The Gripping Hand

Re

Buckman shifted uncomfortably. "Well, I'd look foolish, but it's impossible anyway. Sometimes it seems unfair. My Fyunch(click) believed that the fusion burn will begin within the next thousand years. I've reviewed my observations repeatedly since, and I think he's right. I came that close."

"A Mediator. Your Fyunch(click) wasn't really an astronomer. Male, wasn't it? A male would be too young to have had practice at anything."

"Mediators learn to think like their targets. My Mediator was an astronomer, Kevin, at least by the time we separated."

"Uh-huh. Does the Navy know about this Arnoff's theories?" Re

"I suppose someone in the Bureau of Research watches astrophysics file updates," Buckman said. "Why the Navy?"

"Gerbil shit! Doctor, you have got to learn to look outside your specialty!"

"Kevin?" Bury demanded.

"If the protostar ignites, we get new Alderson paths," Re

"It won't happen," Buckman protested.

"A moment," Mercer said quietly. "Sir Kevin, could you explain?"

"I may have to lecture."

"Please do so."

"Okay. Ships travel along Alderson tramlines. Tramlines form between stars, along lines of equipotential flux. I won't explain that, you got it in high school, but it means they don't form between all pairs of stars. Not all the tramlines are useful, because if the flux densities aren't high enough, they won't carry anything big enough to have a drive aboard.

"The Mote sits out there with the Coal Sack on one side and the big red supergiant Murcheson's Eye on the other. The Eye is big and bright. So bright that the only useful tramline from the Mote is not only to the Eye, it terminates inside the supergiant. Tough on Moties trying to use that tramline. The blockade is there to make it even tougher.

"When Buckman's Protostar ignites, it'll create new tramlines."

"To where? Who would I ask?"

"Damned if I know," Re

"But the Moties could escape." Bury had his diagnostic sleeve on. It showed him staying remarkably calm, considering. As if he had always known, always known they would get out.

"Yeah," Re

Mercer caught Hazel's eye. "Another of that excellent brandy, please. Thank you, Bury. There's no better at the Palace. Now. Sir Kevin, let me get this straight. For a quarter of a century the Empire has spent billions of crowns to maintain a blockade to contain the Moties, as an alternative to sending in a battle fleet to exterminate them. Now you say that if Dr. Buckman's theory is incorrect, that blockade will be ineffective. Suddenly. Is that a fair statement?"

"As I always feared," Bury said. Re

"Nonsense," Buckman insisted. "That star won't collapse in our lifetimes, I don't care how good your doctors are!"

"I find that comforting," Mercer said. "You will understand that as the new Governor General of the Trans-Coal Sack Sector, I will automatically become chairman of the commission that sets policy regarding the Moties? I'd thought the Motie policy fixed and settled. The political questions regarding New Scotland and New Ireland are more than enough to renew my ulcers." He sipped at the huge snifter Hazel had brought him.

"Jacob." Bury sounded very old. "You once had a different notion about the protostar."

"Oh, I don't think so."

"It was long ago, and memories are fallible," Bury said. His hand strayed to the input ball of his chair, and his fingers played complex chords with the buttons. The inboard wall of the lounge became translucent.

Two images formed. Bury and Buckman, both twenty-five years younger, dressed in shipboard clothing fashionable that long ago.

"Buckman, you really must eat," Bury's image said. "Nabil! Sandwiches."

"The Navy people only let me use the telescopes at their convenience," the younger Buckman said. "Computers, too."

"Are either available now?"

"No. Of course you're right. Thank you. Only-Bury, it's so damned important."

"Of course it is. Tell me about it."

"Bury, do I know astrophysics?" Buckman's image didn't wait for a reply. "Not even Horvath thinks he knows more. But the Moties-Bury, they've got a lot of new theories. Some new math to go with it. The Eye. We've been studying the Eye since Jasper Murcheson's time. We've always known it would explode one day. The Moties know when!"

Bury's image looked apprehensive. "Not soon, I trust?"

"They say AD. 2,774,020 on April twenty-seventh."

"Doctor-"

"Oh, they're trying to be fu

Bury's image raised an eyebrow.

"There's a protostar out there," Buckman said. "Forming out in the Coal Sack. I can prove it. It's about ready to collapse."

The younger Bury smiled politely. "I know you a little, Jacob. What do you mean by now? Will you have time to eat?"

"Well, what I meant was sometime in the next half a million years. But the Moties have been watching it a long time. My- student-how do you say it?"

"Fyunch(click)," Bury's younger image said. (Eyes flicked toward the living Bury. Could a human being have made that sound?)

"Yeah. He says it'll take a thousand years, plus or minus forty."

A younger Nabil came on-screen with sandwiches and an old-fashioned thermos.

Bury touched his controls and the wall faded out. "You see, Jacob? You were led to your theory. Left alone, what might you have thought?"

Buckman frowned. "Not the Moties. Their math."

"Observation reports, too," Re

"Well, yes... yes, of course. But Kevin, you're..."

"What?"

"You're suggesting my Fyunch(click) lied to me."

"It never would have crossed my mind," Bury said gently, "that my Fyunch(click) would not lie to me. Kevin's played jokes on him, of course. Lady Blaine's certainly lied to her. It's on record."

"Yes." Buckman was not happy. "Then Arnoff's right."

"Jacob? Come with me aboard Sinbad to Murcheson's Eye. You can get new data. If you can't destroy this Arnoff's reconstruction, you can refine it, improve it, until half of civilization thinks it's yours."

"I'll come," Buckman said quickly.

"This dithering is a bad habit, Jacob," Re

"I'm getting tired of reviewing old data anyway."

"When does Arnoff say is the earliest this-event-could happen?" Mercer asked.

"Last month," Buckman said.

Mercer looked puzzled. "Then it could already have happened and we would not know. I think you said your protostar was light-years from any observer?"

"Oh," Cziller said. "No, my Lord. It has been known since CoDominium times that Alderson tramlines form as nearly instantaneously as anything can be in this universe."

"There's a propagation speed," Buckman said. "We just don't know what it is. No way to measure it." The astrophysicist looked thoughtful. "All the really interesting events happen in the last dozen years."

"Now. They could be happening now," Re

"Allah be merciful," Bury said. He straightened visibly. "Well, my Lord, I promised you an entertaining di

"You've kept that promise," Mercer said. "Now may I offer you more? I have long intended to go to New Caledonia. I would be more than pleased to have you as a guest for the journey."

"That's generous," Mercer said. "I'd like to accept."

"But you do not?" Bury asked.

Mercer sighed. "Excellency, I'm a politician. Successful, I think, but still a politician. I don't know how it happened, but you have made a very powerful enemy."