Motivational Engineers

development effort. Our analysis supports this effort…

Urla sighed almost like a human when she was safely aboard her ship. Earth hung above her, a mottled blue and white and brown ball. The space station called Orbital Watch One float­ed next to the Kreela. The radar de­tector on board the Kreela glowed a pulsing yellow-orange, each radar im­pulse that reflected back to the hu­mans indicated by a single flicker.

“Well?” Detinla asked.

Urla closed her eyes for a moment, and took a deep breath. The familiar odors of home, the deep, musty smells she’d missed so much on Earth, seemed to roll up her nose and into her brain, and wash outward over her entire body. The closest she’d come to this on Earth was the day her trade delegation visited a farm and she lin­ gered, alone for just a minute, in the hog confinement building. She hadn’t even realized she was homesick until then.

And now.

She opened her eyes and smiled.

“If we do our last part correctly, then, yes, we will succeed,” she said. “They are almost ready to build a cathedral. But they need just a little more convincing.”

“Good,” Detinla said. She turned back to the control board while Urla strapped herself in front of the com­ munications console.

Urla checked the clock and the lat­est messages from the other four ships. She sent out a synchronization signal to the ships, scrambled to sound like random solar radiation, and waited impatiently while the signal and replies crawled out and back at the speed of light.

“I’ve got departure clearance from the humans,” Detinla said. She touched the keyboard and the Kreela began to drift away from Orbital Watch One.

“We’re synched up,” Urla said, as the last acknowledgment signal came in from the distant ships. She touched her own keyboard. “Timing signal sent. We’re committed.”

Detinla was busy with her controls. The Kreela accelerated away from the space station. Timing was every­thing. The Kreela must position itself so Orbital Watch One was the only station that could observe them, and then dip out of sight for exactly eight seconds.

“We finally got a signal from that probe we sent out to the star the hu­mans call Tau Ceti,” Detinla said con­ versationally. She kept her voice low and calm, but they both knew the en­tire mission depended on the next ten minutes. Detinla forced herself to keep her hands still and off the key­board, the entire mission now under the control of the ship’s computer, but her eyes still flickered from one indicator to another.

“What did it find?” Urla asked. She was busy linking, secretly and unob­trusively, into the human computer network.

“Our next target species,” Detinla said.

“Intelligent?”

“Very.”

“What do they look like?” Urla asked.

“Larger than us, and they’re water breathers. Slick skinned and talkative. Big noses. Imagine Earth dolphins with hands and fire,” Detinla said.

“Fire? Aquatic life with fire?” Urla asked.

“Unique,” Detinla agreed. Urla felt the old stirrings of hope.

“A new point of view,” she mused. “They could be the ones.”

…To go home again, faster-than-light. Not the slow plodding of a sub­light ship, strapped in suspended an­ imation, but free, free to fly, free to go home to go home to go home…

“What about the humans?” Detinla asked hopefully. “Could they be the ones to discover faster-than-light travel?”

“Perhaps,” Urla said thoughtfully. “I’ve never met a race that thinks so much about profit. If they believe something can be done and it will make money, they’ll do it. And you know how stubborn they can be.”

“You convinced them of the profit potential?” Detinla asked.

“Oh, yes,” Urla said. She remem­bered the look on the faces of the hu­mans as she made her purchases and her sales. “Oh, yes, I convinced them of the profit potential,” she said.

“Good. Then it’s my turn to con­vince them again that we can go faster-than-light,” Detinla said.

“Get ready.”

“Now!”

Urla checked her tap into the hu­man radar net. Their radar showed Kreela was still in orbit, several thou­sand kilometers away from Orbital Watch One. The radar detector blinked a regular orange-yellow with each radar pulse.

Then another Kreela appeared on the human radar net. But this Kreela was eight light-seconds out from Earth.

It disappeared.

Appeared.

Now Kreela was six light seconds out, the radar image told the humans. Gone. Appeared. Four light-seconds out. Gone.

Appeared. Two light-seconds out.

Gone.

“Now!” Detinla said. She slapped the controls and brought the Kreela up so that, for just a split second, the ship showed even more clearly on the human radar net.

Stealth shields snapped into place. Urla watched the Kreela disappear from human sight and their radar net. As far as Earth was concerned, the Kreela was gone.

Urla remem­bered her training lessons.

…A faster-than-light signal will outrun a lightspeed-based detection system. Based on this fact, a faster-than-light speed ship will appear to be boosting out away from the de­tector, when it’s really coming in, to­ ward the detector. And a faster-than-light ship will appear to be boosting in, coming toward the detector, when it’s really going out…

“Did they see us leave?” Detinla asked. “Did they get through the screens?”

Urla adjusted the controls. There was no sign of the Kreela or the oth­er four duplicate ships on the human radar. As far as Earth was concerned, the Tydengh ship, the one and only Tydengh ship they had ever seen or been told existed, had just departed Earth using its faster-than-light space drive.

“They saw us leave faster-than-light,” Urla said. “They didn’t see us after that.”

Detinla looked smug and activated the course setting, stealth shields on full. Urla sent out another disguised signal and waited patiently for the replies to crawl back to her. She felt the comfortable pressure on her back as Detinla turned the thrusters on and headed for the rendezvous with the other ships and the main vessel past Saturn.

“A fresh point of view,” Urla said. “That’s all we need.”

“Do you really think so?” Detinla asked, her face a picture of post mis­sion depression. “We’ve been trying for a thousand years to build a faster-than-light drive. We’ve failed.”

“And we’ve reached a dead end,” Urla said. “We’ve tried to build our own cathedral, but we can’t finish the design. But someone, some­where, will solve the problem. If they have a motive to solve it.”

“And that’s our job,” Detinla said.

“Yes,” Urla said. “We’re the motiva­tional engineers.”

She unstrapped herself and padded back to the cargo hold. She opened it and stared, appalled, at all the Earth merchandise she’d bought. She thought of all the hours she’d spent arguing and haggling over price, just to make the humans be­lieve their merchandise had value. That there was a market and a profit to be made.

“What are you going to do with all that junk?” Detinla asked. “We can’t haul it all the way to Tau Ceti.”

“Drop it outside the Oort cloud,” Urla said decisively. “Except for the Scotch. I rather liked the Scotch…”