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"Agreed," said Whitbread's Motie. "Mine is not a Master, but will be someday."
Another said, "Our Engineer has found much that needs improvement in their tools. There is now no class to fit Dr. Hardy-"
"Stop this," said the Master, and the noise stopped. "Our concern is more specific. What have you learned of their mating habits?"
"They do not speak of this to us. Learning will be difficult. There seems to be only one female aboard."
"ONE female?"
"To the best that we can learn."
"Are the rest neuters, or are most neuters?"
"It would seem that they are not. Yet the female is not pregnant, has not been pregnant at any time since our arrival."
"We must learn," said the Master. "But you must also conceal. A casual question. It must be asked very carefully, to reveal as little as possible. If what we suspect is true-can it be true?"
One said, "All of evolution is against it. Individuals that survive to breed must carry the genes for the next generation. How, then-?"
"They are alien. Remember, they are alien," said Whitbread's Motie.
"We must find out. Select one among you, and formulate your question, and select the human you will ask. The rest of you must avoid the subject unless the aliens introduce it."
"I think we must conceal nothing." One stroked the center of her face as if for reassurance. "They are alien. They may be the best hope we have ever had. With their help we may break the ancient pattern of the Cycles."
The Master showed her surprise. "You will conceal the crucial difference between Man and ourselves. They will not learn of it."
"I say we must not!" cried the other. "Listen to me! They have their own ways-they solve problems, always-" The others converged on her. "No, listen! You must listen!"
"Crazy Eddie," the Master said wonderingly. "Confine her in comfort. We will need her knowledge. No other must be assigned to her Fyunch(click), since the strain has driven her mad."
Blaine let the cutter lead MacArthur to Mote Prime at .780 gee. He was acutely aware that MacArthur was at alien warship capable of devastating half the Motie planet, and did not like to think of what weaponry might be trained on her by uneasy Moties. He wanted the embassy ship to arrive first-not that it would really help, but it might.
The cutter was almost empty now. The scientific perso
Everyone was concerned about the brown miner. She became steadily worse, eating as little of the food provided by the Moties as she had of MacArthur's provisions. It was frustrating, and Dr. Blevins tried endless tests with no results. The miniatures had waxed fat and fecund while loose aboard MacArthur, and Blevins wondered if they had been eating something unexpected, like missile propellant, or the insulation from cables. He offered her a variety of unlikely substances, but the Brown'5 eyesight grew dim, her fur came out in patches, and she howled. One day she stopped eating. The next she was dead.
Horvath was beside himself with fury.
Blaine thought it fitting to call the embassy ship. The gently smiling Brown-and-white that answered could only be Horvath's Motie, although Blaine would have been hard-pressed to say how he knew. "Is my Fyunch(click) available?" Rod asked. Horvath's Motie made him uncomfortable.
"I'm afraid not, Captain."
"All right. I called to report that the Brown we had aboard this ship is dead. I don't know how much it means to you, but we did our best. The entire scientific staff of MacArthur tried to cure her."
"I'm sure of that, Captain. It doesn't matter. May we have the body?"
Rod considered it a moment. "I'm afraid not." He couldn't guess what the Moties could learn from the corpse of an alien that had never communicated when alive; but perhaps he was learning from Kutuzov. Could there have been microtattooing below the fur... ? And why weren't the Moties more concerned about the Brown? That was something he certainly couldn't ask. Best to be thankful they weren't upset. "Give my regards to my Fyunch(click) ."
"I have bad news also," said Horvath's Motie. "Captain, you no longer have a Fyunch(click). She has gone mad."
"What?" Rod was more shocked than he would have believed. "Mad? Why? How?"
"Captain, I don't imagine you can grasp what a strain it has been for her. There are Moties who give orders and there are Moties who make and fix tools. We are neither: we communicate. We can identify with a giver of orders and it is no strain, but an alien giver of orders? It was too much. She- How shall I put it? Mutiny. Your word is mutiny. We have none. She is safe and under confinement, but it is best for her that she does not speak with aliens again."
"Thank you," Rod said. He watched the gently smiling image fade from the screen and did nothing more for five minutes. Finally he sighed and began dictating reports for Lenin. He worked alone and it was as if he had lost a part of himself and was waiting for it to come back.
PART THREE - MEET CRAZY EDDIE
26 Mote Prime
MOTE PRIME: Marginally habitable world in the Trans-Coalsack Sector. Primary: G2 yellow dwarf star approximately ten parsecs from the Trans-Coalsack Sector Capital New Caledonia. Generally referred to as the Mote in Murcheson's Eye (q.v.) or the Mote. Mass 0.91 Sol; luminosity 0.78 Sol.
Mote Prime has a poisonous atmosphere breathable with the aid of commercial or standard Navy issue filters. Contraindicated for heart patients or where emphysema problems exist. Oxygen: 16 percent. Nitrogen: 79.4 cent. C02: 2.9 percent. Helium: 1 percent. Complex hydrocarbons including ketones: 0.7 percent.
Gravity: 0.780 standard. The planetary radius is 0.84 and mass is 0.57 Earth standard; a planet of normal density. Period: 0.937 standard years, or 8,750.005 hours. The planet is inclined at 18 degrees with semimajor of 0.93 AU (137 million kilometers). Temperatures cool, poles uninhabitable and covered with ice. Equatorial and tropical regions are temperate to hot. The local day is 27.33 hours.
There is one moon, small and close. It is asteroidal in origin and the back side bears the characteristic indented crater typical of planetoids in the Mote system. The moon based fusion generator and power-beaming station are critical sources for the Mote Prime civilization.
Topography: 50 percent ocean, not including extensive ice caps. Terrain is flat over most of the land area. Mountain ranges are low and heavily eroded. There are few forests. Arable lands are extensively cultivated.
The most obvious features are circular formations which are visible everywhere. The smallest are eroded to the limits of detection, while the largest can be seen only from orbit.
Although the physical features of Mote Prime are of some interest, particularly to ecologists concerned with the effects of intelligent life on planetography, the primary interest in the Mote centers on its inhabitants.
Two scooters converged at the cutter and suited figures climbed aboard. When both humans and Moties had checked over the ship, the Navy ratings who had brought her to orbit gratefully turned her over to the midshipmen and returned to MacArthur. The middies eagerly took their places in the control cabin and examined the landscape below.
"We're to tell you that all contact with you will be through this ship," Whitbread told his Motie. "Sorry, but we can't invite you aboard MacArthur."
Whitbread's Motie gave a very human shrug to express her opinion of orders. Obedience posed no strain on either her or her human. "What will you do with the cutter when you leave?"