Starquake

by Robert L. Forward

  Thereupon he heard the strangers far off in the distance. They were very noisy. Letter-Reader flattened himself down behind a crust-rock, pulled down his eye-stubs, and let his tread do the seeing. He was glad his hide had some speckles; that made him harder to see.

  It was too early for the arrival of the dothbute takers from Bright Center. Besides, they rode Swifts, and even off their mounts they never would have made as much unnecessary noise as these cheela.

  He listened carefully and could make out a few voices. The accent was clipped, and he didn't understand a lot of the words.

  "Eagle really plowed a furrow in the crust when we came down," Otis-Elevator said as they pushed single file through the disturbed crust dust raised by their passage.

  "I see something up ahead," said Lieutenant Star-Counter. "It has black stripes."

  "It must be one of the herd animals." M.D. Len-McCoy looked at her scroll. "I prepared a list of the types of animals and plants that were said to have survived the starquake." She rolled quickly through the scroll and stopped. "Here it is. It is a food Slink. The stripes go through to the meat inside. The dark meat has the taste of groundnuts, while the white meat has the flavor of singleberries."

  "My pouches are juicy already," Star-Counter said. "Let's capture it and take it back to base."

  "I don't think we'll have too much trouble," said Otis-Elevator. "It doesn't seem to be moving. But let's surround it anyway."

  Letter-Reader pushed one eye up. The strangers had found one of the food Slinks that had died when the flying star landed. They moved cautiously, as if they thought the food Slink were still alive. The animal was obviously dead, since there was no pulsing in the crust from the creature's fluid pumps. There must be something wrong with the treads of the strangers if they couldn't feel that.

  Len-McCoy approached the motionless black and white striped food Slink, then finally saw the large wound on the topside where a falling piece of crust had struck it on the brain-knot.

  "It's dead, Captain."

  "Good. Let's cut it up and haul it back to base."

  Len-McCoy removed her medical bag from her carrying pouch, and soon a surgeon's scalpel was serving as a butcher's slicer.

  "I wonder what food the Slinks eat?" Star-Counter pouched a large chunk of food Slink. "I don't see much except those prickly-looking shrubs." His manipulator was dripping juice and he stuck it in an eating pouch to suck it clean. "Mmmm. Delicious! Tastes like groundnuts."

  "That plant is a groundnut shrub," Len-McCoy told him. "These food Slinks have been bred to dig up the crust near these plants and feed on the nuts."

  "We ought to take some of them home, too," said Otis-Elevator. "While the doctor is cutting up the meat, the rest of you can be digging for groundnuts. They will make a good dressing when mixed with white meal-mush from the food generators."

  "Anything would be better than plain meal-mush," said a spacer as he started to dig.

  Letter-Reader finally felt that he had to do something. After all, it was his job to protect the herd for the clan, and it looked as if the strangers from the flying star were going to take the Slink away and eat it. A lot of hungry younglings back in the clan camp could use that food. He finally unflattened himself and moved to the top of the rise that had kept him hidden. He didn't try to keep his movements silent, but still the strangers didn't sense him. He readied his herder's pike and loosened a bag of tread-pricks in one of his pouches in case they tried to chase after him.

  "Greetings, great strangers," he said, announcing himself. They didn't hear him.

  "GREETINGS," he said, louder. One of them finally saw him.

  "It's a native," said Otis-Elevator. "Gather back here and let's talk with him. This is probably his food Slink we're cutting up. How did he sneak up on us? Keep some eyes looking around. There may be others."

  "Greetings, great strangers," Letter-Reader said. "If you are from Bright Center you are early for your dothbute. I am sorry for the loss of the animal, but it was damaged by your new mount that moves with the stars."

  Otis-Elevator was relieved that he could understand most of what the youngling was saying. The tread accent was broad and drawling, and he didn't get some of the words. The phrase "Bright Center" must refer to the central portion of Bright's Heaven, while "mount" used a root word that implied that someone rode on something; although there were no machines to ride here. He didn't understand the word "dothbute" at all.

  "Greetings. I am Otis-Elevator," said the captain. "We are not from Bright Center. We are from the near stars. The ones that do not rotate."

  "I am Letter-Reader," the youngling replied. "I have read that there were cheela living on the near stars, but I never believed it until now. If you are not from Bright Center, then you cannot take the Zebu Slink. The Taker from Bright Center will be angry with you for taking his dothbute."

  "Who is the Taker?" Otis-Elevator asked. "And what is a dothbute?"

  "Each 72 turns the Taker for the Emperor comes from Bright Center and commands us to gather the clan herd. We

  then give them a dothbute for the Emperor and they leave with the animals. They give us 144 more food Slink eggs of the type that they want for the next harvest, and we tend them until the next taking."

  "They take a dozeth of your herd and don't even pay you?" Otis-Elevator was incredulous.

  "No," Letter-Reader replied. "We get to keep a dozeth of their herd if we have taken care of them properly."

  "Why don't you raise your own herd?" asked Otis-Elevator.

  "We have no Slink eggs," said Letter-Reader. "The Emperor does not allow us to have animals that might eat his groundnuts. We ourselves must only harvest groundnuts in the hilly areas where the food Slinks are not allowed. I am afraid the clan will go hungry this great of turns. We lost six Zebu Slinks to wild Swifts, then your machine killed two, and six were scattered and lost. The meat you have belongs to the Emperor. The Taker for the Emperor will be angry that it is not fresh."

  'Tell the Taker that we will pay for the food Slink," said Otis Elevator. "Right now we need food, but by the next dozen turns we will have plenty of food. The Taker and all your clan can come and have as much as you want."

  "You do not tell the truth. You cannot grow food in a dozen turns."

  "We make the food," Otis-Elevator said. "We use a machine. It makes foods with many different flavors. Come in a dozen turns and taste them."

  He reached into a pouch, pulled out a glow-jewel eye-ring, placed it on the ground, and moved back away. "That is a present for you. We are sorry that our flying machine scared you and your herd Tell your clan leader we will not let the clan go hungry."

  Letter-Reader was not looking at the glow-ring. Instead four of his eyes were looking at the silvery metal scroll that Len-McCoy was still holding.

  "Is that a scroll?" asked Letter-Reader.

  "Yes," said Len-McCoy.

  "With letters and words on it?"

  "Yes, and some pictures, too."

  "The ring is very pretty, but I would like something new to read," said Letter-Reader. "I would trade you my scroll for your scroll." He reached into a pouch and pulled out a soiled and wrinkled scroll. "It is old, and not shiny like your scroll, but you can still read the words on it." He held it out eagerly.

  "I'll give it to him," said Len-McCoy. "I can have the computer print out a new list when we get back to base."

  The trade was made, with the captain adding the glow-ring to the bargain. He looked carefully at the ancient scroll.

  He unrolled it until he came to the personal sign at the bottom. "It is a portion of a daily log. It was written by Qui-Qui!"

  "We must find out where he got it!" whispered Len-McCoy.

  "Later. Right now we have to get a gravity catapult activated, make sure that a clan doesn't starve, and somehow make friends with a dictatorial Emperor that seems to own every last food Slink and groundnut on Egg." He stopped his electronic whisper, and his tread moved again as he spoke once more
to Letter-Reader.

  "Who is this Emperor you speak of?" Otis-Elevator asked.

  "He is the Mighty One, the Terrible One, the Unforgiving One. The cheela that never flows—Attila-the-Speckled," said Letter-Reader, his speckled tread trembling at the name.

  Meanwhile, back at the base, Engineer Power-pack was setting up the power plant that would give them the energy they needed to survive.

  "We are about twenty centimeters from base," he said. "That should give us enough separation so that crust cracks developing about the power plant won't interfere with the foundations for the gravity catapult, while the stray gravity fields from the gravity catapult don't disturb the power plant My crew will set up the bore rig here and start drilling."

  "You have enough hole liner pipe to get started," said Engineer Delta-Mass. "By the time you get down six centimeters my crew will have made the first dozen centimeters of liner for you. After that we can make it faster than you can drill."

  "We will see," Power-Pack said. "That antimatter-jet drill that Cliff-Web designed will poke through this crust like a black hole through a human."

  Delta-Mass returned to base, traveling slowly as she planned the route for the power lines that would have to be run over the twenty centimeters between the site of the power plant and the base. By the time she arrived at the base, her crew had the mass separator operating and were feeding it with ground-up loads of crust. Most of the crust emerged from the machine as dust, which was piped away to a dumping site. Rare elements and useful metals and compounds were col-

  lected, while the high-strength metals were combined into a strong alloy and extruded as a large diameter pipe.

  "The first three centimeters are done," Delta-Mass told her crew as the end of the long pipe fell to the crust with a ringing clang. "Let's take an early break for turnfeast. My eating pouches are wet from thinking about the food Slink that is waiting for us. Groundnuts and singleberry together in the same chunk of meat. I can hardly wait." She led her crew off while the finished pipe was lifted onto cargo-gliders by a transportation crew and hauled off to the distant power plant site.

  Delta-Mass stopped at the outskirts of the base to ask directions. In the turn that she and her crew had been getting the mass separator into operation, the base construction crew under the direction of Metal-Bender had nearly dismantled the cargo and living platforms on Eagle and had reassembled them on the crust as a walled living compound.

  "Do you have the eating area made yet?" Delta-Mass asked.

  "It's the first thing we built," replied Metal-Bender. "Go through the east gate in the outer wall, then straight through to the center. That is the combined eating and meeting area."

  "Great!" Delta-Mass started to lead her crew to the east gate.

  "You'll enjoy the food Slink," said Metal-Bender.

  "I hope you and your crew of Swifts didn't devour it all," Delta-Mass replied.

  "No, the food-service crew wants to make the food Slink last, so they only give you a small piece after you have eaten a big portion of meal-mush."

  The mention of meal-mush brought groans from the treads of the crew. The artificial food generators were quite versatile and could produce a great variety of flavors and textures, but after dozens of greats of eating nothing but artificial food, their pouches ached for something that was different.

  The antimatter drill moved rapidly through the crust, and the hole went down millimeter by millimeter as Power-Pack's drilling crew developed a rhythm. They finally approached the magma layer. The temperatures, pressures, and densities were so high that the outer casing of the drill began to show evidence of transmutation by neutron drip from the surrounding near-fluid of excess neutrons.

  "Lower the last section of liner and put a pressure seal on the top," said Power-Pack. "Then put an antimatter bomb on

  the end of the drill string in place of the drill and lower it. We are going to make a volcano—a tame volcano."

  The antimatter bomb was lowered to the bottom of the hole, and the drill string was removed. Set off by a coded pulse of acoustic waves, the bomb fractured the remaining few centimeters of crust and the high pressure neutron fluid in the mantle pushed upward to the surface. As the fluid rose into regions of lower pressure, some of the neutrons decayed into electrons and protons, releasing energy and lowering the density of the fluid, so that it rose even faster.

  "Here it comes!" Power-Pack shouted over the deep rumble in the crust. "Open the valve to the power generators."

  The high speed, high density, high pressure, high temperature nucleonic fluid rose up through the drill hole and whirled through the power generator where its free thermal, kinetic, and nuclear energies were extracted. The resulting warm crust dust was piped to a nearby depression, while the power extracted from the bowels of Egg flowed over the transmission lines to energize the machinery at the base some twenty centimeters away.

  Admiral Steel-Slicer, now Crust-Crawler, met with the senior staff. "We're on our way," he said. "But we still have a long way to go. What is next on Cliff-Web's schedule?"

  "The gravity catapult needs a power plant two dozen times more powerful than the one we just got into operation," said Power-Pack. "My seismic survey team has found a promising upwelling of energetic magma forty centimeters to the Bright-west. We have moved the drilling rig there and are already down a meter on the first hole, but we will need a power plant built."

  "My crew has finished with the living quarters at base," said Metal-Bender. "We've also installed magnetic barriers around the perimeter to keep out wild Swifts. We're now ready to build the power plant. We have plenty of computer controlled robot welders, nibblers, and cutters for the precision parts, but we need a forge for the larger components. We are ready to go as soon as we get enough metal."

  "The mass separator has been generating plate for the last few turns," Delta-Mass told them. "But we will have to shift back to liner pipe at the rate Power-Pack's crew is going. Perhaps the first thing you should build is another mass separator."

  "You're right," Metal-Bender replied. "I'll get my team busy on that."

  "Anything else?" asked Crust-Crawler.

  "Don't forget that I promised the nearby clan we would give them food once we had power," said Otis-Elevator. "We have visited them a number of times in the past turns and know them pretty well now. It is obvious that they are living at a subsistence level. We have taken them samples of various flavors of meal-mush. They call it the 'food of the gods.' "

  "Good," said Metal-Bender. "Let's trade them a mush-maker for a herd of food Slinks."

  "They won't do that," said Otis-Elevator. "They let us have the ones we killed during the landing, but the herd belongs to the Emperor. In fact, I think I notice an increased anxiety in the leader of the clan as the time comes for the arrival of the Taker to take the herd."

  "What did the leader say?" Crust-Crawler asked.

  "She won't talk about it. But every time the subject comes up, I notice a strange twitch in her eye-wave pattern. Of course, it could be my imagination. The clan leader, like a number of the clan elders, is missing some eyes. The old injuries could be causing the twitch."

  "We must certainly keep our promise," Crust-Crawler said. "Let's start off by inviting them here for next turnfeast and turn it into a real feast."

  "It will certainly be a pleasure feeding someone that appreciates my food," said Chef Pouch-Pleaser. "If the engineers can arrange a power pack, I can give the clan one of our food generators and teach them how to operate it."

  "I'll give them a glider," said Power-Pack. "They can use it to transport the mush-maker back to their compound, then use the power pack on the glider to run the food machine. When the power pack gets low, they can just glide back here and recharge it."

  "I've gotten to know the clan pretty well," said Otis-Elevator. "They are very proud and will insist on bringing food to the feast."

  "Good!" said Pouch-Pleaser. "I want to learn all about the native foods. Not only
how to prepare them for serving, but the best way to grow them. Anything to stop the groans at turnfeast."

  "You are right, Chef," said Crust-Crawler. "We can't live on

  artificial food forever. Don't forget, our main objective is to become natives of Egg once again."

  "I will invite the clan to the next turnfeast," said Otis-Elevator.

  Emperor

  21:02:58 GMT TUESDAY 21 JUNE 2050

  The long procession from the distant clan compound started to arrive well before the end of the turn. Every clan member except those in charge of the herd came. Dented-Shield, the leader of the clan, led the procession, carrying her battered shield high in front of her. Right behind her came her warriors carrying a freshly killed food Slink. It was pink with glowing white spots. Next were younglings with pouches full of nuts and berries. Then came the Old Ones. From their pouches peered the eyes of tiny hatchlings. Bringing up the rear were the herders who were not out taking care of the herd.

  "Where did they get the pink and white food Slink?" Crust-Crawler whispered as the procession approached.

  "There is a clan farther east that is charged with growing that flavor of food Slink," Otis-Elevator replied. "I notice that most of the glow-jewels that I have given them are missing. They probably traded the jewels to the other clan for one of the food Slinks the Emperor allows them to keep."

  "Welcome, friends of the Dusty Crust Clan," said Captain Otis-Elevator. "Your gifts of food for our meager turnfeast are most welcome. While we wait for the turnfeast to start, perhaps you would like to taste these preturn samples we have set out on the food mats."

  "Let us give thanks to Bright for our new friends and their marvelous food machines," said Dented-Shield. "May we all never be hungry again."

  The warriors and the younglings dropped their loads of food, which were picked up eagerly by Chef Pouch-Pleaser's crew. The members of the clan, having just finished a long