The Mote in God's Eye (14 page)

“Aye aye, sir.” Renner grinned. “And so we’re off. Pity the regulations don’t provide for champagne at a time like this.”

“I’d think you’d have your hands full, Mr. Renner. Admiral Kutuzov insists we keep what he calls a proper formation.”

“Yes, sir. I discussed that with
Lenin
’s Sailing Master last night.”

“Oh.” Rod settled back in his command chair. It would be a difficult trip, he thought. All those scientists aboard. Dr. Horvath had insisted on coming himself, and he was going to be a problem. The ship was so swarming with civilians that most of
MacArthur
’s officers were doubled up in cabins already too small; junior lieutenants slung hammocks in the gun room with midshipmen; Marines were packed into recreation quarters so that their barracks rooms could be stuffed with scientific gear. Rod was beginning to wish that Horvath had won his argument with Cranston. The scientist had wanted to take an assault carrier with its enormous bunk spaces.

The Admiralty had put a stop to that. The expedition would consist of ships able to defend themselves and those only. The tankers would accompany the fleet to Murcheson’s Eye, but they weren’t coming to the Mote.

In deference to the civilians, the trip was at 1.2 gee.

Rod suffered through innumerable dinner parties, mediated arguments between scientists and crew, and fended off attempts by Dr. Buckman the astrophysicist to monopolize Sally’s time.

  First Jump was routine. The transfer point to Murcheson’s Eye was well located. New Caledonia was a magnificent white point source in the moment before
MacArthur
Jumped. Then Murcheson’s Eye was a wide red glare the size of a baseball held at arm’s length.

  The fleet moved inward.

Gavin Potter had traded hammocks with Horst Staley.

It had cost him a week’s labor doing two men’s laundry, but it had been worth it. Staley’s hammock had a view port.

Naturally the port was beneath the hammock, in the cylindrical spin floor of the gun room. Potter lay face down in the hammock to look through the webbing, a gentle smile on his long face.

Whitbread was face up in his own hammock directly across the spin floor from Potter. He had been watching Potter for several minutes before he spoke.

“Mr. Potter.”

The New Scot turned only his head. “Yes, Mr. Whitbread?”

Whitbread continued to watch him, contemplatively, with his arms folded behind his head. He was quite aware that Potter’s infatuation with Murcheson’s Eye was none of his damned business. Incomprehensible, Potter remained polite. How much needling would he take?

Entertaining things were happening aboard
MacArthur
, but there was no way for midshipmen to get to them. An off-duty middie must make his own entertainment.

“Potter, I seem to remember you were transferred aboard
Old Mac
on Dagda, just before we went to pick up the probe.” Whitbread’s voice was a carrying one. Horst Staley, who was also off duty, turned over in what had been Potter’s bunk and gave them his attention. Whitbread noticed without seeming to.

Potter turned and blinked. “Yes, Mr. Whitbread. That’s right.”

“Well,
somebody
has to tell you, and I don’t suppose anyone else has thought of it. Your first shipboard mission involved diving right into an F8 sun. I hope it hasn’t given you a bad impression of the Service.”

“Not at all. I found it exciting,” Potter said courteously.

“The point is, diving straight into a sun is a rare thing in the Service. It doesn’t happen every trip. I thought someone ought to tell you.”

“But, Mr. Whitbread, are we no about to do exactly that?”

“Hah?” Whitbread hadn’t expected that.

“No ship of the First Empire ever found a transfer point from Murcheson’s Eye to the Mote. They may no have wanted it badly, but we can assume they tried somewhat,” Potter said seriously. “Now, I have had verra little experience in space, but I am not uneducated, Mr. Whitbread. Murcheson’s Eye is a red supergiant, a big, empty star, as big as the orbit of Saturn in Sol System. It seems reasonable that the Alderson Point to the Mote is within yon star if it exists. Does it not?”

Horst Staley rose up on an elbow. “I think he’s right. It would explain why nobody ever plotted the transfer point. They all knew where it was—”

“But nobody wanted to go look. Yes, of
course
he’s right,” Whitbread said in disgust. “And that’s just where we’re going. Whee! Here we go again.”

“Exactly,” said Potter; and smiling gently, he turned on his face again.

“It’s most unusual,” Whitbread protested. “Doubt me if you must, but I assure you we don’t go diving into stars more than two out of three trips.” He paused. “And even that’s too many.”

The fleet slowed to a halt at the fuzzy edge of Murcheson’s Eye. There was no question of orbits. At this distance the supergiant’s gravity was so feeble that have taken years for a ship to fall into it.

The tankers linked up and began to transfer fuel.

An odd, tenuous friendship had grown between Horace Bury and Buckman, the astrophysicist. Bury had sometimes wondered about it. What did Buckman want with Bury?

Buckman was a lean, knobby, bird-boned man. From the look of him he sometimes forgot to eat for days at a time. Buckman seemed to care for nobody and nothing in what Bury considered the real universe. People, time, power, money, were only the means Buckman used to explore the inner workings of the stars. Why would he seek the company of a merchant?

But Buckman liked to talk, and Bury at least had the time to listen.
MacArthur
was a beehive these days, frantically busy and crowded as hell. And there was room to pace in Bury’s cabin.

Or, Bury speculated cynically, he might like Bury’s coffee. Bury had almost a dozen varieties of coffee beans, his own grinder, and filter cones to make it. He was quite aware of how his coffee compared with that in the huge percolators about the ship.

Nabil served them coffee while they watched the fuel transfer on Bury’s screen. The tanker fueling
MacArthur
was hidden, but
Lenin
and the other tanker showed as two space-black elongated eggs, linked by a silver umbilicus, silhouetted against a backdrop of fuzzy scarlet.

“It should not be that dangerous,” said Dr. Buckman. “You’re thinking of it as a descent into a sun, Bury. Which it is, technically. But that whole vast volume isn’t all that much more massive than Cal or any other yellow dwarf. Think of it as a red-hot vacuum. Except for the core, of course;
that’s
probably tiny and very dense.

“We’ll learn a great deal going in,” he said. His eyes were alight, focused on infinity. Bury, watching him sidewise, found the expression fascinating. He had seen it before, but rarely. It marked men who could not be bought in any coin available to Horace Bury.

Bury had no more practical use for Buckman than Buckman had for Bury. Bury could relax with Buckman, as much as he could relax with anybody. He liked the feeling.

He said, “I thought you would already know everything about the Eye.”

“You mean Murcheson’s explorations? Too many records have been lost, and some of the others aren’t trustworthy. I’ve had my instruments going since the Jump. Bury, the proportion of heavy particles in the solar wind is amazingly high. And helium—tremendous. But Murcheson’s ships never went into the Eye itself, as far as we know. That’s when we’ll
really
learn things.” Buckman frowned. “I hope our instruments can stand up to it. They have to poke through the Langston Field, of course. We’re likely to be down in that red-hot fog for some considerable time, Bury. If the Field collapses it’ll ruin everything.”

Bury stared, then laughed. “Yes, Doctor, it certainly would!”

Buckman looked puzzled. Then, “Ah. I see what you mean. It would kill us too, wouldn’t it? I hadn’t thought of that.”

Acceleration warnings sounded.
MacArthur
was moving into the Eye.

Sinclair’s thick burr sounded in Rod’s ear. “Engineering report, Captain. All systems green. Field holding verra well, ‘tis nae so warm as we feared.”

“Good,” Blaine replied. “Thanks, Sandy.” Rod watched the tankers receding against the stars. Already they were thousands of kilometers away, visible only through the telescopes as bright as points of light.

The next screen showed a white splotch within a red fog:
Lenin
leading into the universal red glare.
Lenin
’s crew would search for the Alderson point—if there were such a point.

“Still, ‘tis certain the Field will leak inward sooner or later,” Sinclair’s voice continued. “There’s no place for the heat to go, it must be stored. ‘Tis no like a space battle, Captain. But we can hold wi’ no place to radiate the accumulated energy for at least seventy-two hours. After that—we hae no data. No one has tried this loony stunt before.”

“Yes.”

“Somebody should have,” Renner said cheerfully. He had been listening from his post on the bridge.
MacArthur
was holding at one gee, but it took attention: the thin photosphere was presenting more resistance than expected. “You’d think Murcheson would have tried it. The First Empire had better ships than ours.”

“Maybe he did,” Rod said absently. He watched
Lenin
move away, breaking trail for
MacArthur
, and felt an unreasonable irritation.
MacArthur
should have gone first...

The senior officers slept at their duty stations. There wasn’t much anyone could do if the Field soaked up too much energy, but Rod felt better in his command seat. Finally it was obvious that he wasn’t needed.

A signal came from
Lenin
and
MacArthur
cut her engines. Warning horns sounded, and she came under spin until other hoots signaled the end of unpleasant changes in gravity. Crew and passengers climbed out of safety rigglng.

“Dismiss the watch below,” Rod ordered. Renner stood and stretched elaborately. “That’s that, Captain. Of course we’ll have to slow down as the photosphere gets thicker, but that’s all right. The friction slows us down anyway.” He looked at his screens and asked questions with swiftly moving fingers. “It’s not as thick as, say, an atmosphere out there, but it’s a lot thicker than a solar wind.”

Blaine could see that for himself.
Lenin
was still ahead, at the outer limit of detection, and her engines were off. She was a black splinter in the screens, her outlines blurred by four thousand kilometers of red-hot fog.

The Eye thickened around them.

Rod stayed on the bridge another hour, then persuaded himself that he was being unfair. “Mr. Renner.”

“Yes, sir?”

“You can go off watch now. Let Mr. Crawford take her.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Renner headed for his cabin. He’d reached the conclusion that he wasn’t needed on the bridge fifty-eight minutes before. Now for a hot shower, and some sleep in his bunk instead of the conning chair.

The companionway to his cabin was jammed, as usual. Kevin Renner was pushing his way through with singleminded determination when someone lurched hard against him.

“Dammit! Excuse me,” he snarled. He watched the miscreant regain his feet by hanging onto the lapels of Renner’s uniform. “Dr. Horvath, isn’t it?”

“My apologies.” The Science Minister stepped back and brushed at himself ineffectually. “I haven’t gotten used to spin gravity yet. None of us have. It’s the Coriolis effect that throws us off.”

“No. It’s the elbows,” Renner said. He regained his habitual grin. “There are six times as many elbows as people aboard this ship, Doctor. I’ve been counting.”

“Very funny, Mr. Renner, isn’t it? Sailing Master Renner. Renner, this crowding bothers my personnel as much as yours. If we could stay out of your way, we would. But we can’t. The data on the Eye have to be collected. We may never have such a chance again.”

“I know, Doctor, and I sympathize. Now if you’ll
—
” Visions of hot water and clean bedding receded as Horvath clutched at his lapels again.

“Just a moment, please.” Horvath seemed to be making up his mind about something. “Mr. Renner, you were aboard
MacArthur
when she captured the alien probe, weren’t you?”

“Hoo Boy, I sure was.”

“I’d like to talk to you.”

“Now? But, Doctor, the ship may need my attention at any moment—”

“I consider it urgent.”

“But we’re cruising through the photosphere of a star, as you may have noticed.”
And I haven’t had a hot shower in three days. as you may also have noticed...
Renner took a second look at Horvath’s expression and gave up. “All right, Doctor. Only let’s get out of the passageway.”

Horvath’s cabin was as cramped as anything on board, except that it had walls. More than half of
MacArthur
’s crew would have considered those walls an undeserved luxury. Horvath apparently did not, from the look of disgust and the muttered apologies as they entered the cabin.

He lifted the bunk into the bulkhead and dropped two chairs from the opposite wall. “Sit down, Renner. There are things about that interception that have been bothering me. I hope I can get an unbiased view from you. You’re not a regular Navy man.”

The Sailing Master did not bother to deny it. He had been mate on a merchant ship before, and would skipper one when he left the Navy with his increased experience; and he could hardly wait to return to the merchant service.

“So,” said Horvath, and sat down on the very edge of the foldout chair. “Renner, was it absolutely necessary to attack the probe?”

Renner started to laugh.

Horvath took it, though he looked as if he had eaten a bad oyster.

“All right,” said Renner. “I shouldn’t have laughed. You weren’t there. Did you know the probe was diving into Cal for maximum deceleration?”

“Certainly, and I appreciate that you were too. But was it really that dangerous?”

“Dr. Horvath, the Captain surprised me twice. Utterly. When the probe attacked, I was trying to take us around the edge of the sail before we were cooked. Maybe I’d have got us away in time and maybe not. But the Captain took us
through
the sail. It was brilliant, it was something I should have thought of, and I happen to think the man’s a genius. He’s also a suicidal maniac.”