The Gripping Hand

"Greetings, 0 Caliph from afar, from the newest of your servants. You may think of us as the Library at Alexandria; our locus is described in this vector. We give you this record of all of our history's observations of this region of the sky. We have watched the skies for countless ages, and we offer all this to you that you will be pleased with us and know how useful we can be. Remember us, 0 Caliph, when you come into your kingdom."

Re

"What else?"

"They know nothing of us. They're powerless and poor. They have no way to engage in dialogue with us, which may imply that they fear Medina, or that they are light-hours away."

"Both, I'd say," Blaine said. "But they're certainly a long way off towards Mote Gamma. They've got good detection. They broadcast across just over two billion kilometers. Even so, they must be poverty-stricken, or they would have sent something, if only a relay to project a narrower beam."

Bury dreamed, his face calm and perfectly still. "Yes. As is, look what they've done. They've spilled their secrets across the sky. They've given away all they had because there was no way to establish a trade. Perhaps the strangers are not strangers to gratitude. Exactly right, for those with no power at all."

"Thanks-"

"There is more. They believe we are powerful, or likely to become so. This argues that others do also. The question is, why? Certainly we are not now."

"Thanks, Horace. Buckman, what have you got?"

"New program just finishing. Their orbits for the Eye and the Mote check against what I've got, with a minor margin of error."

"A hundred thousand years of observations?"

"That, or two or three."

‘Okay get me-"

"Wait one, Kevin. This is finished. Mmm."

Re

"Yeah. It's a reiterative program to predict the collapse of Buckman's Protostar, Kevin, at first blush it looks like Medina Trading should have had this. It would have given them the right date year. I mean this is really, seriously valuable."

"Okay. Get me Atropos."

"Yes, sir, we received a copy, too," Rawlins said. "It came from an asteroid that trails the Beta Leading Trojans."

"Onk?"

"Beta Leading Trojans, sir-"

"Right, I understand that."

"Well, there's an asteroid that trails that group. The group is sixty degrees in front of Mote Beta."

"Naturally."

"And this is maybe fifty degrees from Beta."

"Unstable. Had to be nudged, right, Jacob? Anything else, Rawlins?"

"Yeah, my Sailing Master is a science buff, and he hasn't stopped playing with that since he got it."

Eudoxus's sneer was clear and blatant, if hard to describe. "'Library at Alexandria,' forsooth! Their claim would have been valid once. They're near broken, now. They still had some of their wealth ten years ago."

"That would be when they bought a Bury Mediator," Kevin surmised.

The Motie didn't visibly react. "Yes, they bought their Bury Fyunch(click) from Persia. They were maintaining their ancient tradition of collecting and codifying knowledge. Perhaps they still are.

"They're the oldest family we know of. They've traded in information throughout history. They've had to move countless times. They were in the Leading Trojans of Beta eight thousand years ago, at the killing of the Doctors."

"We heard of that," Re

"Was there a Killing of the Doctors on Mote Prime? I'm not surprised," Eudoxus said. "It must seem so obvious. Doctors make population problems worse, yes?"

"Obvious, right,"

"Here it was very successful. Alexandria refused to participate and so did some other forgotten civilizations; they must all have been destroyed by the victors. Alexandria alone kept their Doctors. Afterward they bred a basic stock and sold crossbreeds and tailored mutations. But other cultures have sequestered their own breeding stock, Doctors and other rare castes, and Alexandria has fallen on hard times."

"Should we be dealing with them?" Re

"It does no harm," Eudoxus said. "They are considered-a bit strange. But they're no threat, and they can be useful."

Bury was nodding to himself. When Re

"Okay, we're closing on it," Buckman said. He image on the screen: a dark object surrounded by "And now Eudoxus is relaying a better picture."

The Motie ship had run on ahead and was nearly Motie base. The screens showed a ring of fusion fire linking black candle flames: fusion rocket motors, forty or more, bright enough to wash out the sensors.

The light washed out some detail, but... the motors ringed one side of a highly regular iceball. Most of the iceball was webbed in colored lines and studded here and there with domes co

The instruments aboard Atropos were superior to what Sinbad carried. A man aboard Atropos was relaying data. "Mass: sixty-five thousand to

"My God, it's huge," Re

The image became a black ball with only the engine-glare protruding. The proprietors had closed the Field.

Eudoxus appeared. "That's I

From Atropos: "The surface is foamed hydrogen ice. We think the interior is hydrogen ice; the mass is about right. The jets are hydrogen fusion with some refinements."

Re

"This time we do land, I think," Horace Bury said.

Half an hour later, Sinbad was close enough to feel the iceball's minuscule gravity. "Here goes," Re

"Yes, sir," Commander Rawlins said. "Sir, I agree it's best to get Sinbad under a powerful Langston Field, but I won't be sorry to keep Atropos out here where I can maneuver, Captain, they've got a lot of ships and guns in there. There's no way I could force them to let you out."

"Right," Re

"We can presume that Hecate's crew are in similar circumstances," Blaine said.

"The Moties of Mote Prime were gracious hosts," Bury said. "We believe these Moties are even more similar to Arabs."

"Yeah. Well, it's one way to find out if Moties have the same ideas about hospitality that Arabs do," Re

"As Allah wills. I am ready, Kevin."

The black shield disappeared. Sinbczd sank toward Base Six. Phidippides moved ahead, veering away toward its own mooring.

Chris pointed. "I think that must be ours."

Re

It was magnificent. It was human, the only shape down there that wasn't utilitarian and alien. Light and airy, a bubble of painted masonry afloat on the ice field. The structure couldn't have been marble; it might well have been carved ice. It was far more mosquelike than the castle King Peter's people had built them on Mote Prime, and considerably smaller. A mosque with a cavity in it... a vertical cha