"A ship, Blaine," Buckman said. "From the inhabited world, Mote Prime. We didn't find it because it was hidden by that damned laser signal."

Blaine nodded. His own screens had shown the Motie ship nine minutes before; Chief Shattuck's crew wasn't about to let civilians keep a better watch than the Navy.

"It will reach us in about eighty-one hours," Buckman said. "It's accelerating at point eight seven gees, which is the surface gravity of Mote Prime by some odd coincidence. It's spitting neutrinos. In general it behaves like the first ship, except that it's far more massive. I'll let you know if we get anything else."

"Fine. Keep an eye on it, Doctor." Blaine nodded and Whitbread cut the circuit. The Captain turned to his exec. "Let's compare what we know with Buckman's file, Number One."

"Aye aye, sir." Cargill toyed with the computer controls for a few minutes. "Captain?"

"Yes?"

"Look at the starting time. That alien ship got under way in not much more than an hour after we broke out."

Blaine whistled to himself. "Are you sure? That gives ten minutes to detect us, another ten for us to see them, and forty minutes to get ready and launch. Jack, what kind of ship launches in forty minutes?"

Cargill frowned. "None I ever heard of. The Navy could do it, keep a ship with a full crew on ready alert. .

"Precisely. I think that's a warship coming at us, Number One. You'd better tell the Admiral, then Horvath. Whitbread, get me Buckman."

"Yes?" The astrophysicist looked harried.

"Doctor, I need-~everything your people can get about that Motie ship. Now. And would you give some thought to their rather strange acceleration?"

Buckman studied the numbers Blaine sent down to his screen. "This seems straightforward enough. They launched from Mote Prime or a closely orbiting moon forty minutes after we arrived. What's the problem?"

"If they launched that fast, it's almost certainly a warship. We'd like to believe otherwise."

Buckman was annoyed. "Believe what you like, but you'll ruin the math, Captain. Either they launched in forty minutes, or... well, you could start the Motie vehicle something over two million kilometers this side of Mote Prime; that would give them' more time... but I don't believe it."

"No more do I. I want you to satisfy yourself about this, Dr. Buckman. What could we assume that would give them more time to launch?"

"Let me see... I'm not used to thinking in terms rocketry, you know. Gravitational accelerations are more my field, if you'll pardon the pun. Hmmm." Buckman's eyes went curiously blank. For a moment he looked like an idiot. "You'd have to assume a period of coasting. And a much higher acceleration in the launching mechanism. Much higher."

"How long to coast?"

"Several hours for every hour you want to give them make up their minds. Captain, I don't understand your problem. Why can't they have launched a scientific survey ship in forty minutes? Why assume a warship? After all, MacArthur is both, and it took you an unreasonably long time to launch. I was ready days early."

Blaine turned him off. I'll break his scrawny neck, I told himself. They'll court-martial me, but I'll claim justifiable homicide. I'll subpoena everyone who knew him. They're bound to let me off. He touched keys. "Number One, what have you got?"

"They launched that ship in forty minutes."

"Which makes it a warship."

"So the Admiral thinks, sir. Dr. Horvath wasn't convinced."

"Neither am I, but we'll want to be ready for them. And we'll want to know more about Moties than Horvath's people are learning from our passenger. Number One, want you to take the cutter and get over to that asteroid the Motie came from. There's no sign of activity there, it should be safe enough-and I want to know just what the Motie was doing there. It might give us a clue."

18 The Stone Beehive

Horace Bury watched the foot-high Moties playing behind the wire screen. "Do they bite?" he asked.

"They haven't yet," Horvath answered. "Not even when the biotechs took blood samples." Bury puzzled him. Science Minister Horvath considered himself a good judge of people-once he'd left science and gone into politics he'd had to learn fast-but he couldn't fathom Bury's thought processes. The Trader's easy smile was only a public face; behind it, remote and emotionless, he watched the Moties like God judging a dubious creation.

Bury was thinking, My but they're ugly. What a shame. They'd be useless as house pets, unless- He checked himself and stepped forward to reach through a gap in the netting large enough for an arm but not a Motie.

"Behind the ear," Horvath suggested.

"Thank you." Bury wondered if one would come to investigate his hand. The thin one came, and Bury scratched her behind the ear, carefully, for the ear looked fragile and delicate. But she seemed to enjoy it.

They'd make terrible pets, Bury thought, but they'd sell for thousands each. For a while. Before the novelty wore off. Best to hit every planet simultaneously. If they breed in captivity, and if we can keep them fed, and if I sell out before people stop buying- "Allah be-! She took my watch!."

"They love tools. You may have noticed that flashlight we gave them!'

"Never mind that, Horvath. How do I get my watch back? In Allah's- How did the catch come unfastened?"

"Reach in and take it. Or let me." Horvath tried. The enclosure was too big, and the Motie didn't want to give up the watch. Horvath dithered. "I don't want to disturb them too much."

"Horvath, that watch is worth eight hundred crowns! It not only tells the time and the date, but-" Bury paused. "Come to that, it's also shockproof. We advertise that a shock that will stop a Chronos will also kill the own~ She probably can't hurt it much."

The Motie was examining the wrist watch in a sober, studious manner. Bury wondered if others would find the manner captivating. No house pet behaved like that, even cats.

"You have cameras on them?"

"Of course," said Horvath.

"My firm may want to buy this sequence. For advertising purposes." That's one thing, Bury thought. Now there was a Motie ship coming here, and Cargill taking the cutter somewhere. He'd never get anywhere pumping Cargill, but Buckman was going. There might be returns from the coffee the astrophysicist drank after all

The thought saddened him obscurely.

The cutter was the largest of the vehicles in hanger deck. She was a lifting body, with a flat upper surface that fitted flat against one wall of hangar deck. She had her own access hatches, to join the cutter's air locks to the habitable regions of MacArthur because hangar deck was usually in vacuum.

There was no Langston Field generator aboard the cutter, and no Alderson Drive. But her drive was efficient and powerful, and her fuel capacity was considerable even without strap-on tanks. The ablative shielding along her nose was good for one (1) reentry into a terrestrial atmosphere at up to 20 km/sec, or many reentries if things could be taken more slowly. She was designed for a crew of six, but would carry more. She could go from planet to planet, but not between stars. History had been ma again and again by spacecraft smaller than MacArthur's cutter.

There were half a dozen men bunking in her now. Or had been kicked out to make room for Crawford win Crawford was kicked out of his own stateroom by a three armed alien.

Cargill smiled when he saw that. "I'll take Crawford, he decided. "Be a shame to move him again. Lafferty Coxswain. Three Marines..." He bent over his crew list. "Staley as midshipman." He'd welcome a chance to prove himself, and was steady enough under orders.

The cutter's interior was clean and polished, but there was evidence of Sinclair's oddball repairs along the port wall where Defiant's lasers had flashed through the ablative shielding; even at the long distances from which the cutter engaged, the damage had been severe.