The Gripping Hand

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The Gripping Hand is a 1993 novel by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. It is a sequel to their landmark work The Mote in God's Eye. The Gripping Hand revolves primarily around two minor characters of the first book, Captain Sir Kevin Renner (ISN, Reserve) and His Excellency Horace Bury, Imperial Trader Magnate. It also resolves many of the conflicts and tension remaining from the preceding novel. To fully understand the story, knowledge of the plot of The Mote in God's Eye is required.

The Gripping Hand is, chronologically, the last novel of the CoDominium Series. In the United Kingdom, The Gripping Hand was released as The Moat Around Murcheson's Eye.

See also the entry gripping hand about the usage of this term as an idiom.

[edit] Synopsis

At the end of Mote, Renner and Bury were secretly enlisted into Imperial Naval Intelligence. For twenty-five years, they have been the finest team in the Empire's employ. For all that time, Bury has desperately tried to forget his harrowing experiences with the Moties. But all things come to an end...

While investigating economic abnormalities on the Mormon planet Maxroy's Purchase, Renner and Bury encounter widespread use of the phrase "on the gripping hand". While the source of the phrase turns out to be innocuous enough — the Governor picked up the expression as an Able Spacer on INSS MacArthur on the expedition to Mote Prime — the memories dredged up by the incident are too much for Bury. Driven by nightmares and a deep-seated fear for humanity's safety, Bury must confirm that the Empire is safe from the Moties.

Renner and Bury travel first to Sparta, the Imperial capital planet, to obtain permission to inspect the blockade. Along the way, they discover widespread interest in a second expedition to the Mote, as well as disturbing evidence that the blockade may soon fail.

In Mote, it was mentioned that a protostar was forming in the Coalsack Nebula. The Moties had studied this extensively and predicted it would ignite in about 1,000 years. That estimate was deliberately falsified - the object turns into a star as the novel opens. The newborn star means new Alderson Points will be created for interstellar travel, allowing the Moties to escape their system without having to run the human blockade and survive the hot photosphere of the supergiant star, Murcheson's Eye, where the only Alderson Point was located.

Armed with the alarming new knowledge and carrying influential passengers, Renner, Bury, and their ship Sinbad depart for New Caledonia, the closest human system to the Mote. There the Imperial Commission decides that ships must be sent to a hitherto ignored star system where a new Alderson point to the Mote may appear. Sinbad is among the ships dispatched. The point appears soon after the small, hastily assembled Imperial fleet's arrival -- and so do the Moties...

The second half of The Gripping Hand is a convoluted tale of alliances, diplomacy, trade, and space combat between the Empire, represented by Bury and Renner, and the many, many factions of Motie civilization. With the aid of the children of Lord and Lady Blaine, and an impressive piece of genetic engineering, Bury and Renner fight to stabilise the Mote civilization and save their Empire.