On the other side of the sky, the Mote was the brightest of a sea of stars. All systems looked this way at breakout: a lot of stars, and one distant sun. To starboard was a splinter of light, Lenin, her Langston Field radiating the overload picked up in the Eye.

Admiral Kutuzov made one final check and signaled Blaine again. Until something threatened, the scientists aboard MacArthur were in charge. Rod ordered coffee and waited for information.

At first there was maddeningly little that he hadn't already known. The Mote was only thirty-five light years from New Scotland, and there had been a number of observations, some dating back to Jasper Murcheson himself. A G2 star, less energetic than Sol, cooler, smaller and a bit less massive. It showed almost no sunspot activity at the moment, and the astrophysicists found it dull.

Rod had known about the gas giant before they started. Early astronomers had deduced it from perturbations in the Mote's orbit around the Eye. They knew the gas giant planet's mass and they found it almost where they expected, seventy degrees around from them. Heavier than Jupiter, but smaller, much denser, with a degenerate matter core. While the scientists worked, the Navy men plotted courses to the gas giant, in case one or the other warship should need to refuel. Scooping up hydrogen by ramming through a gas giant's atmosphere on a hyperbolic orbit was hard on ships and crew but a lot better than being stranded in an alien system.

"We're searching out the Trojan points now, Captain," Buckman told Rod two hours after breakout

"Any sign of the Mote planet?"

"Not yet." Buckman hung up.

Why was Buckman concerned with Trojan points? Sixty degrees ahead of the giant planet in its orbit, and sixty degrees behind, would be two points of stable equilibrium, called Trojan points after the Trojan asteroids that occupy similar points in Jupiter's orbit. Over millions of years they ought to have collected dust clouds and clusters of asteroids. But why would Buckman bother with these?

Buckman called again when he found the Trojans. "They're packed!" Buckman gloated. "Either this whole system is cluttered with asteroids from edge to edge or there's a new principle at work. There's more junk in Mote Beta's Trojans than has ever been reported in another system. It's a wonder they haven't all collected to form a pair of moons-"

"Have you found the habitable planet yet?"

"Not yet," said Buckman, and faded off the screen. That was three hours after breakout.

He called back hail an hour later. "Those Trojan point asteroids have very high albedos, Captain. They must be thick with dust. That might explain how so many of the larger particles were captured. The dust clouds slow them down, then polish them smooth-"

"Dr. Buckman! There is an inhabited world in this system and it is vital that we find it. These are the first intelligent aliens-"

"Dammit Captain, we're looking! We're looking!" Buckman glanced to one side, then withdrew. The screen was blank for a moment, showing only a badly focused shot of a technician in the background.

Blaine found himself confronting Science Minister Horvath, who said, "Please excuse the interruption, Captain~ Do I understand you are not satisfied with our search methods?"

"Dr. Horvath, I have no wish to intrude on your prerogatives. But you've taken over all my instruments, and I keep hearing about asteroids. I wonder if we're all looking for the same thing?"

Horvath's reply was mild. "This is not a space battle, Captain." He paused. "In a war operation, you would know your target. You would probably know the ephemeris of the planets in any system of interest-"

"Hell, survey teams find planets."

"Ever been on one, Captain?"

"Well, think about the problem we face. Until we located the gas giant and the Trojan asteroids we weren't precise about the plane of the system. From the probe's instruments we have deduced the temperature the Modes find comfortable, and from that we deduce how far from their sun their planet should be-and we still must search out a toroid a hundred and twenty million kilometers in radius. Do you follow me?"

Blaine nodded.

"We're going to have to search that entire region. We know the planet isn't hidden behind the sun because we're above the plane of the system. But when we finish photographing the system we have to examine this enormous star field for the one dot of light we want."

"Perhaps I was expecting too much."

"Perhaps. We're all waiting as fast as we can." He smiled-a spasm that lifted his whole face for a split second-and vanished.

Six hours after breakout Horvath reported again. There was no sign of Buckman. "No, Captain, we haven't found the inhabited planet. But Dr. Buckman's time-wasting observations have identified a Motie civilization. In the Trojan points."

"They're inhabited?"

"Definitely. Both Trojan points are seething with microwave frequencies. We should have guessed from the high albedos of the larger bodies. Polished surfaces are a natural product of civilization-I'm afraid Dr. Buckman's people think too much in terms of a dead universe."

"Thank you, Doctor. Is any of that message traffic for us?"

"I don't think so, Captain. But the nearest Trojan point is below us in this system's plane-about three million kilometers away. I suggest we go there. From the apparent density of civilization in the Trojan points it may be that the inhabited planet is not the real nexus of Motie civilization. Perhaps it is like Earth. Or worse."

Rod was shocked. He had found Earth herself shocking, not all that many years ago. New Annapolis was kept on Manhome so that Imperial officers would know just how vital was the great task of the Empire.

And if men had not had the Alderson Drive before Earth's last battles, and the nearest star had been thirty-five light years away instead of four- "That's a horrible thought."

"I agree. It's also only a guess, Captain. But in any event there is a viable civilization nearby, and I think we should go to it."

"I-just a moment." Chief Yeoman Lud Shattuck was at the bridge companionway gesturing frantically at Rod's number-four screen.

"We used the message-sending locator scopes, Skipper," Shattuck shouted across the bridge. "Look, sir."

The screen showed black space with pinhole dots of stars and a blue-green point circled by an indicator lightring. As Rod watched, the point blinked, twice.

"We've found the inhabited planet," Rod said with satisfaction. He couldn't resist. "We beat you to it, Doctor."

After all the waiting, it was as if everything broke at once. The light was first. There might have been an Earth-like world behind it; there probably was, for it was in the doughnut locus Horvath was searching. But the light hid whatever was behind it, and it wasn't surprising that the communications people had found it first. Watching for signals was their job.

Cargill and Horvath's team worked together to answer the pulses. One, two, three, four blinked the light, and Cargill used the forward batteries to send five, six, seven. Twenty minutes later the light sent three one eight four eleven, repeated, and the ship's brain ground out: P1, base twelve. Cargill used the computer to find e to the same base and replied with that.

But the true message was, We want to talk to you. And MacArthur's answer was, Fine. Elaborations would have to wait.

And the second development was already in.

"Fusion light," said Sailing Master Renner. He bent close over his screen. His fingers played strange, silent music on his control board. "No Langston Field. Naturally. They're just enclosing the hydrogen, fusing it and blasting it out. A plasma bottle. It's not as hot as our drives, which means lower efficiency. Red shift, if I'm reading the impurities right... it must be aimed away from us."