The Mote in God's Eye - Larry Niven [0]
Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
And why beholdest thou the mote
that is in thy brother's eye,
but considerest not the beam
that is in thine own eye?
MATTHEW 7 : 3
Chronology
1969 Neil Armstrong sets foot on Earth's moon.
1990 Series of treaties between United States and Soviet Union creates the CoDominium.
2008 First successful interstellar drive tested. Alderson Drive perfected.
2020 First interstellar colonies. Beginning of Great Exodus.
2040 CoDominium Bureau of Relocation begins mass out-system shipment of convicts. Colonization of Sparta and St. Ekaterina.
2079 Sergei Lermontov becomes Grand Admiral of CoDominium Space Navy.
2103 Great Patriotic Wars. End of the CoDominium. Exodus of the Fleet.
2110 Coronation of Lysander I of Sparta. Fleet swears loyalty to the Spartan throne. Marriage of dynasties produces union between Sparta and St. Ekaterina.
2111 Formation Wars begin.
2250 Leonidas I proclaims Empire of Man.
2250-2600 Empire of Man enforces interstellar peace.
2450 Jasper Murcheson explores region beyond the Coal Sack. Terraforming of New Scotland.
2603 Secession Wars begin. Growth of Sauron supermen. St. Ekaterina nearly destroyed.
2640 Secession Wars continue. Dark Ages in many systems. Effective termination of First Empire. Sauron supermen exterminated.
2800 Interstellar trade ceases. Piracy and brigandage. Dark Ages.
2862 Coherent light from the Mote reaches New Scotland.
2870 Effective end of Secession Wars.
2882 Howard Grote Littlemead founds Church of Him on New Scotland.
2903 Coherent light from Mote ends abruptly.
2903 Leonidas IV of Sparta proclaims the Second Empire of Man. The Oath of Reunion is sworn.
3016 Revolt of New Chicago.
3017 FIRST CONTACT
Prologue
“Throughout the past thousand years of history it has been traditional to regard the Alderson Drive as an unmixed blessing. Without the faster than light travel Alderson’s discoveries made possible, humanity would have been trapped in the tiny prison of the Solar System when the Great Patriotic Wars destroyed the CoDominium on Earth. Instead, we had already settled more than two hundred worlds.
“A blessing, yes. We might now be extinct were it not for the Alderson Drive. But unmixed? Consider. The same tramline effect that colonized the stars, the same interstellar contacts that allowed the formation of the First Empire, allowed interstellar war. The worlds wrecked in two hundred years of Secession Wars were both settled and destroyed by ships using the Alderson Drive.
“Because of the Alderson Drive we need never consider the space between the stars. Because we can shunt between stellar systems in zero time, our ships and ships’ drives need cover only interplanetary distances. We say that the Second Empire of Man rules two hundred worlds and all the space between, over fifteen million cubic parsecs...
“Consider the true picture. Think of myriads of tiny bubbles, very sparsely scattered, rising through a vast black sea. We rule some of the bubbles. Of the waters we know nothing...”
—from a speech delivered by Dr. Anthony Horvath at the Blaine Institute, A.D. 3029.
PART ONE
The Crazy Eddie Probe
1 Command
A.D. 3017
“Admiral’s compliments, and you’re to come to his office right away,” Midshipman Staley announced.
Commander Roderick Blaine looked frantically around the bridge, where his officers were directing repairs with low and urgent voices, surgeons assisting at a difficult operation. The gray steel compartment was a confusion of activities, each orderly by itself, but the overall impression was of chaos. Screens above one helmsman’s station showed the planet below and the other ships in orbit near MacArthur, but everywhere else the panel covers had been removed from consoles, test instruments were clipped into their insides, and technicians stood by with color-coded electronic assemblies to replace everything that seemed doubtful. Thumps and whines sounded through the ship as somewhere aft the engineering crew worked on the hull.
The scars of battle