It was impossible to map the Beehive with its tight, curving corridors. It was hard to tell where they were; but they marked their paths as they went, and used proton beam instruments to measure distances through walls.
The corridor walls were eggshell thin throughout the interior. They were not much thicker outside. Beehive Asteroid could not have been a safe place to live.
But the wall beneath the crater was many meters thick. Radiation, Staley thought. There must have been residual radiation. Otherwise they would have carved this wall out the way they did all the others, to make room for themselves.
There must have been a wild population explosion here.
And then something killed them all off.
And now there was no radiation at all. How long ago did it all happen? The place was covered with small meteor holes; scores of holes in the walls. How long?
Staley looked speculatively at the small, heavy Motie artifact Lafferty and Sohl were manhandling through the corridor. Vacuum cementing—and the wandering of elementary particles across an interface. That might tell MacArthur’s civilian scientists just how long Beehive Asteroid had been abandoned; but already he knew one thing. It was old.
19. Channel Two’s Popularity
Chaplain David Hardy watched the miniatures only through the intercom because that way he wasn’t involved in the endless speculations on what Moties were. It was a question of scientific interest to Horvath and his people; but to Chaplain Hardy there was more than intellectual curiosity at stake. It was his job to determine if Moties were human. Horvath’s scientists only wondered if they were intelligent.
The one question preceded the other, of course. It was unlikely that God had created beings with souls and no intelligence; but it was quite possible that He had created intelligent beings with no souls, or beings whose salvation was brought about by ways entirely different from those of mankind. They might even be a form of angel, although an unlikelier-looking set of angels would be hard to imagine. Hardy grinned at the thought and went back to his study of the miniatures. The big Motie was asleep.
The miniatures weren’t doing anything interesting at the moment either. It wasn’t necessary for Hardy to watch them continuously. Everything was holographed anyway, and as MacArthur’s linguist, Hardy would be informed if anything happened. He was already certain the miniatures were neither intelligent nor human.
He sighed deeply. What is man that Thou art mindful of him, O Lord? And why is it my problem to know what place Moties have in Thy plan? Well, that at least was straightforward. Second-guessing God is an old, old game. On paper he was the best man for the job, certainly the best man in Trans-Coalsack Sector.
Hardy had been fifteen years a priest and twelve years a Navy chaplain, but he was only beginning to think of it as his profession. At age thirty-five he had been a full professor at the Imperial University on Sparta, an expert in ancient and modern human languages and the esoteric art called linguistic archeology. Dr. David Hardy had been happy enough tracing the origins of recently discovered colonies lost for centuries. By studying their languages and their words for common objects he could tell what part of space the original colonists had come from. Usually he could pinpoint the planet and even the city.
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.” Horvath hesitated again. “There may have been a metal core. Also ditched.”
“Um. All right. Thank you.”
After some thought, Rod put the pictures on the intercom. Nearly everything went on the intercom, which served as library, amusement center, and communications for MacArthur. In intervals between alerts, or during a battle, one channel of the intercom might show anything. Canned entertainments. Chess tournaments. Spatball games between the champions of each watch. A play, if the crew had that much time on their hands—and they did, sometimes, on blockade duty.