The Mote in God's Eye (6 page)

“NOW HEAR THIS,” Staley announced. The call sounded through the ship. “NOW HEAR THIS. END OF ACCELERATION IN TEN MINUTES. BRIEF PERIOD OF FREE FALL IN TEN MINUTES.”

“But why?” Blaine heard. He looked up to see Sally Fowler at the bridge entranceway. His invitation to the passengers to come to the bridge when there was no emergency had worked out fine: Bury hardly ever made use of the privilege. “Why free fall so soon?” she asked.

“Need the power to make a signal,” Blaine answered. “At this distance it’ll use up a significant part of our engine power to produce the maser beam. We could overload the engines if we had to, but it’s standard to coast for messages if there’s no real hurry.”

“Oh.” She sat in Whitbread’s abandoned chair. Rod swiveled his command seat to face her, wishing again that someone would design a free fall outfit for girls that didn’t cover so much of their legs, or that brief shorts would come back into fashion. Right now skirts were down to calves on Sparta, and the provinces copied the Capital. For shipboard wear the designers produced pantaloon things, comfortable enough, but baggy...

“When do we get to New Scotland?” she asked.

“Depends on how long we stay off Dagda. Sinclair wants to do some outside work while we’re dirtside.” He took out his pocket computer and wrote quickly with the attached stylus. “Let’s see, we’re about one and a half billion kilometers from New Scotland, that’s—uh, make it a hundred hours to turnover. About two hundred hours’ travel time, plus what we spend on Dagda. And the time it takes to get to Dagda, of course. That’s not so far, about twenty hours from here.”

“So we’ll still be a couple of weeks at least,” she said. “I thought once we got here we’d—” She broke off, laughing. “It’s silly. Why can’t you invent something that lets you Jump around in interplanetary space? There’s something faintly ridiculous about it, we went five light years in no time at all, now it takes weeks to get to New Scotland.”

“Tired of us so soon? It’s worse than that, really. It takes an insignificant part of our hydrogen to make a Jump— Well, it isn’t trivial, but it’s not a lot compared to what it’ll take getting to New Scotland. I don’t have enough fuel aboard to go direct, in fact not in less than a year, but there’s more than enough to make a Jump. All
that
takes is enough energy to get into hyperspace.”

Sally snared a cup of coffee from the steward. She was learning to drink Navy coffee, which wasn’t like anything else in the Galaxy. “So we just have to put up with it,” she said.

“Afraid so. I’ve been on trips where it was faster to drive over to another Alderson point, make a Jump, move around in the new system, Jump somewhere else, keep doing that until you come back to the original system at a different place—do all that and it would still be faster than merely to sail across the original system in normal space. But not this time, the geometry isn’t right.”

“Pity,” she laughed. “We’d see more of the universe for the same price.” She didn’t say she was bored; but Rod thought she was, and there wasn’t much he could do about it. He had little time to spend with her, and there weren’t many sights to see.

“NOW HEAR THIS. STAND BY FOR FREE FALL.” She barely had time to strap herself in before the drive cut out.

Chief Yeoman of Signals Lud Shattuck squinted into his aiming sight, his knobby fingers making incredibly fine adjustments for such clumsy appendages. Outside
MacArthur
’s hull, a telescope hunted under Shattuck’s guidance until it found a tiny dot of light. It hunted again until the dot was perfectly centered. Shattuck grunted in satisfaction and touched a switch. A maser antenna slaved itself to the telescope while the ship’s computer decided where the dot of light would be when the message arrived. A coded message wound off its tape reel, while aft
MacArthur
’s engines fused hydrogen to helium. Energy rode out through the antenna, energy modulated by the thin tape in Shattuck’s cubicle, reaching toward New Scotland.

Rod was at dinner alone in his cabin when the reply arrived. A duty yeoman looked at the heading and shouted for Chief Shattuck. Four minutes later Midshipman Whitbread knocked at his captain’s door.

“Yes,” Rod answered irritably.

“Message from Fleet Admiral Cranston, sir.”

Rod looked up in irritation. He hadn’t wanted to eat alone, but the wardroom had invited Sally Fowler to dinner—it was their turn, after all—and if Blaine had invited himself to dine with his officers, Mr. Bury would have come too. Now even this miserable dinner was interrupted. “Can’t it wait?”

“It’s priority OC, sir.”

“A hot flash for us? OC?” Blaine stood abruptly, the protein aspic forgotten. “Read it to me, Mr. Whitbread.”

“Yes, sir.
MACARTHUR
FROM IMPFLEETNEW SCOT. OC OC 8175—”

“You may omit the authentication codes, Midshipman. I assume you checked them out.”

“Yes, sir. Uh, anyway, sir, date, code . . . MESSAGE BEGINS YOU WILL PROCEED WITH ALL POSSIBLE SPEED REPEAT ALL POSSIBLE SPEED TO BRIGIT FOR REFUELING WITH PRIORITY DOUBLE A ONE STOP YOU WILL REFUEL IN MINIMUM POSSIBLE TIME STOP PARAGRAPH

“
MACARTHUR
WILL THEN PROCEED TO—uh, sir, it gives some coordinate points in the New Cal system—OR ANY OTHER VECTOR YOUR CHOICE TO INTERCEPT AND INVESTIGATE MYSTERIOUS OBJECT ENTERING NEW CALEDONIA SYSTEM FROM NORMAL SPACE REPEAT NORMAL SPACE STOP OBJECT PROCEEDS ALONG GALACTIC VECTOR—uh, it gives a course from the general direction of the Coal Sack; sir—AT A SPEED OF APPROXIMATELY SEVEN PERCENT VELOCITY OF LIGHT STOP OBJECT IS DECELERATING RAPIDLY STOP IMPERIAL UNIVERSITY ASTRONOMERS SAY SPECTRUM OF INTRUDER IS SPECTRUM OF NEW CAL SUN BLUE SHIFTED STOP OBVIOUS CONCLUSION THAT INTRUDER IS POWERED BY LIGHT SAIL STOP PARAGRAPH

“IMPERIAL UNIVERSITY ASTRONOMERS CERTAIN OBJECT IS ARTIFACT CONSTRUCTED BY INTELLIGENT BEINGS STOP FYI NO KNOWN HUMAN COLONIES AT APPARENT ORIGIN OF INTRUDER STOP PARAGRAPH

“CRUISER
LERMONTOV
DISPATCHED TO ASSIST BUT CANNOT ARRIVE TO MATCH VELOCITY WITH INTRUDER UNTIL SEVENTY ONE HOURS AFTER MINIMUM TIME
MACARTHUR
VELOCITY MATCH WITH OBJECT STOP PROCEED WITH CAUTION STOP YOU ARE TO ASSUME INTRUDER IS HOSTILE UNTIL OTHERWISE ASSURED STOP YOU ARE ORDERED TO USE CAUTION BUT DO NOT INITIATE HOSTILITIES REPEAT DO NOT INITIATE HOSTILITIES STOP

“BREAK BREAK GO GET IT CZILLER STOP WISH I WAS OUT THERE STOP GODSPEED STOP CRANSTON BREAK MESSAGE ENDS AUTHENTICATION—uh, that’s it, sir.” Whitbread was breathless.

“That’s it. That’s quite a lot of it, Mr. Whitbread,” Blaine fingered the intercom switch. “Wardroom.”

“Wardroom aye aye, Captain,” Midshipman Staley answered.

“Get me Cargill.”

The First Lieutenant sounded resentful when he came on. Blaine was intruding on his dinner party. Rod felt an inner satisfaction for doing it. “Jack, get to the bridge. I want this bird moving. I’ll have a minimum time course to land us on Brigit, and I mean minimum. You can run the tanks, but get us there fast.”

“Aye aye, sir. Passengers aren’t going to like it.”

“Rape the— Uh, my compliments to the passengers, and this is a Fleet emergency. Too bad about your dinner party, Jack, but get your passengers into hydraulic beds and move this ship. I’ll be on the bridge in a minute.”

“Yes, sir.” The intercom went Silent for a moment, then Staley’s voice hooted through the ship. “NOW HEAR THIS. NOW HEAR THIS. STAND BY FOR PROLONGED ACCELERATION ABOVE TWO GRAVITIES. DEPARTMENT HEADS SIGNAL WHEN SECURED FOR INCREASED ACCELERATION.”

“OK,” Blaine said. He turned to Whitbread. “Punch that damned vector designation into the computer and let’s see where the hell that intruder comes from.” He realized he was swearing and made an effort to calm down. Intruders—aliens? Good God, what a break! To be in command of the first ship to make contact with aliens.

“Let’s just see where they’re from, shall we?”

Whitbread moved to the input console next to Blaine’s desk. The screen swam violently, then flashed numbers.

“Blast your eyes, Whitbread, I’m not a mathematician! Put it on a graph!”

“Sorry, sir.” Whitbread fiddled with the input controls again. The screen became a black volume filled with blobs and lines of colored light. Big blobs were stars colored for type, velocity vectors were narrow green lines, acceleration vectors were lavender, projected paths were dimly lit red curves. The long green line— Blaine looked at the screen in disbelief, then laid his finger along the knot in his nose. “From the Mote. Well, I will be go to hell. From the Mote, in normal space.” There was no known tramline to the intruder’s Star. It hung in isolation, a yellow fleck near the super giant Murcheson’s Eye. Visions of octopoids danced in his head.

Suppose they were hostile? he thought suddenly. If
Old Mac
had to fight an alien ship, she’d need more work. Work they’d put off because it ought to be done in orbit, or dirtside, and now they’d have to do it at two plus gee.

But it was
MacArthur
’s baby—and his. Somehow they’d do it.

Blaine made his way quickly to the bridge and strapped himself into the command chair. As soon as he was settled he reached for the intercom unit. A startled Midshipman Whitbread looked out of the screen from the Captain’s cabin.

Blaine gambled. “Read it to me, Mister.”

“Uh—sir?”

“You have the regs open to the standing orders on alien contact, don’t you? Read them to me, please.” Blaine remembered looking them up, long ago, for fun and curiosity. Most cadets did.

“Yes, sir.” Visibly, Whitbread wondered if the Captain had been reading his mind, then decided that it was the Captain’s prerogative. This incident would start legends. “‘Section 4500: First contact with nonhuman sentient beings. Note: Sentient beings are defined as creatures which employ tools and communication in purposeful behavior. Subnote: Officers are cautioned to use judgment in applying this definition. The hive rat of Makassar, as an example, employs tools and communication to maintain its nest, but is not Sentient.

“‘Section One: Upon encounter with sentient nonhuman beings, officers will communicate the existence of such aliens to nearest Fleet command. All other objectives will be considered secondary to this accomplishment.

Section Two: After the objective described in section one is assured, officers will attempt to establish communication with the aliens, provided however that in so doing they are not authorized to risk their command unless so ordered by higher authority. Although officers will not initiate hostilities it must be assumed that nonhuman sentient creatures may be hostile. Section Three—’“

Whitbread was cut off by the final acceleration warning.

Blaine nodded acknowledgment to the middle and settled back in his couch. The regulations weren’t likely to be much use anyway. They mostly dealt with initial contact without prior warning, and here Fleet command pretty well knew
MacArthur
was going out to intercept an alien vessel.

Ship’s gravity edged upward, slowly enough to give the crew time to adjust, a full minute to rise to three gravities.

Blaine felt two hundred sixty kilos settling into his acceleration couch. Throughout the ship men would be moving with the wary attention one gives to lifting weights, but it was not a crippling acceleration. Not for a young man. For Bury it would be rough, but the Trader would be all right if he stayed in his gee bed.

Blaine felt very much at ease in his contoured armchair. It had headrest and fingertip controls, lapboard, power swiveling so that the entire bridge was in view without effort, even a personal relief tube. Warships are designed for long periods of high gravity.

Blaine fiddled with his screen controls to produce a 3-d graph overhead. He cut in the privacy switch to hide his doodles from the rest of the crew. Around him the bridge officers attended to their duties, Cargill and Sailing Master Renner huddled together near the astrogation station, Midshipman Staley settled next to the helmsman ready to assist if needed but mostly there to learn how to handle the ship. Blaine’s long fingers moved over the screen controls.

A long green velocity line, a short lavender vector pointing in the opposite direction
—
with a small white ball between. So. The intruder had come straight from the direction of the Mote and was decelerating directly into the New Cal system . . . and it was somewhat bigger than Earth’s Moon. A ship-sized object would have been a dimensionless point.

A good thing Whitbread hadn’t noticed that. There’d be gossip, tales to the crew, panic among the new hands... Blaine felt the metallic taste of fear himself. My God, it was
big
.

“But they’d have to have something that big,” Rod muttered. Thirty-five light years, through normal space! There never had been a human civilization that could manage such a thing. Still
—
how did the Admiralty expect him to “investigate” it? Much less “intercept” it? Land on it with Marines?

What in Hannigan’s Hell was a light sail?

“Course to Brigit, sir,” Sailing Master Renner announced.

Blaine snapped up from his reverie and touched his screen controls again. The ship’s course appeared on his screen as a pictorial diagram below tables of figures. Rod spoke with effort. “Approved.” Then he went back to the impossibly large object on his view screen. Suddenly he took out his pocket computer and scribbled madly across its face. Words and numbers flowed across the surface, and he nodded.

Of course light pressure could be used for propulsion.

In fact
MacArthur
did exactly that, using hydrogen fusion to generate photons and emitting them in an enormous spreading cone of light. A reflecting mirror could use outside light as propulsion and get twice the efficiency. Naturally the mirror should be as large as possible, and as light, and ideally it should reflect all the light that fell on it.

Blaine grinned to himself. He had been nerving himself to attack a space-going planet with his half-repaired battle cruiser! Naturally the computer had pictured an object that size as a globe. In reality it was probably a sheet of silvered fabric thousands of kilometers across, attached by adjustable shrouds to the mass that would be the ship proper.