The Mote in God's Eye

“Yes…” Jock hesitated. “All that are relevant to the conditions, Mr. Renner. We’d hardly take Farmers to a nonterraformed rock until the Engineers had built a dome.”

“Yeah. Well, I was wondering, because of this.” He fumbled with his pocket computer and the screens lit. They showed an oddly distorted New Cal, a brilliant flash, then darkness. “Woops. Wrong place. That was when the probe fired on Captain Blaine’s ship.”

“Ah?” Jock said. He twittered to the others. They answered. “We had wondered what was the fate of the probe. Frankly, we believed you had destroyed it, and thus we did not wish to ask—”

“You’re close,” Renner said. More images flashed on the screen. The light sail was rippling. “This is just before they shot at us.”

“But the probe would not have fired on you,” Jock protested.

“It did. Thought we were a meteor, I guess,” Rod answered. “Anyway—”

Black shapes flowed across the screen. The sail rippled, flashed, and they were gone. Renner backed the tape until the silhouettes were stark against the light, then stopped the film.

“I must warn you,” Jock said. “We know little about the probe. It is not our specialty, and we had no chance to study the records before we left Mote Prime.”

Senator Fowler frowned. “Just what are you getting at, Mr. Renner?”

“Well, sir, I wondered about the images.” Renner took a light pointer from a recess in the table. “These are various Motie classes, aren’t they?”

Jock seemed hesitant. “They appear to be.”

“Sure they are. That’s a Brown, right? And a Doctor.”

“Right.” The light pointer moved. “Runner,” Jock said. “And a Master…”

“There’s a Watchmaker.” Rod almost spat it. He couldn’t hide his distaste. “The next one looks like a Farmer. Hard to tell from a Brown but—” His voice went suddenly uneasy. “Renner, I don’t recognize that next one.”

There was silence. The pointer hovered over a misshapen shadow, longer and leaner than a Brown, with what seemed to be thorns at the knees and heels and elbows.

“We saw them once before,” Renner said. His voice was almost automatic now. Like a man walking through a graveyard on a bet. Or the point man advancing over the hill into enemy territory. Emotionless, determined, rigidly under control. It wasn’t like Renner at all.

The screen divided, and another image appeared: the time-machine sculpture from the museum in Castle City. What looked like a junk-art sculpture of electronic parts was surrounded by things bearing weapons.

At his first sight of Ivan, Rod had felt an embarrassingly strong urge to stroke the Ambassador’s silky fur. His impulse now was equally strong: he wanted to be in karate stance. The sculpted things showed in far too much detail. They grew daggers at every point, they looked hard as steel and stood like coiled springs, and any one of them would have left a Marine combat instructor looking as if he’d been dropped into a mowing machine. And what was that under the big left arm, like a broad-bladed knife half concealed?

“Ah,” said Jock, “a demon. I suppose they must have been dolls representing our species. Like the statuettes, to make it easier for the Mediator to talk about us.”

“All of those?” Rod’s voice was pure wonder. “A shipload of full-sized mockups?”

“We don’t know they were full-sized, do we?” asked Jock.

“Fine. Assume they were mockups,” Renner said. He went on relentlessly. “They were still models of living Motie classes. Except this one. Why would that one be in the group? Why bring a demon with the rest?”

There was no answer.

“Thank you, Kevin,” Rod said slowly. He didn’t dare look at Sally. “Jock, is this or is it not a Motie class?”

“There’s more, Captain,” Renner said. “Look real close at the Farmer. Now that we know what to look for.”

The image wasn’t very clear, little more than a fuzzy edged silhouette; but the bulge was unmistakable on the full profile view.

“She’s pregnant,” Sally exclaimed. “Why didn’t I think of that! A pregnant statuette? But— Jock, what does this mean?”

“Yeah,” Rod asked coldly.

But it was impossible to get Jock’s attention.

“Stop! Say no more!” Ivan commanded.

“What would I say?” Jock wailed. “The idiots took a Warrior! We are finished, finished, when moments ago we had the universe in our hand!” The Motie’s powerful left hand closed crushingly on air.

“Silence. Control yourself. Now. Charlie, tell me what you know of the probe. How was it built?”