The Mote In God's Eye

"Can I ask what kind of colony they'll set up?" said Re

"Eh? Sure."

"Thank you. Will you be bringing representatives of all your classes?"

"Yes..." Jock hesitated. "All that are relevant to the conditions, Mr. Re

"Yeah. Well, I was wondering, because of this." He fumbled with his pocket computer and the screens lit. They showed an oddly distorted New Cal, a brilliant flash, then darkness. "Woops. Wrong place. That was when the probe fired on Captain Blaine's ship."

"Ah?" Jock said. He twittered to the others. They answered. "We had wondered what was the fate of the probe. Frankly, we believed you had destroyed it, and thus we did not wish to ask-"

"You're close," Re

"But the probe would not have fired on you," Jock protested.

"It did. Thought we were a meteor, I guess," Rod answered. "Anyway-"

Black shapes flowed across the screen. The sail rippled, flashed, and they were gone. Re

"I must warn you," Jock said. "We know little about the probe. It is not our specialty, and we had no chance to study the records before we left Mote Prime."

Senator Fowler frowned. "Just what are you getting at, Mr. Re

"Well, sir, I wondered about the images." Re

Jock seemed hesitant. "They appear to be."

"Sure they are. That's a Brown, right? And a Doctor."

"Right." The light pointer moved. "Ru

"There's a Watchmaker." Rod almost spat it. He couldn't hide his distaste. "The next one looks like a Farmer. Hard to tell from a Brown but-" His voice went suddenly uneasy. "Re

There was silence. The pointer hovered over a misshapen shadow, longer and leaner than a Brown, with what seemed to be thorns at the knees and heels and elbows.

"We saw them once before," Re

The screen divided, and another image appeared: the time-machine sculpture from the museum in Castle City. What looked like a junk-art sculpture of electronic parts was surrounded by things bearing weapons.

At his first sight of Ivan, Rod had felt an embarrassingly strong urge to stroke the Ambassador's silky fur. His impulse now was equally strong: he wanted to be in karate stance. The sculpted things showed in far too much detail. They grew daggers at every point, they looked hard as steel and stood like coiled springs, and any one of them would have left a Marine combat instructor looking as if he'd been dropped into a mowing machine. And what was that under the big left arm, like a broad-bladed knife half concealed?

"Ah," said Jock, "a demon. I suppose they must have been dolls representing our species. Like the statuettes, to make it easier for the Mediator to talk about us."

"All of those?" Rod's voice was pure wonder. "A shipload of full-sized mockups?"

"We don't know they were full-sized, do we?" asked Jock.

"Fine. Assume they were mockups," Re

There was no answer.

"Thank you, Kevin," Rod said slowly. He didn't dare look at Sally. "Jock, is this or is it not a Motie class?"

"There's more, Captain," Re

The image wasn't very clear, little more than a fuzzy edged silhouette; but the bulge was unmistakable on the full profile view.

"She's pregnant," Sally exclaimed. "Why didn't I think of that! A pregnant statuette? But- Jock, what does this me an?"

"Yeah," Rod asked coldly.

But it was impossible to get Jock's attention.

"Stop! Say no more!" Ivan commanded.

"What would I say?" Jock wailed. "The idiots took a Warrior! We are finished, finished, when moments ago we had the universe in our hand!" The Motie's powerful left hand closed crushingly on air.

"Silence. Control yourself. Now. Charlie, tell me what you know of the probe. How was it built?"

Charlie gestured contempt interrupted by respect. "It should be obvious. The probe builders knew an alien species inhabited this star. They knew nothing more. Thus they must have assumed the species resembled ours, if not in appearance, then in the essentials."

"Cycles. They must have assumed Cycles," Ivan mused. "We had yet to know that all races are not condemned to the Cycles."

"Precisely," said Charlie. "The hypothetical species had survived. It was intelligent. They would have no more control of their breeding than we, since such control is not a survival characteristic. Thus the probe was launched in the belief that this star's people would be in collapse when the probe arrived."

"So." Ivan thought for a moment. "The Crazy Eddies put pregnant females of every class aboard. Idiots!"

"Give them credit. They did their best," said Charlie. "The probe must have been rigged to dump the passengers into the sun the instant it was hailed by a space-traveling civilization. If the hypothetical aliens were that advanced, they would find, not an attempt to take over their planet with the light sail as a weapon, but a Mediator sent on a peaceful errand." Charlie paused for thought. "An accidentally dead Mediator. The probe would have been set to kill her, so the aliens would learn as little as possible. You are a Master: is this not what you would do?"

"Am I also Crazy Eddie, to launch the probe at all? The strategy did not work. Now we must tell these humans something."

"I say tell them all," Charlie said. "What else can we do? We are caught in our own lies."

"Wait," Ivan commanded. Only seconds had passed, but Jock was normal again. The humans were staring curiously. "We must say something momentous. Hardy knows we are excited. True?"

"Yes," Charlie gestured.

"What discovery could so have excited us?"

"Trust me," Jock said quickly. "We may yet be saved.

Demon worshipers! We told you we have no racial enemies, and this is true; but there is a religious faction, secret, which makes gods of the time demons. They are vicious, and very dangerous. They must have seized the probe before it left the asteroid belt. Secretly, perhaps-"

"Then the passengers and crew were alive?" Rod asked. Charlie shrugged. "I believe so. They must have committed suicide. Who knows why? Possibly they thought we had developed a faster-than-light drive and were waiting for them. What did you do when you approached them?"

"Sent messages in most human languages," Rod answered. "You're sure they were alive?"

"How would we know?" Jock asked. "Do not be concerned about them." The voice was filled with contempt. ~~They were not proper representatives of our race. Their rituals include sacrifice of sentient classes."

"Just how many of these demon worshipers are there?" Hardy asked. "I was never told of them."

"We are not proud of their existence," Jock answered. "Did you tell us of outies? Of the excesses of Sauron System? Are you pleased that we know humans are capable of such things?"

There were embarrassed murmurs.

"Damn," Rod said quietly. "They were alive after all- after all that distance," The thought was bitter.

"You are distressed," Jock said. "We are pleased that you did not speak to them before you met us. Your expedition would have been of quite a different character if you had-"