the fate of the Motie species"—he hadn't paused— "it's all on our shoulders. I didn't even bother to ask Jennifer, she's worked up to this her whole life, but you—"

He'd finished typing in the course change. A warning note sounded, then they felt gentle acceleration.
Hecate
was now on route to MGC-R-31. Freddy relaxed in his chair, tired, not looking at her.

Didn't wait. Didn't need to think it over. Just trusted me and moved.

And she saw that it would break him. He would heal, over the years, almost; but his view of women of his class would be colored by a period of terrible frustration while his life was bent to one powerful woman's missionary urge.

She made a bet with herself, no trivial thing at all, and said, "I'll be moving into your cabin, if your offer's still open."

He looked up, and searched among possible answers while hiding his surprise. She held her expression solemn, a bit uneasy. Freddy nodded and smiled and took her hand, and still feared to speak.

Chris Blaine reminded Kevin of someone. Of Captain Roderick Blaine, of course, but of someone else, too . . . and he finally got it as Chris paused at a window. Kevin had seen Midshipman Horst Staley looking out at Murcheson's Eye blazing against the Coal Sack, like a single coal red eye within a monk's hood, just before
MacArthur
jumped to Murcheson's Eye itself.

And Chris took his fill of the Hooded Man, then moved on aft to get breakfast, while Kevin mused at his station.

Why Horst? Horst Staley, who had learned too much on Mote Prime and died for it, twenty-eight years ago. They could never have met. They certainly weren't related. Chris Blaine looked like his father, square face, fine blond hair, tiny Irish nose . . . his father's was broken, of course . . . whereas Horst Staley had been enlistment-poster handsome, triangular face, long, heavy muscles, and sloping shoulders. . . .

"Ah."

Horace Bury looked up. "What?"

Chris Blaine was just coming into earshot; Renner could hear his voice. He said, "Just a vagrant thought."

As they approached their stations, Renner heard Trujillo's voice, cheerful and musical and not quite audible; then Blaine's voice raised above the hum of the ship's systems. "If you hadn't been digging for scandal, the high brass wouldn't have heard about the token ships for years. They look so harmless!"

"I can't take credit for that. It was the scandal I was after."

They were both finishing breakfast bars. Joyce Trujillo's assigned chair was out of the way, with a view of several screens but no controls. Blaine took his place as copilot. Renner waited a few minutes, then asked, "Chris, how're we doing?"

"Seventy hours en route and up to speed. I'll wind down the thrust"—
tap
—"now. Then we can drop the external tank and coast till we're approaching the Jump to the red dwarf. Two hundred seventy hours, unless the Jump point's moved, in which case all Hell lets out for lunch."

"I'm inclined to keep the tank and refill it. Better safe."

Blaine nodded.

During the next five minutes the thrust dropped from a standard gravity to .05 gee, just enough to pull spilled liquid out of the air. Renner waited it out, then said, "Lieutenant, you have the con." And he went aft for coffee.

He was unsurprised to find that Bury had floated after him. He asked, "Turkish?"

"Please. You have left—left Blaine in charge of my ship. Is that wise?"

"We're barely beyond Dagda's orbit in New Cal system in free fall, near as dammit. What could happen? Outies? Helium flash in the motor? He's Navy trained, you know."

"Yes."

"Like me."

"Yes. Kevin, what was it you didn't want him to overhear? Or was it the Trujillo woman?"

"Oh . . . something was nagging at me, irritating me, and I finally got it. You wouldn't remember Midshipman Horst Staley. He was an idealized Navy officer, handsome, imposing, the kind you put on posters. So's Blaine, but he's doing it consciously, like a signal."

"Yes, after all, he was raised by Moties. What think you now of Trujillo?"

"All sex and all business, generally not at the same time. She can turn it on and off. What are the rules this trip, Horace? Sex or no sex?"

"Blind eyes, I think. Poor old Trader Bury notices nothing. But she is staying to business?"

"Yeah. Projects availability, but. I like it, actually. I like flirting." Bury did not smile. Renner said, "Give her a break, Horace. Her dad told her about Traders, merchant princes, but she doesn't know any. She'll learn about Traders from you."

" 'Your reputation precedes you,' " Bury quoted.

"I doubt she meant that as viciously as it sounded." Renner sighed. "It's going to be a fun trip. Trujillo offended you first chance she got, you hate Blaine, and if everything goes right, we'll get there in time to find a Motie armada coming out at us."

In the pause that followed, Renner finished brewing two bulbs of Turkish. Bury took his and asked, "How can you say that I hate Kevin Christian Blaine? He is your godson. He is my guest."

"Horace, you haven't been overtly rude, but I know you. And look, if I had to . . . Igor! Tonight we will make something quite different,
quite
."

"Yes, Doctor Frankenstein! Yes! Yes!"

"Tonight we will create the infidel least likely to be welcome aboard a teeny tiny spacecraft with Trader Horace Bury. We will give him the following characteristics,
hnpf hnpf hnpf!
Anglo-Saxon. Christian. An Empire Navy man. Related to the same
Roderick Blaine
who once held Bury prisoner aboard a Navy warship. And lastly,
hnpf hnpf hnpf!
He will be raised by Motie Mediators!"

Horace dropped the accent. "Lastly, he is a manipulative son of a dog."

"I'd say that goes with the Motie training."

"Yes, Kevin, but he tried to manipulate me. Does he think me a fool?"

"Mmm."

"It was not Joyce Trujillo who discovered the significance of the token ships!"

"I'll be dipped. Horace, he's chasing her."

"Eh?"

"I didn't see it. She's a career woman six years older than he is! Even so, that's it. He let her see him manipulating you for her benefit. I wonder if she'll buy it?"

Renner hadn't even decided if he
liked
her. That was not always the most interesting question. Perhaps, somewhere in the back of his brain, he had considered Joyce Mei-Ling Trujillo to be his by default. Blaine was too young, Buckman and Bury were too old, and Kevin Renner was captain of
Sinbad
.

The problem lay in what she might want. Not money, nor entree into certain levels of society; he could do that. But secrets . . . she loved secrets, and Kevin Renner's were not his to give away.

Blaine was too young, and he was a classic model of a Navy man—but Kevin Christian Blaine had been raised by Motie Mediators. Why was that so easy to forget? Renner began to watch him.

Sinbad
in free fall could not be spun up. Chris Blaine was used to a bigger Navy ship. He was clumsy for the first couple of days. So was Joyce; she had not spent much time in space. Then they got oriented more or less together. Simultaneously, in fact. . . .

You had to concentrate to see it, how often they occupied the same space. In any of the narrow passages they might pass without brushing. Joyce was still a bit clumsy, but Chris could eel gracefully past her, close enough to link magnetic fields, but without touching her at all. Like dancing.

The morning before
Sinbad
began deceleration, Joyce Trujillo looked different, and so did Chris Blaine. They both seemed a bit embarrassed about it, and they couldn't seem to avoid body contact.

Two centuries ago, Jasper Murcheson had cataloged most of the stars this side of the Coal Sack. He had numbered them in some haste for his
Murcheson General Catalog
, then filled in details at leisure.

Half those stars were red dwarves, such as this orange-white dot called MGC-R-31. Murcheson had collected more detail on the hotter yellow dwarves, those that might have habitable planets and particularly those that did. MGC-R-31 had a brown dwarf star companion at half a light-year's distance; Murcheson hadn't even known that much.

Kevin Renner knew it the moment he popped into the system. He knew because some unseen nearby mass had skewed his Jump point by several million miles.

It should be located, fast. It would move the I-point, too! Buck-man and Renner set to work at once.

It was good to be in MGC-R-31 system, good to have something to do, to have an excuse to lock that door.

A week of Bury's strained good manners and Blaine's and Trujillo's body-contact formality had been getting on everyone's nerves . . . or maybe only on Kevin Renner's. Buckman's needs gave him an excuse to do something about it. Renner had a section of
Sinbad
's lounge partitioned off to become Jacob Buckman's laboratory.

It was cramped for Buckman, very cramped for Buckman and Renner; visitors were impossible. They preferred using it that way to everyone's popping in and out of the small bridge compartment. The others tried not to interfere.

Search for a brown dwarf. First observe the red dwarf, find its plane of rotation. By then Buckman had calculated a series of distances and masses that might account for the shift in the Alderson point. Look at one locus of points, observe again, calculate again . ..