“I’m afraid that’s out of the question.”
Hardy sighed. “Well, that’s why I brought it up now, that we could thrash it out. They’ve shown that they trust us, Captain. There’s not a cubic centimeter of their embassy ship that we haven’t seen, or at least probed with instruments. Whitbread will testify that there’s no sign of weaponry aboard. Eventually they’re going to wonder what guilty secrets we’re hiding aboard.”
“I’m going to tell you. Are there Moties within earshot?”
“No. And they haven’t learned Anglic that well anyway.”
“Don’t forget they will learn, and don’t forget recorders. Now, Chaplain, you’ve got a problem—about Moties and Creation. The Empire has another. For a long time we’ve talked about the Great Galactic Wizards showing up and deciding whether to let the humans join, right? Only it’s the other way around, isn’t it? We’ve got to decide whether to let the Moties out of their system, and until that’s decided we don’t want them to see the Langston Field generators, the Alderson Drive, our weapons… not even just how much of MacArthur is living space, Chaplain. It would give away too much about our capabilities. We’ve a lot to hide, and we’ll hide it.”
“You’re treating them as enemies,” David Hardy said gently.
“And that’s neither your decision nor mine, Doctor. Besides, I’ve got some questions I want answered before I decide that the Moties are nothing more than steadfast friends.” Rod let his gaze go past the Chaplain, and his eyes focused a long way off. I’m not sorry it’s not my decision, he thought. But ultimately they’re going to ask me. As future Marquis of Crucis, if nothing else.
He had known the subject would come up, and would again, and he was ready. “First, why did they send us a ship from Mote Prime? Why not from the Trojan cluster? It’s much closer.”
“I’ll ask them when I can.”
“Second, why four Moties? It may not be important, but I’d like to know why they assigned one to each of you scientists, one to Whitbread, and none to any of the crew.”
“They were right, weren’t they? They set guides on the four people most interested in teaching them—”
“Exactly. How did they know? Just for example, how could they have known Dr. Horvath would be aboard? And the third question is, what are they building now?”
“All right, Captain.” Hardy looked unhappy, not angry. He was and would be harder to refuse than Horvath… partly because he was Rod’s confessor. And the subject would come up again. Rod was sure of that.
23. Eliza Crossing the Ice
During the weeks that followed MacArthur was a bustle of activity. Every scientist worked overtime after each data transmission from the cutter, and every one of them wanted Navy assistance immediately. There was also the problem of the escaped miniatures, but this had settled to a game, with MacArthur losing. In the mess room it was even money that they were both dead, but no bodies were found. It worried Rod Blaine, but there was nothing he could do.
He also allowed the Marines to stand watches in normal uniform. There were no threats to the cutter, and it was ridiculous to keep a dozen men uncomfortable in battle armor. Instead he doubled the watch keeping surveillance around MacArthur, but no one—or no thing—tried to approach, escape, or send messages. Meanwhile the biologists went wild over clues to Motie psychology and physiology, the astronomy section continued to map Mote Prime, Buckman dithered whenever anyone else used the astronomical gear, and Blaine tried to keep his overcrowded ship’ running smoothly. His appreciation of Horvath grew every time he had to mediate a dispute between scientists.
There was more activity aboard the cutter. Commander Sinclair had gone aboard and been immediately taken to the Motie ship. Three days passed before a Brown-and-white began following Sinclair around, and it was a peculiarly quiet Motie. It did seem interested in the cutter’s machinery, unlike the others who had assigned themselves to a human. Sinclair and his Fyunch(click) spent long hours aboard the alien ship, poking into corners, examining everything.
“The lad was right about the tool room,” Sinclair told Blaine during one of his daily reports. “It’s like the nonverbal intelligence tests BuPers worked up for new recruits. There are things wrong wi’ some o’ the tools, and ‘tis my task to put them right.”
“Wrong how?”
Sinclair chuckled, remembering. He had some difficulty explaining the joke to Blaine. The hammer with the big, flat head would hit a thumb every time. It needed to be trimmed. The laser heated too fast… and that was a tricky one. It had generated the wrong frequency of light. Sinclair fixed it by doubling the frequency—somehow. He also learned more about compact lasers than he’d ever known before. There were other tests like that. “They’re good, Captain. It took ingenuity to come up wi’ some of the testing gadgets wi’out giving away more than they did. But they canna keep me from learning about their ship… Captain, I already ken enough to redesign the ship’s boats to be more efficient. Or make millions o’ crowns designing miner ships.”
“Retiring when we go back, Sandy?” Rod asked; but he grinned widely to show he didn’t mean it.
In the second week, Rod Blaine also acquired a Fyunch(click).
He was both dismayed and flattered. The Motie looked like all the others: brown-and-white markings, a gentle smile in a lopsided face just high enough above the deck that Rod could have patted her on the head—if he’d ever seen the Motie face to face, which he never would.
Each time he called the cutter she was there, always eager to see Blaine and talk to him. Each time he called, her Anglic was better. They would exchange a few words, and that was that. He didn’t have time for a Fyunch(click), or a need for one either. Learning Motie language wasn’t his job—from the progress made, it wasn’t anyone’s job—and he only saw her through a phone link. What use was a guide he would never meet?
“They seem to think you’re important,” was Hardy’s dead-pan answer.
It was something to think about while he presided over his madhouse of a ship. And the alien didn’t complain at all.
The month’s flurry of activity hardly affected Horace Bury. He received no news at all from the cutter, and had nothing to contribute to the scientific work on the ship. Alert to rumors, which were always helpful, he waited for news to filter down through the grapevine; but not very much did. Communications with the cutter seemed to stop with the bridge, and he had no real friends among the scientists other than Buckman. Blaine had given up putting everything on the intercom. For the first time since he left New Chicago, Bury felt imprisoned.
It bothered him more than it should have, although he was introspective enough to know why. All his life he had tried to control his environment as far as he could reach: around a world, across light years of space and decades of time—or throughout a Navy battle cruiser. The crew treated him as a guest, but not as a master; and anywhere he was not master, he was a prisoner.
He was losing money, too. Somewhere in the restricted sections of MacArthur, beyond the reach of all but the highest-ranking scientists, physicists were studying the golden stuff from the Stone Beehive. It took weeks of effort to pick up the rumor that it was a superconductor of heat.
That would be priceless stuff, and he knew he must obtain a sample. He even knew how it might be done, but forced himself to idleness. Not yet! The time to steal his sample would be just before MacArthur docked in New Scotland. Ships would be waiting there despite the cost, not only a ship openly acknowledging him as owner, but at least one other. Meanwhile, listen, find out, know what else he should have when he left MacArthur.