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"Yes, sir."
"Excellent. I'm sending a boatload of scientists your way-now that you've broken the ground, so to speak. By the way, well done. Before I send the others, have you further comments?".
"Um. Yes, sir. First, there are two children aboard. I saw them clinging to the backs of adults. They're bigger than miniatures, and colored like the adults."
"More evidence of peaceful intent," Blaine said. "What else?"
"Well, I didn't get a chance to count them, but it looks like twenty-three Brown-and-whites and two brown asteroid-miner types. Both of the children were with the Browns. I've been wondering why."
"Eventually we'll be able to ask them. All right, Whitbread, we'll send over the scientists. They'll have the cutter. Re
"Yes, sir."
"Work out a course. I want MacArthur fifty kilometers from the Motie ship. I don't know what the Moties will do when we move, but the cutter'll be over there first."
"You're moving the ship, sir?" Re
"Yes."
Nobody said anything for a long moment.
"All right," Blaine capitulated. "I'll explain. The Admiral is very concerned about the miniatures. He thinks they might be able to talk about the ship. We've orders to see that the escaped miniatures have no chance to communicate with an adult Motie, and one klick is just a bit close."
There was more silence.
"That's all, gentlemen. Thank you, Mr. Whitbread," Rod said. "Mr. Staley, inform Dr. Hardy that he can get aboard the cutter any time."
"Well, you're on," Chaplain Hardy thought to himself. He was a round, vague man, with dreamy eyes and red hair just begi
David Hardy was not unfriendly. Anyone could come to his cabin for coffee, a drink, a game of chess, or a long talk, and many did. He merely disliked people in large numbers. He could not get to know them in a crowd.
He also retained his professional inclination not to discuss his work with amateurs and not to publish results until enough evidence was in. That, he told himself, would be impossible now. And what were the aliens? Certain they were intelligent. Certainly they were sentient. And certainly they had a place in the divine scheme of the universe. But what?
Crewmen moved Hardy's equipment aboard the cutter. A tape library, several stacks of children's books, reference works (not many; the cutter's computer would be able draw on the ship's library; but David still liked books, impractical as they were). There was other equipment: two display screens with sound transducers, pitch reference electronic filters to shape speech sounds, raise or low pitch, change timbre and phase. He had tried to stow the gear himself, but First Lieutenant Cargill had talked him out of it. Marines were expert at the task, and Hardy's worries about damage were nothing compared to theirs; if anything broke they'd have Kelley to contend with.
Hardy met Sally in the air lock. She was not traveling light either. Left to herself, she'd have taken everything, even the bones and mummies from the Stone Beehive; but the Captain would only allow her holographs, and even those were hidden until she could learn the Moties attitude toward grave robbers. From Cargill's description of the Beehive, the Moties had no burial customs, but that was absurd. Everyone had burial customs, even the most primitive humans.
She could not take the Motie miner, either, or the remaining miniature, which had become female again. And the ferrets and Marines were searching for the other miniature and the pup (and why had it run away with the other miniature, not its mother?). She wondered if the fuss she had made about Rod's orders to the Marines might be responsible for the ease with which she won her place on the cutter. She knew she wasn't really being fair to Rod. He had his orders from the Admiral. But it was wrong. The miniatures weren't going to hurt anyone. It took a paranoid to fear them.
She followed Chaplain Hardy into the cutter's lounge. Dr. Horvath was already there. The three of them would be the first scientists aboard the alien ship, and she felt a surge of excitement. There was so much to learn!
An anthropologist-she thought of herself as fully qualified now,, and certainly ,there was no one to dispute it-a linguist, and Horvath, who had been a competent physicist before going into administration. Horvath was the only useless one in the group, but with his rank he was entitled to the seat if he demanded it. She did not think the same description applied to herself, although half the scientists aboard MacArthur did.
Three scientists, a coxswain, two able spacers, and Jonathon Whitbread. No Marines, and no weapons aboard. Almost, the excitement was enough to cover the fear that welled up from somewhere in her insides. They had to be unarmed, of course; but she would have felt better, all the same, if Rod Blaine had been aboard. And that was impossible.
Later there would be more people on the cutter. Buckman with a million questions once Hardy cracked the communications problem. The biologists would come in force. A Navy officer, probably Crawford, to study the Motie weapons. An engineering officer. Anyone, but not the Captain. It was unlikely that Kutuzov would allow Rod Blaine to leave his ship no matter how peaceful they might find the Moties.
She was suddenly homesick. On Sparta she had a home, Charing Close, and within minutes was the Capital. Sparta was the center of civilization-but she seemed to be living in a series of space craft of diminishing sizes, with the prison camp thrown in for variety. When she graduated from the university she had made a decision: she would be a person, not an ornament to some man's career. Right now, though, there was much to be said for being an ornament, especially for the right man, only- No. She must be her own woman.
There was a crash couch and a curved instrument board at one end of the cutter's lounge. It was the fire-control bridge-some lounge! But there were also couches and recessed tables for games and dining.
"Have you been through this boat?" Horvath was asking her.
"I beg your pardon?" Sally answered.
"I said, ‘Have you been through this boat?' It has gun emplacements all over it. They took out the works, but they left enough to show there were guns. Same with the torpedoes. They're gone, but the launch ports are still there. What kind of embassy ship is this?"
Hardy looked up from a private reverie. "What would you have done in the Captain's place?"
"I'd have used an unarmed boat."
"There aren't any," Hardy replied softly. "None you could live on, as you'd know if you spent any time on hangar deck." Chapel was held on hangar deck, and Horvath had not attended. That was his business, but no harm in reminding him.
"But it's so obviously a disarmed warship!"
Hardy nodded. "The Moties were bound to discover our terrible secret sooner or later. We are a warlike species. Anthony. It's part of our nature. Even so, we arrive in a complete disarmed fighting vessel. Don't you think that's a significant message for the Moties?"
"But this is so important to the Empire!"
David Hardy nodded assent. The Science Minister was right, although the Chaplain suspected he had the wrong reasons.
There was a slight lurch, and the cutter was on her way. Rod watched on the bridge screens and felt helpless frustration. From the moment the cutter came alongside the Motie vessel, one of Crawford's batteries would be locked onto her-and Sally Fowler was aboard the frail, disarmed ship.
The original plan had the Moties coming aboard MacArthur, but until the miniatures were found that was impossible. Rod was glad that his ship would not be host to the aliens. I'm learning to think paranoid, he told himself. Like the Admiral.