The Gripping Hand

"'Your reputation precedes you,'" Bury quoted.

"I doubt she meant that as viciously as it sounded." Re

In the pause that followed, Re

"Horace, you haven't been overtly rude, but I know you. And look, if I had to ...

"Igor! Tonight we will make something quite different, quite.

"Yes, Doctor Frankenstein! Yes! Yes!"

"Tonight we will create the infidel least likely to be welcome aboard a teeny tiny spacecraft with Trader Horace Bury. We will give him the following characteristics, hnpf hnpf hnpf! AngloSaxon. Christian. An Empire Navy man. Related to the same Roderick Blaine who once held Bury prisoner aboard a Navy warship. And lastly, hnpf hnpf hnpf! He will be raised by Motie Mediators!"

Horace dropped the accent, "Lastly, he is a manipulative son of a dog."

"I'd say that goes with the Motie training.

"Yes, Kevin, but he tried to manipulate me. Does he think me a fool? It was not Joyce Trujillo who discovered the significance of the token ships!"

"I'll be dipped. Horace, he's chasing her."

"Eh?"

"I didn't see it. She's a career woman six years older than he is! Even so, that's it. He let her see him manipulating you for her benefit. I wonder if she'll buy it?"

Re

The problem lay in what she might want. Not money, nor entrée into certain levels of society; he could do that. But secrets... she loved secrets, and Kevin Re

Blaine was too young, and he was a classic model of a Navy man-but Kevin Christian Blaine had been raised by Motie Mediators. Why was that so easy to forget? Re

Sinbad in free fall could not be spun up. Chris Blaine was used to a bigger Navy ship. He was clumsy for the first couple of days. So was Joyce; she had not spent much time in space. Then they got oriented more or less together. Simultaneously, in fact.

You had to concentrate to see it, how often they occupied the same space. In any of the narrow passages they might pass without brushing. Joyce was still a bit clumsy, but Chris could eel gracefully past her, close enough to link magnetic fields, but without touching her at all. Like dancing.

The morning before Sinbad began deceleration, Joyce Trujillo looked different, and so did Chris Elaine. They both seemed a bit embarrassed about it, and they couldn't seem to avoid body contact.

Two centuries ago, Jasper Murcheson had cataloged most of the stars this side of the Coal Sack. He had numbered them in some haste for his Murcheson General Catalog, then filled in details at leisure.

Half those stars were red dwarves, such as this orange-white dot called MGC-R-31. Murcheson had collected more detail on the hotter yellow dwarves, those that might have habitable planets and particularly those that did. MGC-R-31 had a brown dwarf star companion at half a light-year's distance; Murcheson hadn't even known that much.

Kevin Re

It should be located, fast. It would move the I-point, too! Buckman and Re

It was good to be in MGC-R-31 system, good to have something to do, to have an excuse to lock that door.

A week of Bury's strained good ma

It was cramped for Buckman, very cramped for Buckman and Re

Search for a brown dwarf. First observe the red dwarf, find its plane of rotation. By then Buckman had calculated a series of distances and masses that might account for the shift in the Alderson point. Look at one locus of points, observe again, calculate again.

Di

And breakfast... but by then they were done. Re

"Allah is merciful," Bury said.

"How sure are you?" Joyce Trujillo asked.

Chris Blaine said, "Good question. You can't know where the Alderson point is going to be."

"I do know that there is no new Alderson point in this region," Buckman said. "As to where the incipient point will be, I've had to change the locus because of the companion. Not much. Brown dwarf stars don't radiate much. It's still an arc along here, still about a million klicks long. I moved it by a couple of light minutes. And it isn't there."

The arc Buckman's cursor made across the screen stretched away from the orange-white glare of MGC-R-31, toward the Coal Sack and an off-centered red peephole into Hell: Murcheson's Eye.

Re

Agamemnon had popped out a few minutes ahead of Sinbad, separated by no more than the gap between Earth and Earth's moon. Now they were a few tens of thousands of miles apart, while Atropos moved ahead toward the hypothetical I-point. Agamemnon's response came immediately

"Sinbad this is Agamemnon. Affirmative. I say again, affirmative, there are no signs of any ships in this system. We are definitely here first. Is Lieutenant Blaine available?"

"Right here."

"Please stand by for the skipper."

"Right."

"So that's that," Joyce Trujillo said. She was all business now, as Blaine was all officer.

"For the moment," Bury said. "They will come. But now-now I believe Allah has given us this chance. We may yet lose it, but we have the opportunity."

"God is merciful," Joyce said. "He will not do everything and thus take away our free will and that share of glory that belongs to us."

"Biblical?" Re

She laughed. "Niccolo Machiavelli."

"Arrgh! Joyce, you have done it to me again."

Buckman said, "Horace? I've listed it as Bury's Infrastar. Your ship, your crew, your discovery."

Seconds late, Bury reacted. He smiled with effort and said, "Thank you, Jacob."

"Here's the skipper," the comm set a

"Blaine?"

"Yes, sir. We're all here."

"Some of my officers are suggesting this is a wild-goose chase."

"I would like nothing better, Commander," Horace Bury said. "But I do not believe that."

"Don't guess I do either. We're wondering what to do next. I don't mind admitting this isn't a situation I was trained to deal with," Balasingham said.

"Nothing complicated about it," Buckinan said. "Re

"Fifteen days."

"Fifteen days. Your other ships have our data."

Chris Blaine took over. "Sir, we've sent the data to Atropos, so he'll take up station ahead of us. The I-point will be in this region. I suggest that Agamemnon stay behind, that is, between us and the path back to New Caledonia. Maybe they can intercept. As for us, we make repeated passes until the I-point appears."