The Mote in God's Eye - Larry Niven [86]
He tried not to think about how thoroughly he was trapped. The corridor was unlighted and claustrophobically narrow. He looked into a line of tanks connected by pumps, possibly a cooling system for hydrogen fuel. It would connect to that single black fin outside.
Light flashed on the Motie.
It was a big opening, big enough even for Whitbread. Beyond: dim sunlight, like the light beneath a thunderstorm. Whitbread followed the Motie into what had to be one of the toroids. He was immediately surrounded by aliens.
They were all identical. That seemingly random pattern of brown and white was repeated on every one of them. At least a dozen smiling lopsided faces ringed him at a polite distance. They chattered to each other in quick squeaky voices.
The chattering stopped suddenly. One of the Moties approached Whitbread and spoke several short sentences that might have been in different languages, though to Whitbread they were all meaningless.
Whitbread shrugged, theatrically, palms forward.
The Motie repeated the gesture, instantly, with incredible accuracy. Whitbread cracked up. He sprawled helplessly in free fall, arms folded around his middle, cackling like a chicken.
Blaine spoke in his ear, his voice sober and metallic. “All right, Whitbread, everyone else is laughing too. The question is—”
“Oh, no! Sir, am I on the intercom again?”
“The question is, what do the Moties think you’re doing?”
“Yessir. It was the third arm that did it.” Whitbread had sobered. “It’s time for my strip-tease act, Captain. Please take me off that intercom...”
The telltale at his chin was yellow, of course. Slow poison; but this time he wasn’t going to breath it. He took a deep breath, undogged, and lifted his helmet. Still holding his breath, he took SCUBA gear from an outside patch of his suit and fitted the mouthpiece between his teeth. He turned on the air; it worked fine.
Leisurely he began to strip. First came the baggy coverall that contained the suit electronics and support gear. Then he unsnapped the cover, strips that shielded the zippers, and opened the tight fabric of the pressure suit itself. The zippers ran along each limb and up the chest; without them it would take hours to get in and out of suit, which looked like a body stocking or a leotard. The elastic fibers conformed to every curve of his musculature, as they had to, to keep him from exploding in vacuum; with their support, his own skin was in a sense his pressure suit, and his sweat glands were the temperature regulating system.
The tanks floated free in front of him as he struggled out of the suit. The Moties moved slowly, and one—a Brown, no stripes, identical to the miner aboard MacArthur—came over to help.
He used the all-purpose goop in his tool kit to stick his helmet to the translucent plastic wall. Surprisingly it did not work. The brown Motie recognized his difficulty instantly. He (she, it) produced a tube of something and dabbed it on Whitbread’s helmet; now it stuck. Jonathon faced the camera toward him, and stuck the rest of his suit next to it.
Humans would have aligned themselves with their head at the same end, as if they must define an up direction before they could talk comfortably. The Moties were at all angles. They clearly didn’t give a damn. They waited, smiling.
Whitbread wriggled the rest of the way out of his suit until he wore nothing at all.
The Moties moved in to examine him.
The Brown was startling among all the brown-and-white patterns. It was shorter than the others, with slightly bigger hands and an odd look to the head, as far as Whitbread could tell, it was identical to the miner. The others looked like the dead one in the Motie light-sail probe.