After all the waiting, it was as if everything broke at once.The light was first. There might have been an Earthlike world behind it; there probably was, for it was in the doughnut locus Horvath was searching. But the light hid whatever was behind it, and it wasn’t surprising that the communications people had found it first. Watching for signals was their job.
Cargill and Horvath’s team worked together to answer the pulses. One, two, three, four blinked the light, and Cargill used the forward batteries to send five, six, seven. Twenty minutes later the light sent three one eight four eleven, repeated, and the ship’s brain ground out: Pi, base twelve. Cargill used the computer to find e to the same base and replied with that.
But the true message was, We want to talk to you. And MacArthur’s answer was, Fine. Elaborations would have to wait.
And the second development was already in.
“Fusion light,” said Sailing Master Renner. He bent close over his screen. His fingers played strange, silent music on his control board. “No Langston Field. Naturally. They’re just enclosing the hydrogen, fusing it and blasting it out. A plasma bottle. It’s not as hot as our drives, which means lower efficiency. Red shift, if I’m reading the impurities right… it must be aimed away from us.”
“You think it’s a ship coming to meet us?”
“Yessir. A small one. Give us a few minutes and I’ll tell you its acceleration. Meanwhile, we assume an acceleration of one gee…” Renner’s fingers had been tapping all the while “…and get a mass of thirty tons. Later we’ll readjust that.”
“Too big to be a missile,” Blaine said thoughtfully. “Should we meet him halfway, Mr. Renner?”
Renner frowned. “There’s a problem. He’s aiming at where we are now. We don’t know how much fuel he’s got, or how bright he is.”
“Let’s ask, anyway. Eyes! Get me Admiral Kutuzov.”
The Admiral was on his bridge. Blurs out of focus behind him showed activity aboard Lenin. “I’ve seen it, Captain,” Kutuzov said. “What do you want to do about it?”
“I want to go meet that ship. But in case it can’t change course or we can’t catch it, it will come here, sir. Lenin could wait for it.”
“And do what, Captain? My instructions are clear, Lenin is to have nothing to do with aliens.”
“But you could send out a boat, sir. A gig, which we’ll pick up with your men. Sir.”
“How many boats do you think I have, Blaine? Let me repeat my instructions. Lenin is here to protect secret of Alderson Drive and Langston Field. To accomplish task we will not only not communicate with aliens, we will not communicate with you when message might be intercepted.”
“Yes, sir.” Blaine stared at the burly man on the screen. Didn’t he have a shred of curiosity? Nobody could be that much of a machine… or could he? “We’ll go to the alien ship, sir. Dr. Horvath wants to anyway.”
“Very good, Captain. Carry on.”
“Yes, sir.” Rod cut off the screen with relief, then tuned to Renner. “Let’s go make first contact with an alien, Mr. Renner.”
“I think you just did that,” said Renner. He glanced nervously at the screens to be sure the Admiral was gone.
Horace Bury was just leaving his cabin—on the theory that he might be less bored somewhere else—when Buckman’s head popped out of a companionway.
Bury changed his mind at once. “Dr. Buckman! May I offer you coffee?”
Protuberant eyes turned, blinked, focused. “What? Oh. Yes, thank you, Bury. It might wake me. There’s been so much to do—I can only stay a moment—”
Buckman dropped into Bury’s guest chair, limp as a physician’s display skeleton. His eyes were red; his eyelids drooped at half-mast. His breathing was too loud. The stringy muscle tissue along his bare arm drooped. Bury wondered what an autopsy would show if Buckman were to die at this moment: exhaustion, malnutrition, or both?
Bury made a difficult decision. “Nabil, some coffee. With cream, sugar, and brandy for Dr. Buckman.”
“Now, Bury, I’m afraid that during working hours— Oh, well. Thank you, Nabil.” Buckman sipped, then gulped. “Ah! That’s good. Thank you, Bury, that ought to wake me.”
“You seemed to need it. Normally I would never adulterate good coffee with distilled spirits. Dr. Buckman, have you been eating?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You haven’t. Nabil, food for our guest. Quickly.”
“Bury, we’re so busy, I really haven’t time. There’s a whole solar system to explore, not to mention the jobs for the Navy—tracing neutrino emissions, tracking that damned light—”
“Doctor, if you were to die at this moment, many of your notes would never be written down, would they?”
Buckman smiled. “So theatrical, Bury. But I suppose I can spare a few minutes. All we’re doing now is waiting for that signal light to go off.”
“A signal from the Mote planet?”
“From Mote Prime, yes, at least it came from the right place. But we can’t see the planet until they turn off the laser, and they won’t. They talk and talk, and for what? What can they tell us if we don’t speak a common language?”
“After all, Doctor, how can they tell us anything until they teach us their language? I presume that’s what they’re trying to do now. Isn’t anyone working on that?”
Buckman gave a feral snarl. “Horvath has all the instruments feeding information to Hardy and the linguists. Can’t get any decent observations of the Coal Sack—and no one’s ever been this close to it before!” His look softened. “But we can study the Trojan asteroids.”
Buckman’s eye took on that look, the focus on infinity. “There are too many of them. And not enough dust. I was wrong, Bury; there’s not enough dust to capture so many rocks, or to polish them either. The Moties probably did the polishing, they must be all through those rocks, the neutrino emissions are fantastic. But how did so many rocks get captured?”
“Neutrino emissions. That means a fusion technology.”
Buckman smiled. “One of a high order. Thinking of trade possibilities?”
“Of course. Why else would I be here?” And I would be here even if the Navy had not made it clear that the alternative was a formal arrest… but Buckman wouldn’t know that. Only Blaine did. “The higher their civilization, the more they’ll have to trade.” And the harder they’d be to cheat; but Buckman wouldn’t be interested in such things.
Buckman complained, “We could move so much faster if the Navy didn’t use our telescopes. And Horvath lets them! Ah, good.” Nabil entered, pushing a tray.
Buckman ate like a starved rat. Between mouthfuls he said, “Not that all the Navy’s projects are totally without interest. The alien ship—”
“Ship?”
“There’s a ship coming to meet us. Didn’t you know?”
“No.”
“Well, its point of departure is a large, stony asteroid well outside the main cluster. The point is, it’s very light. It must have a very odd shape, unless there are gas bubbles all through the rock, which would mean—”
Bury laughed outright. “Doctor, surely an alien space craft is more interesting than a stony meteorite!”
Buckman looked startled. “Why?”
The slivers turned red, then black. Clearly the things were cooling; but how had they become hot in the first place?