The Gripping Hand

He let Sinbad's corridors turn raucous while he ran the thrust up to one gee. Nabil and Cynthia hovered around Bury like worker ants feeding a queen. Bury's medical monitors were drawing a forest of needles, but why wouldn't they? Horace Bury hadn't been shot at since...

The Outies at Pierrot? Rape my lizard, was it that long ago? And Blaine and Trujillo were staying well clear of each other's privacy bubbles, and neither was saying anything. There may not be as much help there as I thought.

Phidippides was easing away at a gee and a half, almost two Mote gravities. Re

Atropos was aglow, black to glare green in a few seconds. The Motie ships looked tiny compared to the empire cruiser, but they had expanding Fields and Atropos didn't. Not good... but somewhere behind them a red point blossomed into a violet sun and dissipated. Atropos began to cool. Rawlins was fast with his guns.

The battle was mostly behind them now. Friendly and enemy ships looked too much alike; in the telescopes each was unique; but one squadron was definitely deploying to form a barrier behind the three fleeing ships. Another group converged on a ship trying to get past the barrier force.

Re

Blaine shook his head and pointed to the battle screen. "Rawlins is right, it's unlikely we'd get a message back to Agamemnon even with help from Medina's fleet, and without Atropos we're in big trouble. Other than that, we're fine. Rawlins knows how to fight, and whoever our allies are, they're pretty good. And willing to take punishment for us."

"They'll be Warriors," Re

"Horace?"

"I think of nothing you have not. I feel as if I have deceived myself."

"Which you did," Buckman said, chuckling.

"Mote Beta?" Joyce asked.

"We called the main Mote planet Mote Prime," Re

"And almost certainly another planet," Buckman said. "Mote Gamma. Almost certainly a gas giant. There are also two large clusters of asteroids sharing the orbit of Mote Beta. Nearly all of them were moved into place."

"Moved," Joyce said. "Isn't that a lot of work, moving asteroids?"

"Sure is," Re

"Alea jacta est," Joyce said

"Onk?"

"The die is cast," Bury translated. "Indeed.

"Right. Okay, mike's live again. All right, Eudoxus," Re

Freddy Townsend woke when Kakumi's voice barked at him from the intercom. He woke quickly as he always did when he slept at the bridge console.

"Freddy, there's a radio message. General communications band. Talk to them, Freddy. You there?"

Freddy reached tentatively for the console. The timer showed nearly an hour since the shift. His hand was steady, and his head felt clear. He flipped a switch to put the incoming message on the speakers:

"WARNING. YOU HAVE ENTERED AN INTERDICT ZONE. THIS SYSTEM HAS BEEN PLACED UNDER INTERDICT BY AUTHORITY OF THE VICEROY GOVERNOR GENERAL OF TRANS-COAL SACK SECTOR! THIS SYSTEM IS PATROLLED BY THE IMPERIAL NAVY. BROADCAST YOUR LOCATION MJD IDENTITY ON THIS BAND AND WAIT FOR INSTRUCTIONS, FAILURE TO COMPLY MAY RESULT IN DESTRUCTION OF YOUR SHIP. WARNING."

"Well, that's pretty explicit," Freddy said. He typed quickly on the control console. "Glenda Ruth, I think you should include something in your code so they can be sure its you. That message wasn't friendly at all."

"All right." She co

"Yes, dear."

"I wonder about this," Glenda Ruth said. "That message sounds pretty positive."

"You think something has happened?"

"I don't know, but I bet we don't have long to wait." The reply came four minutes later:

HECATE THIS IS INSS AGAMEMNON, REQUEST YOU RENDEZVOUS WITH US IMMEDIATELY. VECTORS FOLLOW. WE HAVE MESSAGES FOR THE HON. GLENDA RUTH FOWLER ELAINE. BALASINGHAM."

Freddy's fingers played. She'd seen him more tense, his fingers moving faster, during a Sauron Menace game... when the penalties for mistakes weren't so high. "Not far. We can be there in ten minutes. Glenda Ruth, I can't find a blinker."

"A what?'

"Normally they'd give us a laser spot to follow. This close, with lOOx mag, I should see something that big directly... unless the Langston Field is up. Nice that we were expected, though. And it's a request, at least so far."

"They've gone stealth," Glenda Ruth said. "And no comment regarding Sinbad or my brother. Freddy, I think it's happened. The Moties are loose."

"Uh-huh." He tapped at console keys. "ACCELERATION WARNING. Stand by for half-standard gravity."

"The Fyunch(click)s of humans were very diverse," Eudoxus said, "and so were their various fates. Captain Roderick Elaine's went mad. Sally Fowler's remained sane enough to advise, but was rarely considered trustworthy. Jacob Buckman's never had a problem. Chaplain Hardy's played abstract intellectual games; even some of the Masters found them interesting. Kevin, yours won so many arguments that she was made a teacher, but always under supervision."

"Flattering," Re

"No. I know these things due to observations by Horace Bury's Fyunch(click). That individual-shall we call her Bury-One? She was young, male, when he studied Horace Bury."

"After MacArthur's departure he saw a ruinous war shaping itself. He made some efforts to avert it, then to shape any kind of refuge for knowledge that would be lost. When these attempts had clearly failed, Bury-One left her Master. With a tangle of alliances and bluffs collapsing about her, she built and provisioned a spacecraft, reached the asteroids, and a

Eudoxus waited patiently through Kevin Re

Presently Re

"No, Kevin, Medina hadn't the wealth or position by then. A civilization we will call Byzantium won the bidding among those who could not be driven off or barred by distance or shortfall of delta-vee."

Chris Blaine was listening patiently, taking it all in and giving nothing. Joyce huddled in one corner of the bridge, whispering frantically into her recorder. Bury was smiling, enjoying Kevin's discomfiture. Bury had played this game before.

None of Re

Byzantium? Re

Some of this may have showed even through static, to a trained Mediator. Eudoxus said, "Please, Kevin, let me try to give you some picture of the extraplanetary civilizations."

"Try it."

"On Mote Prime they tend to big, sprawling cultures," Eudoxus said. "They use more intricate interlockings of obligations, bigger and more extensive families controlling wider, better-defined territories than we do. We don't go near Mote Prime. The planetbound are too powerful, and also not mobile enough to threaten us.

"In the asteroids and the moon clusters of Mote Beta and Mote Gamma-"