The Gripping Hand

"Captain, the first two Motie ships are under acceleration. They must be automated; Moties wouldn't have recovered yet."

"Wonder what kind of computer they trust to work that soon after a Jump?" Buckman muttered.

Chris Blaine examined the computer screen. "Continuing in their original directions. My guess is they'll all do that."

Re

"Me, too," Blaine said. "Maybe they couldn't."

"Spacecraft are expensive," Bury said. He sounded comfortable enough under 1.5 gravities. "Many resources, of different kinds. A complex society."

"Which may mean they've got problems," Re

"Fairly far out. Well beyond the orbit of their gas giant, Mote Beta."

"We never looked at the Trojan civilizations," Re

Half an hour later it was clear enough. Chris Blaine went back to explain to Joyce and Bury: "There are seven Motie ships. Five are under full acceleration in five different directions. One of them is lost, to us and Agamemnon and everyone else. Maybe we'll find it. Maybe not."

"Mercy of Allah," Bury muttered. "And the seventh?"

"The seventh is headed directly toward us, Excellency."

Bury fingered his beard. "They will want to talk, then."

Joyce Mei-Ling was staring at the viewscreen. Suddenly she pointed at the Motie ship. As they watched, a laser beam blinked on and off.

"As you said, Excellency. If you'll excuse me..." Blaine went back to his duty station and turned to Re

"So do we," Re

"One of the others looks to be heading for the Jump point to New Cal," Blaine said. "Agamemnon will be there first, though."

"Meanwhile, that ship is coming to us," Re

"Imperial ship, this is Motie vessel Phidippides," the speaker said.

"I've heard that name," Joyce Mei-Ling Trujillo said.

"We come in peace. We seek His Excellency Horace Bury. Is he aboard?"

Joyce said, "Phidippides was the first Marathon ru

Re

"Horace? It's for you."

4 The I Point

Foreign relations are like human relations. They are endless. The solution of one problem usually leads to another.

James Reston

The Honorable Freddy Townsend woke slowly, savoring each moment of relaxation. He felt eyes on him and turned over. "Hi."

"Hi, yourself."

Nobody puts a big bed aboard a racing ship. It only leaves room for accidents. Freddy had moved the double into Hecate for that earlier voyage with Glenda Ruth. He'd left it aboard for this trip ... of course, why not? It had seemed so empty, until now.

"Chocolate," she said. "Is there any chocolate aboard?"

"You shall have your desire if I have to grow the beans myself," Freddy proclaimed.

"If you find any aboard, lock it up. We're likely to need it."

He stared. Then he reached for her, a tentative gesture. Glenda Ruth laughed. "I won't vanish, you know."

"I can barely follow you, and you always know what I'm thinking. That worries me. If you know so much about people from what the Moties taught you, what do they know about us? Everything including what we don't know ourselves?"

"Maybe not that much," she said.

"But you're not sure."

"I only knew three Moties. And they had to be the smartest ones available. I mean, who would you send as ambassadors to another race? To an empire that threatened your whole race?"

"Yeah, you're probably right." This time he took her firmly by the shoulder and pulled her toward him.

It would take them six days to cross to the Jump point to MGC R-3 1.

On a later splendid morning Glenda Ruth said, "You should let Kakumi teach you some fighting techniques."

Freddy wasn't quite awake yet. He woke slowly and carefully. "Terry? I don't know that he knows any. Inuit are nice peaceful folk who really know machines."

"Taniths aren't. There was three hundred years of tooth and nail. Terry Kakumi's half Tanith."

"And maybe five percent Sauron superman, Freddy. He's bound to know something."

Freddy sat bolt upright. "Rape my lizard! Kakumi's been my engineer-Glenda Ruth, how would you know that? You barely know him!"

"I started watching him because I don't want Je

"Four years, five, he's kept this ship healthy."

"He's a good man, Freddy, but I noticed things. I've watched him move. He tried to cook for us once?"

"Ugh. I should have warned you. In a race there's just the two of us. I take precooked. It's better"

"They were perfect soldiers, the Saurons. March for a week without sleeping. Tolerate any sunlight level, any gravity. Breathe any atmosphere, never mind the stench. Sleep anywhere, wake instantly." She paused. "Eat anything organic. Anything."

"Oh. I guess that figures. Okay, so he's part-Sauron. There are Sauron loyalists, you know. Kakumi was six years in the Navy. Honorable discharge as an engineering petty officer."

"It doesn't matter."

"Some places it does," Freddy said. "I'm glad they didn't know when we were racing in the Ekaterina system. I'm glad I didn't know. I'd have been too nervous."

"You won, though."

"Sure. Didn't know you ... You don't follow racing. Damn, sometimes you scare me."

"Pooh."

"Yeah, pooh. Let's both take lessons." They'd been in New Cal system for four days; another six would take them through the Jump point to MGC-R-31. Six lessons in how to be a Sauron soldier?

"Oh, Freddy, that's..." She stopped.

"You weren't going to say..."

"No, not because I'm a girl and you're a boy! Mediators don't fight. Sure, let's both take lessons."

Terry Kakumi looked hard and round, a little taller than Glenda Ruth but more than half again her weight. When Hecate was racing and all needless mass had been stripped out, he slept in the engine compartment. Now there were bulkheads installed to make a cabin for him just forward of the engine compartment, but he hadn't done much with it.

"Bare as the engine room," Freddy told Glenda Ruth. "I suppose it makes sense-are you sure about his ancestry?"

"Want to ask him?"

"No, I don't think so-"

"Of course he may not know."

Freddy tapped on the engine room compartment door.

It opened. "Aye, aye." Kakumi saw Glenda Ruth, came out into the companionway, closing the door behind him. "Need me to relieve George on watch?"

"No, we're on course. Wanted to ask you something, Terry. You were Navy, you must have learned how to fight."

Kakumi nodded.

"Or knew already. Anyway, you knew when we left Sparta we'd be trying to get to the Mote. Well, it might be dangerous. We're wondering if you'll give us some lessons?"

Kakumi looked at Freddy, then Glenda Ruth, and shook his head slowly. "Wouldn't be a good idea. Four days or so, you'd learn just enough to get in trouble. If there's trouble, you talk, I'll fight." He gri

"Not yet."