Larry Niven: The Mote in God's Eye

To Marilyn and Roberta, who put up with us while we wrote this;

and to Lurton and Ginny, who made us do this job over again.

Roderick Harold,Lord Blaine, Commander, Imperial Space Navy.

Arkley Kelley,Gunner, Imperial Marines, and Blaine family retainer.

Admiral Sir Vladimir Richard George Plekhanov,Vice Admiral Commanding Imperial Navy Forces, New Chicago, and Acting Governor General, New Chicago.

Captain Bruno Cziller,Imperial Space Navy, Master of INSS MacArthur.

Commander John Cargill,ISN, Chief Engineer of MacArthur.

Commander Jock (Sandy) Sinclair,ISN, Chief Engineer of MacArthur.

Midshipman Hosrt Staley,ISN, senior midshipman aboard INSS MacArthur.

Midshipman Jonathon Whitbread,ISN.

Kevin Renner,Sailing Master Lieutenant, Imperial Space Navy Reserve.

Lady Sandra Liddell Leonovna Bright Fowler,B.A., M.s., doctoral candidate in anthropology, Imperial University of Sparta.

His Excellency Horace Hussein Bury,Trader and Magnate; Chairman of the Board, Imperial Autonetics Company, Ltd.

Midshipman Gavin Potter,ISN.

Fleet Admiral Howland Cranston,Commander-in-Chief, His Majesty’s Forces Beyond the Coal Sack.

His Imperial Highness Richard Stefan Merrill,Viceroy for His Majesty’s Dominions beyond the Coal Sack.

Dr. Anthony Horvat,Minister of Science for Trans-Coalsack Sector.

Dr. Jacob Buckman,Astrophysicist.

Father David Hardy,Chaplain-Captain, Imperial Space Navy Reserve.

Admiral Lavrenty Kutuzov,Vice Admiral Commanding His Majesty’s Expedition Beyond Murcheson’s Eye.

Senator Benjamin Bright Fowler,Majority Leader and Member of Privy Council.

Dr. Sigmund Horowitz,Proffessor of Xenobiology, University pf New Scotland.

Herbert Colvin,onetime Captain of Space Forces of the Republic of Union, and onetime master of Union cruiser Defiant.

1969—Neil Armstrong sets foot on Earth’s moon.

1990—Series of treaties between United States and Soviet Union creates the CoDominium.

2008—First successful interstellar drive tested. Alderson Drive perfected.

2020—First interstellar colonies. Beginning of Great Exodus.

2040—CoDominium Bureau of Relocation begins mass out-system shipment of convicts. Colonization of Sparta and St. Ekaterina.

2079—Sergei Lermontov becomes Grand Admiral of CoDominium Space Navy.

2103—Great Patriotic Wars. End of the CoDominium. Exodus of the Fleet.

2110—Coronation of Lysander I of Sparta. Fleet swears loyalty to the Spartan throne. Marriage of dynasties produces union between Sparta and St. Ekaterina.

2111—Formation Wars begin.

2250—Leonidas I proclaims Empire of Man.

2250–2600—Empire of Man enforces interstellar peace.

2450—Jasper Murcheson explores region beyond the Coal Sack. Terraforming of New Scotland.

2603—Secession Wars begin. Growth of Sauron supermen. St. Ekaterina nearly destroyed.

2640—Secession Wars continue. Dark Ages in many systems. Effective termination of First Empire. Sauron supermen exterminated.

2800—Interstellar trade ceases. Piracy and brigandage. Dark Ages.

2862—Coherent light from the Mote reaches New Scotland.

2870—Effective end of Secession Wars.

2882—Howard Grote Littlemead founds Church of Him on New Scotland.

2903—Coherent light from Mote ends abruptly.

2903—Leonidas IV of Sparta proclaims the Second Empire of Man. The Oath of Reunion is sworn.

3016—Revolt of New Chicago.

3017—FIRST CONTACT.

“Throughout the past thousand years of history it has been traditional to regard the Alderson Drive as an unmixed blessing. Without the faster than light travel Alderson’s discoveries made possible, humanity would have been trapped in the tiny prison of the Solar System when the Great Patriotic Wars destroyed the CoDominium on Earth. Instead, we had already settled more than two hundred worlds.

“A blessing, yes. We might now be extinct were it not for the Alderson Drive. But unmixed? Consider. The same tramline effect that colonized the stars, the same interstellar contacts that allowed the formation of the First Empire, allowed interstellar war. The worlds wrecked in two hundred years of Secession Wars were both settled and destroyed by ships using the Alderson Drive.

“Because of the Alderson Drive we need never consider the space between the stars. Because we can shunt between stellar systems in zero time, our ships and ships’ drives need cover only interplanetary distances. We say that the Second Empire of Man rules two hundred worlds and all the space between, over fifteen million cubic parsecs…

“Consider the true picture. Think of myriads of tiny bubbles, very sparsely scattered, rising through a vast black sea. We rule some of the bubbles. Of the waters we know nothing…”

“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 as somewhere aft the engineering crew worked on the hull.

The scars of battle showed everywhere, ugly burns 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 hull and wash across his left side. His left arm was still bound across his chest by an elastic bandage, and 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 damage control was his responsibility, even if he’d been away from MacArthur when she took most of the hits.