The Gripping Hand

by Larry Niven

  "Yes."

  "Like me."

  "Yes. Kevin, what was it you didn't want him to overhear? Or was it the Trujillo woman?"

  "Oh... something was nagging at me, irritating me, and I finally got it. You wouldn't remember Midshipman Horst Staley. He was an idealized Navy officer, handsome, imposing, the kind you put on posters. So's Blaine, but he's doing it consciously, like a signal."

  ‘"Yes, after all, he was raised by Moties. What think you now of Trujillo?"

  "All sex and all business, generally not at the same time. She can turn it on and off. What are the rules this trip, Horace? Sex or no sex?"

  "Blind eyes, I think. Poor old Trader Bury notices nothing. But she is staying to business?"

  "Yeah. Projects availability, but. I like it, actually. I like flirting." Bury did not smile.

  Renner said, "Give her a break, Horace. Her dad told her about Traders, merchant princes, but she doesn't know any. She'll learn about Traders from you."

  "'Your reputation precedes you,'" Bury quoted.

  "I doubt she meant that as viciously as it sounded." Renner sighed. "It's going to be a fun trip. Trujillo offended you first chance she got, you hate Blaine, and if everything goes right, we'll get there in time to find a Motie armada coming out at us."

  In the pause that followed, Renner finished brewing two bulbs of Turkish. Bury took his and asked, "How can you say that I hate Kevin Christian Blaine? He is your godson. He is my guest."

  "Horace, you haven't been overtly rude, but I know you. And look, if I had to ...

  "Igor! Tonight we will make something quite different, quite.

  "Yes, Doctor Frankenstein! Yes! Yes!"

  "Tonight we will create the infidel least likely to be welcome aboard a teeny tiny spacecraft with Trader Horace Bury. We will give him the following characteristics, hnpf hnpf hnpf! AngloSaxon. Christian. An Empire Navy man. Related to the same Roderick Blaine who once held Bury prisoner aboard a Navy warship. And lastly, hnpf hnpf hnpf! He will be raised by Motie Mediators!"

  Horace dropped the accent, "Lastly, he is a manipulative son of a dog."

  "I'd say that goes with the Motie training.

  "Yes, Kevin, but he tried to manipulate me. Does he think me a fool? It was not Joyce Trujillo who discovered the significance of the token ships!"

  "I'll be dipped. Horace, he's chasing her."

  "Eh?"

  "I didn't see it. She's a career woman six years older than he is! Even so, that's it. He let her see him manipulating you for her benefit. I wonder if she'll buy it?"

  Renner hadn't even decided if he liked her. That was not always the most interesting question. Perhaps, somewhere in the back of his brain, he had considered Joyce Mei-Ling Trujillo to be his by default. Blaine was too young, Buckman and Bury were too old, and Kevin Renner was captain of Sinbad.

  The problem lay in what she might want. Not money, nor entrée into certain levels of society; he could do that. But secrets... she loved secrets, and Kevin Renner's were not his to give away.

  Blaine was too young, and he was a classic model of a Navy man-but Kevin Christian Blaine had been raised by Motie Mediators. Why was that so easy to forget? Renner began to watch him.

  Sinbad in free fall could not be spun up. Chris Blaine was used to a bigger Navy ship. He was clumsy for the first couple of days. So was Joyce; she had not spent much time in space. Then they got oriented more or less together. Simultaneously, in fact.

  You had to concentrate to see it, how often they occupied the same space. In any of the narrow passages they might pass without brushing. Joyce was still a bit clumsy, but Chris could eel gracefully past her, close enough to link magnetic fields, but without touching her at all. Like dancing.

  The morning before Sinbad began deceleration, Joyce Trujillo looked different, and so did Chris Elaine. They both seemed a bit embarrassed about it, and they couldn't seem to avoid body contact.

  Two centuries ago, Jasper Murcheson had cataloged most of the stars this side of the Coal Sack. He had numbered them in some haste for his Murcheson General Catalog, then filled in details at leisure.

  Half those stars were red dwarves, such as this orange-white dot called MGC-R-31. Murcheson had collected more detail on the hotter yellow dwarves, those that might have habitable planets and particularly those that did. MGC-R-31 had a brown dwarf star companion at half a light-year's distance; Murcheson hadn't even known that much.

  Kevin Renner knew it the moment he popped into the system. He knew because some unseen nearby mass had skewed his Jump point by several million miles.

  It should be located, fast. It would move the I-point, too! Buckman and Renner set to work at once.

  It was good to be in MGC-R-31 system, good to have something to do, to have an excuse to lock that door.

  A week of Bury's strained good manners and Blaine's and Trujillo's body-contact formality had been getting on everyone's nerves ....r maybe only on Kevin Renner's. Buckman's needs gave him an excuse to do something about it. Renner had a section of Sinbad's lounge partitioned off to become Jacob Buckman's laboratory.

  It was cramped for Buckman, very cramped for Buckman and Renner; visitors were impossible. They preferred using it that way to everyone's popping in and out of the small bridge compartment. The others tried not to interfere.

  Search for a brown dwarf. First observe the red dwarf, find its plane of rotation. By then Buckman had calculated a series of distances and masses that might account for the shift in the Alderson point. Look at one locus of points, observe again, calculate again.

  Dinner appeared from somewhere. Renner would have ignored it, but Buckman hadn't even looked up. Better to eat, and make Buckman eat too.

  And breakfast... but by then they were done. Renner sighed in relief. He opened the door to the lounge and announced, "Nothing. We're here first."

  "Allah is merciful," Bury said.

  "How sure are you?" Joyce Trujillo asked.

  Chris Blaine said, "Good question. You can't know where the Alderson point is going to be."

  "I do know that there is no new Alderson point in this region," Buckman said. "As to where the incipient point will be, I've had to change the locus because of the companion. Not much. Brown dwarf stars don't radiate much. It's still an arc along here, still about a million klicks long. I moved it by a couple of light minutes. And it isn't there."

  The arc Buckman's cursor made across the screen stretched away from the orange-white glare of MGC-R-31, toward the Coal Sack and an off-centered red peephole into Hell: Murcheson's Eye.

  Renner touched a button on the console. "Agamemnon, this is Sinbad. We get a clean sweep. Do you? Over."

  Agamemnon had popped out a few minutes ahead of Sinbad, separated by no more than the gap between Earth and Earth's moon. Now they were a few tens of thousands of miles apart, while Atropos moved ahead toward the hypothetical I-point. Agamemnon's response came immediately

  "Sinbad this is Agamemnon. Affirmative. I say again, affirmative, there are no signs of any ships in this system. We are definitely here first. Is Lieutenant Blaine available?"

  "Right here."

  "Please stand by for the skipper."

  "Right."

  "So that's that," Joyce Trujillo said. She was all business now, as Blaine was all officer.

  "For the moment," Bury said. "They will come. But now-now I believe Allah has given us this chance. We may yet lose it, but we have the opportunity."

  "God is merciful," Joyce said. "He will not do everything and thus take away our free will and that share of glory that belongs to us."

  "Biblical?" Renner asked.

  She laughed. "Niccolo Machiavelli."

  "Arrgh! Joyce, you have done it to me again."

  Buckman said, "Horace? I've listed it as Bury's Infrastar. Your ship, your crew, your discovery."

  Seconds late, Bury reacted. He smiled with effort and said, "Thank you, Jacob."

  "Here's the skipper," the comm set announced.


  "Blaine?"

  "Yes, sir. We're all here."

  "Some of my officers are suggesting this is a wild-goose chase."

  "I would like nothing better, Commander," Horace Bury said. "But I do not believe that."

  "Don't guess I do either. We're wondering what to do next. I don't mind admitting this isn't a situation I was trained to deal with," Balasingham said.

  "Nothing complicated about it," Buckinan said. "Renner has us on a course to coast along the arc over the next..."

  "Fifteen days."

  "Fifteen days. Your other ships have our data."

  Chris Blaine took over. "Sir, we've sent the data to Atropos, so he'll take up station ahead of us. The I-point will be in this region. I suggest that Agamemnon stay behind, that is, between us and the path back to New Caledonia. Maybe they can intercept. As for us, we make repeated passes until the I-point appears."

  "All right," Balasingham said. "For now, anyway. The Viceroy's sending more ships." Short pause. "What if a Motie fleet comes through shooting?"

  "Then we do what we can," Bury said.

  "And maybe the horse will sing," Renner muttered.

  Bury shrugged. He seemed amazingly calm. "The Moties have no control over the protostar. This will be as Allah wills, and Allah is merciful."

  If Buckman turned off his intercom, as he frequently did, the only way to find out what he was doing was to bang on his door and risk his acerbic comments about disturbing his work.

  He had left the compartment door open this morning. Buckman had been constantly in his laboratory or the adjacent lounge for over thirty hours. Kevin Renner and Chris Blaine had alternated waiting just outside the lab door, and it was Chris's turn. He'd been there an hour, with nothing to do. Then he heard a shout.

  "By God!"

  Chris went to the compartment door. Buckman was hunched over a console. His grin was wide

  "What is it?" Chris asked.

  "It's happening."

  Chris didn't ask what. "How far away?'

  "I'm only getting a flux reading. It's not stable yet, but it will be. It's tremendous! By God! Blaine, this is the best record of a new Alderson event anyone has ever got! Now we can set up for the visuals.'

  "How far away, Doctor Buckman?"

  Buckman shook his head vigorously. "It's wobbling back and forth! The new star must be pulsing. It's traversing the arc. Half a million kilometers of sweep. More. We could conceivably Jump while it passes us, if it was anything like stable yet."

  "I'll tell the other ships."

  "It's strong enough that even Navy instruments should pick up, but go ahead." Buckman went back to his console.

  Blaine used the lounge intercom. "Kevin. Buckman says this it. I'll alert Agamemnon."

  "Agamemnon this is Sinbad. Alderson event detected in our vicinity. Buckman data attached to this message. Suggest you converge on probable Alderson point location. I am also sending this message to Atropos. Blaine."

  They waited. Two minutes later the answer came. "Sinbad this is Agamemnon. We are under way at three gee, I say again, three standard gravities. We'll move toward you, but I will remain between the I-point and the exit to New Cal."

  "Doesn't take him long to make decisions," Renner said. "He's about twenty light-seconds behind us, but he's not going where we are. He can get to the New Cal Jump point in"-he typed rapidly-about five hours, starting now. And Atropos is ahead of us. I don't know the best tactics."

  "Depends too much on what comes through," Chris Blaine said crisply.

  "What is it? What's happening?" Joyce eeled out of her cabin, hurriedly adjusting her clothing. "Moties? They've come through?"

  "Not yet," Blaine said. "They will."

  "Yeah," Renner said. "Dr. Buckman, have things stabilized at all?"

  "Beginning to, yes, Kevin. Do you see how the I-point comes fast toward us along the arc and slow going back? I expect we're seeing irregular pulses on the protostar."

  "Yeah. Boom and it settles down, boom and it settles down, boom. When the protostar stops flaring..."

  "Well, for the next hundred thousand years it won't quite."

  "Eases off, then. The I-point will be ahead of us, won't it? Closer to Atropos than us, and still wobbling a bit."

  "At a guess, Kevin. This is a first in every way. The collapse of Buckman's Protostar into Buckman's Star."

  "It's all guesses, but give Atropos about four and a half hours. At one gee we'll take about eight."

  "But you and Buckman don't think we have four hours," Blaine said.

  Renner said, "I know, can't push much more than a gee without killing Bury."

  "Do not worry about me," Bury said from behind him. "I will be in my water bed. Nabil is bringing it to the lounge now."

  "One and a half, then. No more," Renner said. "Okay, as soon as you get in it-

  "Stabilized!" Buckman shouted.

  "How do you know?"

  "A ship came through. There's another! A light-second or two apart."

  Renner brought the images up on his screen. "About three light-seconds ahead of us. Closer to us than Atropos-three ships." Renner's fingers were dancing. An alarm wheeped; Renner slapped the volume down. Secure for acceleration. "Four ships. Five."

  Sinbad's motor lit. Objects drifted aft.

  "They're well separated. The star must be still flaring, the I-point's still drifting."

  "Mercy of Allah," Bury muttered. "Quickly, Nabil, get me into my water bed."

  "I must secure it to the deck," Nabil said calmly. The little old assassin moved easily under what had become half a gee of pull.

  "Six. Seven," Renner said. "Seven so far. Blaine, you'd better get Atropos on line."

  "Roger. Doing it."

  "What's happening?" Joyce Mei-Ling demanded from the lounge

  "Secure for acceleration, dammit!" Renner shouted. "All hands, secure. Nabil, let me know when it's safe!'

  "The bed is secured. If you do not turn too much, I can put him in it when we are under way."

  "I'll hold it at one gee until you've got him set. Everyone secure? Buckman, you holding on to something? Here we go."

  Sinbad eased up to one gee. "They're scattering," Renner said.

  "Must have come through with different velocities," Blaine said. "It's just drift so far."

  "Sure."

  "They will scatter," Bury said. "Of course they will. Seven ships. They have been preparing for this for years. Kevin, can we intercept them all?"

  "Not likely. Moties can't take as much gee stress as we can, but there's no way three ships can chase down seven. Not given that much head start."

  "Sinbad this is Agamemnon. What's happening, Blaine?"

  "Seven Motie ships so far," Blaine said. "Beyond us, and drifting in seven directions. I'll squirt up the data we have." He pressed keys, and the computer sent out what it had. Data twenty plus seconds out-of-date would be better than nothing.

  Nearly a minute went by. "Blaine, they'll have plenty of time to recover from Jump shock before we get there," Balasingham's voice said. "Assuming each one accelerates along its present course, and giving them anything like the performance Motie ships had at the blockade point, we aren't going to catch more than four. Five tops, and that assumes we can cripple them without too much of a fight, which is assuming a lot. Damnation-"

  Pause; then Balasingham said, "I think it's time to change tactics. I'm ordering Atropos to move toward the I-point and prepare to chase Motie ships. That gets him close to you. I'm taking Agomemnon back to block the way out of this system. Our entry point won't have changed enough to matter. We'll never catch them all, but maybe we can bottle them up in here."

  "Not bloody likely," Blaine muttered. "But I suppose it's the best thing to try."

  "Captain Renner," Balasingham continued. "You were given sealed orders when you left New Scotland. To be opened on my instructions. My orders said to have you do that when the situation got beyond my control. I hereby instruct you to open those o
rders.

  "You'll find that your Reserve commission as Captain is activated, and you're in command of this expedition with the titular rank of commodore. I don't know what you can do, but I sure can't think of anything. I'm ordering Commander Rawlins in Atropos to put himself under your direction.

  "Sir, I am now changing course to guard the Alderson point to New Caledonia. If you want me to do something else, tell me what it is. Agamemnon out.'

  "God's navel," Renner said

  "Kevin, have I heard correctly?" Bury demanded.

  "Apparently," Renner said. "I heard it too."

  "Moties," Joyce said from somewhere aft. "Chris-"

  "Later."

  "Yes, but-Chris, they're Moties!'

  "Joyce, it's a great story, but there's no time!" Chris shouted.

  "Captain, the first two Motie ships are under acceleration. They must be automated; Moties wouldn't have recovered yet."

  "Wonder what kind of computer they trust to work that soon after a Jump?" Buckman muttered.

  Chris Blaine examined the computer screen. "Continuing in their original directions. My guess is they'll all do that."

  Renner said, "Scatter and lose us. Only seven ships, and I don't see any more... in fact I've lost one. I'd have thought they would send more."

  "Me, too," Blaine said. "Maybe they couldn't."

  "Spacecraft are expensive," Bury said. He sounded comfortable enough under 1.5 gravities. "Many resources, of different kinds. A complex society."

  "Which may mean they've got problems," Renner said. "Jacob, where in the Mote system will their end of the tramline be?"

  "Fairly far out. Well beyond the orbit of their gas giant, Mote Beta."

  "We never looked at the Trojan civilizations," Renner said. "Maybe we should have."

  Half an hour later it was clear enough. Chris Blaine went back to explain to Joyce and Bury: "There are seven Motie ships. Five are under full acceleration in five different directions. One of them is lost, to us and Agamemnon and everyone else. Maybe we'll find it. Maybe not."

  "Mercy of Allah," Bury muttered. "And the seventh?"

  "The seventh is headed directly toward us, Excellency."

  Bury fingered his beard. "They will want to talk, then."