INSS MacArthur
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INSS MacArthur is a starship featured in the science fiction novel The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. It is an Imperial General-class battlecruiser of the Imperial Space Navy of the Second Empire of Man.
According to the Authors, MacArthur is based on a model called the "Leif Ericson". Instead of creating a starship from scratch, it was decided by Niven and Pournelle to write the model (with some changes) into the novel. Ship type, abilities, and functions of the various compartments of MacArthur are based on the design of the Leif Ericson.
[edit] History
MacArthur, under the command of Captain Bruno Cziller, was instrumental in putting down the AD 3017 revolt on New Chicago, but suffered extensive damaged in the course of the battle. After the revolt was put down Cziller was brevetted rear-admiral and retained to serve in the military government of New Chicago. MacArthur's young exec, Commander Lord Roderick Blaine, was promoted to captain and given temporary command to take MacArthur to the yards on New Caledonia for a refit. In the New Caledonia system, MacArthur was ordered to intercept an alien light sail vessel, the Crazy Eddie probe. Blaine's discharge of those orders raised public controversy, and the local commander-in-chief gave Blaine permanent command of the ship to indicate confidence in his ability and approval of his actions. Blaine thus secured a command far more substantial than his seniority would normally have allowed.
Afterwards, the battlecruiser was refitted, and with the battleship INSS Lenin, was part of the first contact expedition to the Mote. For the expedition, the ship also carried a large number of scientists, the science minister of the Trans-Coalsack Sector, a priest who was also a skilled linguist, an Imperial trader, and a Senator's daughter who was a trained anthropologist and who had been caught up in the New Chicago insurgency.
The mission orders called for MacArthur to serve as the scientific and diplomatic ship, while the more powerful Lenin remained aloof from all possible contact and contamination. MacArthur became inadvertently infested with Motie Watchmakers, which secretly modified the ship to their own advantage, and bred up to numbers that threatened the passengers and crew. Eventually Captain Blaine was forced to abandon ship, whereupon Lenin destroyed MacArthur in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to prevent human technological secrets such as the Alderson Drive and Langston Field from falling into Motie hands.
For more information, see The Mote in God's Eye.
