The Mote in God's Eye - Larry Niven [155]
“Do you think the wooden case came out of another museum?”
“Aye.”
Whitbread did laugh then. They moved on. Presently Whitbread pointed and said, “Here, that’s the same metal, isn’t it?” The small two-handed weapon—it had to be a gun—carried the same date as the sapphire bubble.
Beyond that was a puzzling structure near the wall of the great dome. It was made of a vertical lacework of hexagons, each formed from steel members two meters long. There were thick plastic frames in some of the hexagons, and broken fragments in others.
Potter pointed out the gentle curve of the structure. “‘Twas another dome. A spherical dome with geodesic bracing. Not much left of it—and it wouldn’t hae covered all of the compound anyway.”
“You’re right. It didn’t weather away, though. Look at how these members near the edge are twisted. Tornadoes? This part of the country seems flat enough.”
It took Potter a moment to understand. There were no tornadoes in the rough terraformed New Scotland. He remembered his meteorology lessons and nodded. “Aye. Maybe. Maybe.” Beyond the fragments of the earlier dome Potter found a framework of disintegrating metal within what might have been a plastic shell. The plastic itself looked frayed and motheaten. There were two dates on the plaque, both in five figures. The sketch next to the plaque showed a narrow ground car, primitive looking, with three seats in a row. The motor hood was open.
“Internal combustion,” said Potter. “I had the idea that Mote Prime was short on fossil fuels.”
“Sally had an idea on that too. Their civilization may have gone downhill when they used up all their fossil fuels. I wonder.”
But the prize was behind a great glass picture window in one wall. They found themselves looking into the “steeple” past an ancient, ornately carved bronze plaque that had a smaller plaque on it.
Within the “steeple” was a rocket ship. Despite the holes in the sides and the corrosion everywhere, it still held its shape: a long, cylindrical tank, very thin-walled, with a cabin showing behind a smoothly pointed nose.
They made for the stairs. There must be another window on the first floor...
And there was. They knelt to look into the motor.
Potter said, “I don’t quite...”
“NERVA style,” said Whitbread. His voice was almost a whisper. “Atomic. Very early type. You send some inert fuel through a core of uranium or plutonium or the like. Fission pile, prefusion...”
“Are you sure?”
Whitbread looked again before he nodded. “I’m sure.”
Fission had been developed after internal combustion; but there were still places in the Empire that employed internal combustion engines. Fission power was very nearly a myth, and as they stared the age of the place seemed to fail from the walls like a cloak and wrap them in silence.
The plane landed near the orange rags of a parachute and the remains of a cone. The open doorway was an accusing mouth just beyond.
Whitbread’s Motie jumped from the plane and rushed over to the cone. She twittered, and the pilot bounded from the ship to join her. “They opened it,” Whitbread’s Motie said. “I never thought Jonathon would solve it. It must have been Potter. Horst, is there any chance at all they didn’t go inside?”
Staley shook his head.
The Motie twittered to the Brown again. “Watch for aircraft, Horst,” Whitbread’s Motie said. She spoke to the other Brown-and-white, who left the airplane and stared at the skies.
The Brown picked up Whitbread’s empty pressure suit and armor. She worked rapidly, shaping something to take the place of the missing helmet and closing the suit top. Then she worked on the air regenerator, picking at the insides with tools from a belt pouch. The suit inflated and was set upright. Presently the Brown closed the panel and the suit was taut, like a man in vacuum. She tied lengths of line to constrict the shoulders and punched a hole at each wrist.
The empty man raised his arms to the sound of hissing air blowing out the wrist holes. The pressure dropped and