“Is that—that doesn’t sound much like the Admiral, sir,” Cargill protested.
“It sounds like him if you’d overheard the fight he had with Dr. Horvath. Our Minister of Science keeps telling the Admiral to keep out of the way, and Kutuzov is about to take him at his word.” Blaine turned to his midshipman. “You don’t have to spread this around the gun room either, Whitbread.”
“No, sir.”
“Now, while we’ve got the time, let’s see what you can remember about that Motie ship.” Blaine touched controls and several views of the alien craft appeared on his wall screens. “This is what the computer knows so far,” Rod explained. “We’ve mapped some of the interior already. There was no shielding from our probes, nothing to hide, but that doesn’t make it all that easy to understand.”
Blaine took up a light pointer. “These areas held liquid hydrogen. Now there was heavy machinery here; did you see any of it?”
“No, sir, but that back panel looked as if it would roll up.”
“Good.” Blake nodded and Cargill sketched it in with the screen stylus.
“Like that?” the First Lieutenant asked. “Fine.” He touched the record button. “Now, we know there was quite a lot of hydrogen fuel hidden away. And that drive of theirs ionizes, heats, and enriches the hydrogen with hot carbon vapor. It takes a lot of machinery to do that. Where was it?”
“Sir, shouldn’t the Chief Engineer be here?”
“He should be here, Mr. Whitbread. Unfortunately there are about ten things happening at once on this ship, and Commander Sinclair is needed elsewhere. He’ll get his chance at you soon enough— Jack, let’s not forget the Mote design philosophy. We keep looking for separate mechanisms to do each job, but on that probe, everything did four or five overlapping things at once, so to speak. It could be we’re looking for too much machinery.”
“Yes, sir—but, Captain, no matter how you slice it, that ship had to perform a minimum number of functions. Had to. And we can’t find equipment enough for half of them.”
“Not with our technology, anyway,” Blaine said thoughtfully. Then he grinned, a young man’s broad and impertinent grin. “We may be looking for a combination microwave oven, fuel ionizer, and sauna. OK, now the alien herself. Your impressions, Whitbread. Is it that intelligent?”
“She didn’t understand anything I said. Except that one time, when I screamed ‘Turn off the force field!’ She understood that right away. Otherwise nothing.”
“You’ve edited that a bit, lad,” Cargill said. “But never mind. What do you think, boy? Does the alien understand Anglic? Is she faking?”
“I don’t know. She didn’t even understand my gestures, except once. That was when I handed her her own suit—and that’s a pretty pointed hint, sir.”
“She may simply be stupid,” Rod said.
“She’s an asteroid miner, Captain,” Cargill said slowly. “That’s fairly certain. At least that’s an asteroid miner’s ship. The hooks and clamps at the stern have to be for hanging on durable cargo, like ore and air-bearing rock.”
“So?” Blaine prompted.
“I’ve known some asteroid miners, Skipper. They tend to be stubborn, independent, self-reliant to the point of eccentricity, and close-mouthed. They’ll trust each other with their lives, but not with their women or property. And they forget how to talk out there; at least it seems that way.”
They both looked hopefully at Whitbread, who said, “I don’t know, sir. I just don’t know. She’s not stupid. You should have seen her hands moving around in the guts of the instrument panel, rewiring, making new circuits, recalibrating half a dozen things at once, it looked like. Maybe—maybe our sign language just doesn’t work. I don’t know why.”
Rod pushed a finger along the knot in his nose. “It might be surprising if it did work,” he said thoughtfully. “And this is one example of a completely alien race. If we were aliens and picked up an asteroid miner, what conclusions would we draw about the Empire?” Blaine filled his coffee cup, then Whitbread’s. “Well, Horvath’s team is more likely to come up with something than we are, they have the Motie to work with.”
Sally Fowler watched the Motie with a feeling of deep frustration. “I can’t decide whether she’s stupid or I am. Did you see what happened when I drew her a diagram of the Pythagorean Theorem?”
“Uh huh.” Renner’s grin was no help at all. “She took your pocket computer apart and put it back together again. She didn’t draw anything. She’s stupid in some ways, though,” he said more seriously. “Meaning no insult to our eminently trustworthy selves, she’s too damned trusting. Maybe she’s low on survival instincts.”
Sally nodded and watched the Motie at work.
“She’s a genius at building things,” Renner said. “But she doesn’t understand language, gestures, or pictures. Could the bloody alien be a genius and a moron at the same time?”
“Idiot savant,” Sally murmured. “It happens with humans, but it’s quite rare. Imbecile children with the ability to extract cube roots and do logarithms in their heads. Mathematical whizzes who can’t buckle their shoes.”
“It’s a difference in perceptions.” Horvath had been engaged in a more thorough study of the small Moties. “One has to learn that a picture is a picture. Your drawings— Good God, what’s it doing now?”
Someone screamed in the companionway.
Ostensibly Cargill was delivering Whitbread to the scientists. Actually, he had no doubt that Whitbread could have found his way to the wardroom where they had brought the Moties while artificers built a cage for the miniatures in the petty officers’ lounge. But Jack Cargill was curious.
Halfway through the companionway he caught his first sight of the alien. It was disassembling the wardroom coffee maker—an act of malice made all the more diabolical by the innocence of her smile.
She cringed away at Cargill’s yell—and the First Lieutenant saw that it was too late. Tiny screws and parts were scattered across the table. The alien had broken the percolator tube, possibly to analyze the soldering technique. Bits of the timing mechanism were neatly arrayed. The Motie had pulled the cylindrical shell open along its welded seam.
Cargill found that the Science Minister had him by the arm. “You’re frightening the alien,” Horvath said in a low voice. “Go away, please.”
“Doctor, have the goodness to tell me—”
“Elsewhere.” Horvath propelled him to the other end of the room. Cargill glimpsed the miniature aliens squatting on the games table, surrounded by members of the life sciences group and by samples from the galley: grain, bread, carrots and celery, defrosted raw and cooked meat. “Now,” said Horvath. “What do you mean by barging into—”
“That monster ruined the wardroom coffee maker!”
“We’re lucky,” Midshipman Whitbread said irreverently. “She was trying to take apart the number-four air lock mechanism until I stopped her.”
“All she’s interested in is tools.” Horvath was pointedly ignoring Cargill’s agitation. “For once I even agree with Admiral Kutuzov. The alien must not be allowed to see the Alderson Drive or the Field generators. She seems able to deduce what a thing is for and how it works almost without touching it.”
“Never mind that!” Cargill said. “Couldn’t you have given the Motie something else to play with? That coffee maker is half repairs anyway. Nobody could figure out how it’s made since Sandy Sinclair finished with it. And the Motie’s broken some of the parts.”