He had several reports on the Stone Beehive to crosscheck against each other. He even tried to gain information from Buckman; but the results were more amusing than profitable.
“Oh, forget the Stone Beehive,” Buckman had exclaimed. “It was moved into place. It’s no damned use at all. The Beehive’s got nothing to do with the formation of the Trojan point clusters, and the Moties have messed up the internal structure to the point where you can’t tell anything about the original rock…”
So. The Moties could and did make superconductors of heat. And there were always the little Moties. He enjoyed the search for the escaped miniatures. Naturally most of the Navy personnel were silently rooting for the underdog, the fleeing miniature and the child, Eliza crossing the ice. And the miniature was winning. Food disappeared from odd places: staterooms, lounges, everywhere but the kitchen itself. The ferrets could find no scent. How could the miniatures have made truce with the ferrets? Bury wondered. Certainly the aliens were… alien, yet the ferrets had had no trouble scenting them the first night.
Bury enjoyed the hunt, but… He took the lesson: a miniature was harder to catch than to keep. If he expected to sell many as pets he had better sell them in foolproof cages. Then there was the matter of acquiring a breeding pair. The longer the miniatures remained free, the less grew Bury’s chances of persuading the Navy that they were harmless, friendly pets.
But it was fun seeing the Navy look foolish. Bury rooted for both sides, and practiced patience; and the weeks went on.
While six Fyunch(click)s bunked aboard the cutter, the rest of the Moties worked. The interior of the alien ship changed like dreams; it was different every time anyone went aboard. Sinclair and Whitbread made a point of touring it periodically to see that no weapons were built; perhaps they would have known and perhaps not.
One day Hardy and Horvath stopped by the Captain’s watch cabin after an hour in MacArthur’s exercise rooms.
“The Moties have a fuel tank coming,” Horvath told Rod. “It was launched at about the same time as their own ship, by linear accelerator, but in a fuel-saving orbit. It should arrive in two weeks.”
“So that’s what it is.” Blaine and his officers had worried about that silent object coasting at leisure toward their position.
“You knew about it? You might have mentioned it to us.”
“They’ll need to retrieve it,” Blaine speculated. “Hmm. I wonder if one of my boats might get it for them. Would they let us do that?”
“I see no reason why not. We’ll ask,” said David Hardy. “One more thing, Captain.”
Rod knew something tricky was coming. Horvath had Dr. Hardy ask for all the things Rod might refuse.
“The Moties want to build an air-lock bridge between the cutter and the embassy ship,” Hardy finished.
“It’s only a temporary structure and we need it.” Horvath paused. “It’s only a hypothesis, you understand, but, Captain, we now think that every structure is only temporary to them. They must have had high-gee couches at takeoff, but they’re gone now. They arrived with no fuel to take them home. They almost certainly redesigned their life-support system for free fall in the three hours following their arrival.”
“ ‘And this too shall pass away,’ ” Hardy added helpfully. “But the idea doesn’t bother them. They seem to like it.”
“It’s a major departure from human psychology,” Horvath said earnestly. “Perhaps a Motie would never try to design anything permanent at all. There will be no sphinx, no pyramids, no Washington Monument, no Lenin’s Tomb.”
“Doctor, I don’t like the idea of joining the two ships.”
“But, Captain, we need something like this. People and Moties are constantly passing back and forth, and they have to use the taxi every time. Besides, the Moties have already started work—”
“May I point out that if they join those two ships, you and everyone aboard will thenceforth be hostage to the Moties’ good will?”
Horvath was ruffled. “I’m sure the aliens can be trusted, Captain. We’re making very good progress with them.”
“Besides,” Chaplain Hardy added equably, “we’re hostage now. There was never a way to avoid the situation. MacArthur and Lenin are our protection, if we need protection. If two battleships don’t scare them—well, we knew the situation when we boarded the cutter.”
Blaine ground his teeth. If the cutter was expendable, the cutter’s personnel were not. Sinclair, Sally Fowler, Dr. Horvath, the Chaplain—MacArthur’s most valuable people were living aboard the cutter. Yet the Chaplain was clearly right. They were all subject to murder at any moment, save for the risk of MacArthur’s vengeance.
“Tell them to go ahead,” Rod said. The air-lock bridge would not increase the danger at all.
The lock was begun as soon as Rod gave permission. A tube of thin metal, flexibly jointed, jutting from the hull of the Motie ship, it snaked toward them like a living creature. Moties swarmed around it in fragile-seeming suits. As seen from the cutter’s main port, they might almost have been men—almost.
Sally’s eyes blurred as she watched. The lighting was strange—dim Mote light and space-black shadows, and occasional flares of artificial light, everything reflected from the bright, curved metal surface. The perspective was all wrong, and it gave her a headache.
“I keep wondering where they’re getting the metal,” said Whitbread. He sat near her, as he usually did when they were both between jobs. “There wasn’t any spare mass aboard the ship, not the first time I went through it and not now. They must be tearing their ship apart.”
“That would fit,” said Horvath.
They had gathered around the main window after dinner, with tea and coffee bulbs in their hands. The Moties had become tea and chocolate fanciers; they could not stomach coffee. Human, Motie, human, Motie, they circled the window on the horseshoe-shaped free-fall bench. The Fyunch(click)s had learned the human trick of aligning themselves all in the same direction.
“Look how fast they work,” Sally said. “The bridge seems to grow before your very eyes.” Again her eyes tried to cross. It was as if many of the Moties were working farther back, well behind the others. “The one marked with the orange strips must be a Brown. She seems to be in charge, don’t you think?”
“She’s also doing most of the work,” said Sinclair.
“That makes an odd kind of sense,” said Hardy. “If she knows enough to give the orders, she must be able to do the work better than any of the others, too, wouldn’t you think?” He rubbed his eyes. “Am I out of my mind, or are some of those Moties smaller than others?”
“It does look that way,” said Sally.
Whitbread stared at the bridge builders. Many of the Moties seemed to be working a long way behind the embassy ship—until three of them passed in front of it. Carefully he said, “Has anyone tried watching this through the scope? Lafferty, get it on for us, will you?”
In the telescope screen it was shockingly clear. Some of the Motie workmen were tiny, small enough to crawl into any crevice. And they had four arms each.
“Do—do you often use those creatures as workmen?” Sally asked her Fyunch(click).