The Mote in God's Eye - Larry Niven [75]
He liked everything about the university except the students. He had not been particularly religious until his wife was killed in a landing boat crash; then, and he was not sure even yet how it happened, the Bishop had come to see him, and Hardy had looked long and searchingly at his life—and entered a seminary. His first assignment after ordination had been a disastrous tour as chaplain to students. It hadn’t worked, and he could see that he was not cut out for a parish priest. The Navy needed chaplains, and could always use linguists...
Now, at age fifty-two, he sat in front of an intercom screen watching four-armed monsters playing with cabbages. A Latin crossword puzzle lay on the desk at his left hand, and Hardy played idly with it. Domine, non sum...
“Dignis, of course.” Hardy chuckled to himself. Precisely what he had said when the Cardinal gave him the assignment of accompanying the Mote expedition. “Lord, I am not worthy...”
“None of us is, Hardy,” the Cardinal had said. “But then we’re not worthy of the priesthood either, and that’s more presumption than going out to look at aliens.”
“Yes, my lord.” He looked at the crossword puzzle again. It was more interesting than the aliens at the moment.
Rod Blaine would not have agreed, but then the Captain didn’t get as many chances to watch the playful little creatures as the Chaplain did. There was work to do but for now it could be neglected. His cabin intercom buzzed insistently, and the miniatures vanished to be replaced by the smooth round face of his clerk. “Dr. Horvath insists on speaking with you.”
“Put him on,” said Rod.
As usual, Horvath’s manner was a study in formal cordiality. Horvath must be getting used to getting along with men he could not allow himself to dislike. “Good morning, Captain. We have our first pictures of the alien ship. I thought you’d like to know.”
“Thank you, Doctor. What coding?”
“They’re not filed yet. I have them right here.” The image split, Horvath’s face on one half, and a blurred shadow on the other. It was long and narrow, with one end wider than the other, and it seemed to be translucent. The narrow end terminated in a needle spine.
“We caught this picture when the alien made mid-course turnover. Enlargement and noise eliminators gave us this and we won’t have better until it’s alongside.” Naturally, Rod thought. The alien ship would now have its drive pointed toward MacArthur.
“The spine is probably the Motie fusion drive.” An arrow of light sprang into the picture. “And these formations at the front end— Well, let me show you a density pattern.”
The density pattern showed a pencil-shaped shadow circled by a row of much wider, almost invisible toroids. “See? An inner core, rigid, used for launching. We can guess what’s in there: the fusion motor, the air and water regeneration chamber for the crew. We’ve assumed that this section was launched via linear accelerator at high thrust.”
“And the rings?”
“Inflatable fuel tanks, we think. Some, of them are empty now, as you can see. They may have been kept as living space. Others were undoubtedly ditched.”
“Uh huh.” Rod studied the silhouette while Horvath watched him from the other side of the screen. Finally Rod said, “Doctor, these tanks couldn’t have been on the ship when it was launched.”
“No. They may have been launched to meet the core section. Without passengers, they could have been given a much higher thrust.”
“In a linear accelerator? The tanks don’t look metallic.”
“Er—no. They don’t seem to be metallic.”
“The fuel has to be hydrogen, right? So how could those have been launched?”
“We . . . don’t know.