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The Mote in God's Eye
| Author: | Larry Niven Jerry Pournelle |
| Publisher: |
Simon & Schuster, 1974 |
| Series: | The Moties: Book 1 |
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1. The Mote in God's Eye |
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| Book Type: | Novel |
| Genre: | Science-Fiction |
| Sub-Genre Tags: | First Contact Space Exploration Hard SF |
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Synopsis
In the year 3016, the Second Empire of Man spans hundreds of star systems, thanks to the faster-than-light Alderson Drive. No other intelligent beings have ever been encountered, not until a light sail probe enters a human system carrying a dead alien. The probe is traced to the Mote, an isolated star in a thick dust cloud, and an expedition is dispatched.
In the Mote the humans find an ancient civilization--at least one million years old--that has always been bottled up in their cloistered solar system for lack of a star drive. The Moties are welcoming and kind, yet rather evasive about certain aspects of their society. It seems the Moties have a dark problem, one they've been unable to solve in over a million years.
Excerpt
Chapter 1: Command
A.D. 3017
"Admiral's compliments, and you're to come to his office right away," Midshipman Staley announced.
Commander Roderick Blaine looked frantically around the bridge. where his officers were directing repairs with low and urgent voices, surgeons assisting at a difficult operation. The gray steel compartment was a confusion of activities, each orderly by itself but the overall impression was of chaos. Screens above one helmsman's station showed the planet below and the other, ships in orbit near MacArthur, but everywhere else the panel covers had been removed from consoles, test instruments were clipped into their insides, and technicians stood by with color-coded electronic assemblies to replace everything that seemed doubtful. Thumps and whines sounded through the ship 89 somewhere aft the engineering crew worked on the hull.
The scars of battle showed everywhere, ugly bums where the ship's protective Langston Field had overloaded momentarily. An irregular hole larger than a man's fist was burned completely through one console, and now two technicians seemed permanently installed in the system by a web of cables. Rod Blaine looked at the black stains that had spread across his battle dress. A whiff of metal vapor and burned meat was still in his nostrils or in his brain, and again he saw fire and molten metal erupt from the and wash across his left side. His left arm was still bound across his chest by an elastic bandage, he could follow most of the previous week's activities by the stains it carried.
And I've only been aboard an hour! he thought. With the Captain ashore, and everything a mess. I can't leave now! He turned to the midshipman. "Right away?"
"Yes, sir. The signal's marked urgent."
Nothing for it, then, and Rod would catch hell when the Captain came back aboard. First Lieutenant Cargill and Engineer Sinclair were competent men, but Rod was Exec and control was his responsibility, even if he'd been away MacArthur when she took most of the hits.
Rod's Marine orderly coughed discreetly and pointed to the stained uniform. "Sir, we've time to get you more decent?"
"Good thinking." Rod glanced at the status board to be sure. Yes, he had half an hour before he could take a boat down to the planet's surface. Leaving sooner wouldn't get him to the Admiral's office any quicker. It would be a relief to get out of these coveralls. He hadn't undressed since he was wounded.
They had to send for a surgeon's mate to undress him. The medic snipped at the armor cloth embedded in his left arm and muttered. "Hold still, sir. That arm's cooked good." His voice was disapproving. "You should have been in sick bay a week ago."
"Hardly possible," Rod answered. A week before, MacArthur had been in battle with a rebel warship, who'd spored more hits she ought to have before surrendering. After the victory Rod was prize master in the enemy vessel and there weren't facilities for proper treatment damage from there. As the armor came away he something worse than week-old sweat. Touch of gangrene, maybe.
"Yessir." A few more threads were cut away. The synthetic was as tough as steel. "Now it's gonna take surgery, Commander. Got to cut all that away before the regeneration stimulators can work. While we got you in sick bay we can fix that nose."
"I like my nose," Rod told him coldly. He fingered the slightly crooked appendage and recalled the battle when it was broken. Rod thought it made him look older, no bad thing at twenty-four standard years; and it was the badge of an earned, not inherited, success. Rod was proud of his family background, but there were times when the Blaine reputation was a bit hard to live up to.
Eventually the armor was cut loose and his arm smeared with Numbitol. The stewards helped him into a powder-blue uniform, red sash, gold braid, epaulettes; all wrinkled and crushed, but better than monofiber coveralls. The stiff jacket hurt his arm despite the anesthetic until be found that he could rest his forearm on the pistol butt.
When he was dressed he boarded the landing gig from MacArthur's hangar deck, and the coxswain let the boat drop through the big flight elevator doors without having the spin taken off the ship. It was a dangerous maneuver, but it saved time. Retros fired, and the little winged flyer plunged into atmosphere.
NEW CHICAGO: Inhabited world, Trans-Coalsack Sector, approximately 20 parsecs from Sector Capital. The primary is an F9 yellow star commonly referred to as Beta Hortensis.
The atmosphere is very nearly Earth-normal and breath-able without aids or filters. Gravity is 1.08 standard. The planetary radius is 1.05, and mass Is 1.21 Earth-standard, indicating a planet of greater than normal density. New Chicago is inclined at 41 degrees with a semi-major axis of 1.06 AU, moderately eccentric. The resulting variations in sesonal temperature have confined the inhabited areas to a relatively narrow band in the south temperate zone.
There is one moon at normal distance, commonly called Evanston. The origin of the name is obscure.
New Chicago is 70 percent seas. Land area is mostly mountainous with continuing volcanic activity. The extensive metal industries of the First Empire period were nearly all destroyed in the Secession Wars; reconstruction of an industrial base has proceeded satisfactorily since New Chicago was admitted to the Second Empire in A.D. 2940.
Most inhabitants reside in a single city which bears the same name as the planet. Other population centers are widely scattered, with none having a population over 45,000. Total planet population was reported as 6.7 million in the census of 2990. There are iron mining towns in the mountains, and extensive agricultural settlements. The planet is self-sufficient in foodstuffs.
New Chicago possesses a growing merchant fleet, and is located at a convenient point to serve as a center of Trans-Coalsack interstellar trade. It is governed by a governor general and a council appointed by the Viceroy of Trans-Coalsack Sector, there is an elected assembly, and two delegates have been admitted to the Imperial Parliament.
Rod Blaine scowled at the words flowing across the screen of his pocket computer. The physical data were current but everything else was obsolete. The rebels had changed even the name of their world, from New Chicago to Dame Liberty. Her government would have to be built all over again. Certainly she'd lose her delegates; she might even lose the right to an elected assembly.
He put the instrument away and looked down. They were over mountainous country, and he saw no signs of war. There hadn't been any area bombardments, thank God.
It happened sometimes: a city fortress would hold out with the aid of satellite-based planetary defenses. The, Navy had no time for prolonged sieges. Imperial policy was to finish rebellions at the lowest possible cost in lives -- but to finish them. A holdout rebel planet might be reduced to glittering lava fields, with nothing surviving but a few cities lidded by the black domes of Langston Fields; and what then? There weren't enough ships to transport food across interstellar distances. Plague and famine would follow.
Yet, he thought, it was the only possible way. He had sworn the Oath on taking the Imperial commission. Humanity must be reunited into one government, by persuasion or by force, so that the hundreds of years of Secession Wars could never happen again. Every Imperial officer had seen what horrors those wars brought; that was why the academies were located on Earth instead of at the Capital.
As they neared the city he saw the first signs of battle. A ring of blasted lands, ruined outlying fortresses, broken concrete rails of the transportation system; then the almost untouched city which had been secure within the perfect circle of its Langston Field. The city had taken minor damage, but once the Field was off, effective resistance had ceased. Only fanatics fought on against the Imperial Marines.
They passed over the ruins of a tall building crumpled over by a falling landing boat. Someone must have fired on the Marines and the pilot hadn't wanted his death to be for nothing....
They circled the city, slowing to allow them to approach the landing docks without breaking out all the windows. The buildings were old, most built by hydrocarbon technology, Rod guessed, with strips torn out and replaced by more modern structures. Nothing remained of the First Empire city which had stood here.
When they dropped onto the port on top of Government House, Rod saw that slowing hadn't been required. Most city windows were, smashed already. Mobs milled in the streets, and the only moving vehicles were military convoys. Some people stood idly, others ran in and out of shops. Gray-coated Imperial Marines stood guard behind electrified ziot fences around Government House. The flyer landed.
Blaine was rushed down the elevator to the Governor General's floor. There wasn't a woman in the building, although Imperial government offices usually bristled with them, and Rod missed the girls. He'd been in space a long time. He gave his name to the ramrod-straight Marine at the receptionist's desk and waited.
He wasn't looking forward to the coming interview, and spent the time glaring at blank walls. All the decorative paintings, the three-d star map with Imperial banners floating above the provinces, all the standard equipment of a governor general's office on a Class One planet, were gone, leaving ugly places on the walls.
The guard motioned him into the office. Admiral Sir Vladimir Richard George Plekhanov, Vice Admiral of the Black, Knight of St. Michael and St. George, was seated at the Governor General's desk. There was no sign of His Excellency Mr. Haruna, and for a moment Rod thought the Admiral was alone. Then he noticed Captain Cziller, his immediate superior as master of MacArthur, standing by the window. All the transparencies had been knocked out, and there were deep scratches in the paneled walls. The displays and furniture were gone....
Copyright © 1974 by Larry Niven
Copyright © 1974 by Jerry Pournelle
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