Mote In God's Eye

The Mote in God's Eye, written by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, is a science fiction novel generally regarded as one of the greatest Ð''first contact' stories ever written. The story takes place in outer space during the year 3017. The protagonist of this book is Roderick Blaine, the captain of the Navy spaceship MacArthur, who is asked to intercept an alien probe entering his empire's solar system to determine if it is friendly . The antagonists are the race of aliens (called Moties) that the crew encounters. While technologically less advanced, the Moties are frightening in their raw ability to learn and adapt.

The major conflict in The Mote in God's Eye involves Captain Blaine, his crew, and the crew of another Navy warship, Lenin, struggling to discover the true nature of the Moties, and then trying to escape from the Moties' solar system to warn the empire of the aliens' frightening capabilities and nature.

The novel begins just after the human race has recovered from the Secession Wars, a long period of interplanetary civil war that destroyed the First Empire of Man. Captain Blaine's ship, INSS MacArthur, is sent to investigate a strange sighting nearby. The object turns out to be an alien craft using a light sail to travel. It took the alien vessel 190 years to get to where it currently was. The alien ship is slow compared to human ships using the Alderson Drive, an engine that allows near instantaneous travel between two certain points, called Trojan Points. The alien vessel's automated defensive systems shoot at MacArthur, but MacArthur sustains minimal damage, and captures the alien spacecraft. When Blaine takes the vessel back to the Navy base on New Caledonia, the alien pilot is found to be dead.

The ship came from an area of space known as the "Mote," and as such, the alien is called a "Motie." The commander of the Imperial Navy orders MacArthur and the battleship Lenin to go to the Mote and search for any signs of life. In addition to the standard military personnel, MacArthur was carrying scientists to study the Moties. Lenin was going with MacArthur to make sure that important technology like the Alderson Drive and the Langston Field, a protective field around ships that absorbed radiation, did not fall into Motie hands. If the Motie's figured out how those two devices worked, they would then be capable of traveling to Ð'- and possibly invading Ð'- the far reaches of the empire. So great was this threat that Lenin was under orders to destroy the MacArthur if this technology fell into the hands of the Moties. For the whole trip, Lenin was forbidden to have any contact with the aliens.

MacArthur makes contact with the Moties, who appear to be peaceful. The Moties assign a Ð''personal mediator' (called his or her "Fyunch(click)") to learn the language and communicate with each human . They learn frighteningly quickly and thoroughly Ð'- so thoroughly that they actually take on the mannerisms of their human counterparts. They are then taken to the Motie home planet, where they stay in a castle created specifically for them. The humans learn much about the Moties during their stay. They learn that there are various classes of Moties, each physically and behaviorally adapted to excel at a specific task. The "Fyunch(clicks)" are Mediators, who specialize in communication. There are Engineers and Watchmakers, both of whom are extremely skilled at building and repairing all objects. There are also Warriors, incredibly deadly and accurate soldiers; and Masters, who govern the rest of the Moties.

Back on MacArthur, two of the Watchmakers that were taken aboard with an Engineer escape. The crew searches for a few weeks, but find nothing, and presume that the Watchmakers are dead. However, the Watchmakers did not die; they were actually breeding and rebuilding parts of the ship. Eventually, the guns of MacArthur are searched, and the Watchmakers are found. They start attacking the crew. The Marines and space crew fight valiantly, but the ship is overrun by hundreds of the Watchmakers. Blaine and everyone else onboard evacuate the ship, and he orders MacArthur to be destroyed.

Three midshipmen escape in lifeboats that had been altered