by James White
“Quickly, move them to the other side of that line. They’ll be safe there, believe me!”
He grabbed one of the fallen Teldins by the feet and began dragging it toward the line. The rolling and bouncing rocks were being stopped by the invisible shield, and the other students had realized that the protection was not hearsay. But more than half of them were down, and the uninjured were trying to drag them to safety. Martin pulled his Teldin across the line and went after another.
“Get back, dammit!” Beth shouted. “Half the bloody mountain is falling on you…!”
A rain of fine dust and stones struck his back as he bent over the Teldin casualty, and suddenly a bouncing rock hit him in the back of die leg. He sat down abruptly, tears as well as dust blinding him. The rumbling sound from high up on the cliff was growing louder, and large rocks were thumping into the ground all around him with increasing frequency. The force shield and safety were only a few meters away, but he did not know in which direction.
He was grasped suddenly by four large hands which lifted him and hurled him backward. He tumbled through the shield interface closely followed by the Teldin who had saved him. Martin blinked, trying to clear his vision as expert hands felt along his limbs and body.
“Nothing broken, stranger,” the young Teldin said, “Some minor lacerations and bruising on the leg. You should use your own medication to treat the injury.”
‘Thank you,” Martin said. He climbed to his feet and limped toward the lander.
The sound of the rockfall had become muffled because the hemisphere of the force shield was completely covered by loose rocks and soil. Several of the casualties lay looking up at the smooth dome of rubble which had inexplicably refused to fall on them, with expressions which were still unreadable to Martin, while the others had obviously accepted the invisible protection as a fact and were busying themselves with the injured.
When each and every victim and survivor was a trained medic, he thought admiringly, the aftermath of even a major disaster lost much of its horror.
Another young Teldin intercepted him at the tender’s entry port. It said, “Thank you, stranger. All of the students who were trying to reach the school have returned or have been returned. There are no fatalities.”
Not yet, thought Martin.
He was concerned about the tremendous weight of rock pressing down on the force shield. That shield could handle the heaviest of meteor showers or projectile-firing weapons without difficulty, but it had not, been designed to support the weight of an avalanche. The drain on the small ship’s power reserves did not bear thinking about.
He looked at the hemisphere of rocks above and around him, knowing that Beth’s repeaters were showing her everything he saw, and asked, “How long can I keep it up?”
“Not long,” she said grimly. “But long enough for your air to run out first. There are over two hundred people in there. I’m coming down.”
He started to protest, then realized that Beth knew as well as he did that she could not land the great, ungainly bulk of the hypership-its configuration suited it only for deep space and orbital maneuvering. The ship could, in an emergency be brought close to the ground, but it was not the kind of maneuver to be undertaken by a trainee on first assignment. Worrying out loud, however, would only undermine her confidence, so Martin remained silent while he applied a dressing to his damaged leg and watched the pictures she was sending down to him.
He saw the valley city grow large in his main screen, saw the fresh meteor crater on the mountainside above the school, and the gray scar left by the rockslide joining it with the great pile of rubble at the base of the cliff where the lander was buried. He saw four large, shallow depressions appear suddenly in unoccupied areas of the valley floor as the hypership’s pressor beams were deployed to check the vessel’s descent and hold her, braced and immobile, on four rigid, immaterial stilts. Her tremendous force shield covered the whole valley, and for the first time in over a thousand years the Scourge was impotent against the city.
A tractor beam speared out, came to a tight focus, and began to pull at the pile of rubble.
“Nice work,” Martin said warmly. “Concentrate on digging us out and clearing a path to the school entrance. Some of these casualties will have to be moved there for proper treatment, and quickly.”
Clearing the rocks above the lander was taking much longer than expected; every time Beth pulled out a mass of nibble, more slid down to fill the space. He decided to run a quick computation based on the volume of air trapped inside the shield and the rate at which it was being used by two hundred Teldins whose lung capacities were almost double that of a human being, and his anxiety gave way to mounting desperation.
He went out to talk to the younger students and try to reassure them, and discovered that three of them were the children of Masters.
Now I’m really in trouble, he thought.
All around him, the older Teldins were suggesting to each other, and by inference to Martin, that they should not waste air in needless conversation. He returned to the lander.
“You should seal yourself inside the lander,” Beth said suddenly. “It’s air-maker will easily produce enough to keep you alive while I’m digging you out, but the same amount of air distributed among two hundred Tel-dins wouldn’t last ten minutes. The unit is not designed to support that many beings. Think about it.”
For several minutes Martin thought very seriously about it. He thought about facing Skorta with the news that he alone was alive among two hundred asphyxiated students. Briefly, he thought about playing God and squeezing a few of the Teldins into the lander-young ones, of course, and probably the children of the Masters. What would Skorta think of that compromise? For some reason that particular Teldin’s good opinion of him had become very important to Martin.
Would it be better, he wondered in sudden self-disgust, simply to stay in the lander without speaking to any Teldin and-when he was able to take off-rejoin the hypership and return to Fomalhaut Three? He could tell the tutor that the problem had become too complicated, that the responsibility for assessing the Teldin species for citizenship was too much for him. In short, he should simply walk away from the whole sorry mess.
He was still thinking about it, and he had not closed the lander’s entry port, when Beth spoke again.
“All right!” she said angrily. “Be noble and self-sacrificing and…and stupid! But I have another idea. It’s tricky. I don’t think the equipment is supposed to be used in this way, and it could be more dangerous so far as you’re concerned…”
Her idea was to concentrate on clearing a small area at the exact top center of the shield, the point where it could be opened without the rest of the shield collapsing, and use wide focus pressors to stop the surrounding rocks from sliding into the opening for as long as possible-long enough, at least, for the stinking fog inside to be replaced with fresh outside air. The danger to Martin was that if the pressors slipped, the rocks which fell into the opening would smash through the canopy of the lander’s control deck some thirty meters below, and he would no longer have to worry about his assignment or anything else.
Bitterly he cursed the design of the super-efficient meteor shield that allowed access to organic matter down to the size of the smallest microorganism, and forbade it to the even smaller but nonliving molecules of the air they so desperately needed. And there was no time for the complex reprogramming necessary to alter that possibly fatal error.
For the next twenty minutes he divided his attention between the rocks visible about him and Beth’s outside viewpoint, which showed her doing things to the pile of rock with tractor and pressor beams which he had not thought possible. Then slowly, from both viewpoints, a gap appeared. It was about two meters wide and it was holding.
“Now” Beth said.
Very carefully he dilated the shield until the aperture was roughly a meter across. Stones and coarse gravel rattled down on the canopy, but nothing large enough to cause
damage. The fine rock dust which had begun to fall was being blown out again as the hot, stale air rushed to escape. It held for one, two… nearly five minutes.
“It’s beginning to…” Beth began.
He hit the stud which returned the shield to full coverage and cringed as several small rocks which had slipped through banged against the canopy. The gap above was again completely closed with rubble.
“.. slip,” she ended.
Around the lander the uninjured students were on their feet, standing motionless and watching him in absolute silence. Martin gestured vaguely, not knowing what else to do, and they began sitting down again.
The next time they needed to freshen the air, enough rubble had been cleared to allow Martin to leave the aperture open. But the sun was close to setting before the lander and the school forecourt were completely uncovered and the students began moving in an orderly procession toward the entrance, carrying the injured with them.
Skorta came hurrying in the opposite direction.
It stopped in front of Martin and stood looking down at him for several seconds. The Teldin was trembling, whether from anger, relief, or fatigue Martin could not say.
“The students,” it said, “would have been safe inside the school.”
“There were no deaths,” Martin said, by way of an apology. “And, ah, three of the students are the children of Masters.”
The Teldin was still shaking as it said, “Those students are the property of their Master parent. They are loved and cherished, as are all children, but they are not yet Masters and may never be.” It gestured with three of its arms, indicating the lander, the valley city, and the hypership, which still looked gigantic even through it had withdrawn to an altitude of three miles. “Your activities here have been reported to the Masters. Now I have been instructed to proceed at once to the polar city to undergo a Masters interrogation regarding you. If you wish it you may accompany me.”
“I would like that,” Martin said. “I could explain to the Masters why I…”
“No, stranger,” the Teldin said, no longer shaking. “At most we can speak together and be overheard by the Masters, but nothing you say to me has any value. To them it would be hearsay and irresponsible. Martin, can you send for… can you urgently request the presence of your Master?”
“No,” Martin said. “My Master would not come.”
“Then the Masters of Teldi will not accept your words,” Skorta went on, “although I, personally, would like to speak with you at great length. But there could be grave danger for you here. I have no previous knowledge or hearsay which enables me to foretell what will happen when we meet the Masters.
“It would be safer,” it ended, “if you left Teldi at once.”
“That is good advice,” Beth said.
Martin knew that, but at the same time he was feeling confused by a sudden warmth of feeling for this large, incredibly ugly, and strangely considerate extraterrestrial. There could be no doubt that the Masters were going to give Skorta a hard time, and that Martin was directly responsible for its problems. His presence during the interrogation would relieve the Teldin of a lot of the pressure-especially if Martin pleaded ignorance and took the blame for everything that had happened. It would not be right to leave this senior teaching slave to face them alone. Besides, giving moral support to the Teldin might give him a chance to complete the assignment.
“I want to meet the Masters,” he said, to both Skorta and Beth. “Thank you for your concern. However, I can remove the danger of the long journey to the polar city. My lander can take us there very quickly, and a speedy response to their summons might favorably impress your Masters. Are you willing to travel in my vessel?”
“Yes, Martin,” die Teldin replied with no hesitation at all, “and I am grateful indeed for this unique opportunity.”
There was a feeling in Martin’s stomach not unlike zero gee, a sensation composed of fear and excitement at the knowledge that, within a matter of hours, the empty spaces in the Teldin jigsaw puzzle would be filled in, and he would know the full extent of the trouble he had caused and, perhaps, the penalty to be paid for causing it.
Chapter 10
INITIALLY they flew only as far as the hyper-ship, because the lander needed a systems check and power recharge after its argument with the avalanche. The Teldin was folded so awkwardly into the space available in the control cubicle that it could not see out and, much to its disappointment, the lander’s dock in the mother ship had no viewports, even though there was enough headroom there for it to stand erect.
When it met Beth, Skorta made a bow which could only be described as courtly. It told her that it had had a life-mate who had perished in the Scourge many years earlier, and it had not met another who had engaged its intellect and its emotions to anything like the same extent, but that the fault was probably its own because several of the teaching slaves had made overtures.
Martin left them talking while he went to the computer’s Fabrications module. He did not intend going down to meet the Masters either empty-handed or with an empty backpack.
Beth joined him as he was listing and describing his requirements to the Fabricator.
“I like your friend,” she said, leaning over his shoulder. “Right now it’s in the observation blister and looks as if it will stay there for a long time. You know, I still don’t agree with what you intend doing, but I can understand why you don’t want to let it face the Masters alone…No! You can’t take that!”
She was pointing at the image of the Fabricator’s drafting screen, and before he could respond she went on vehemently, “You are not allowed to carry weapons. The Federation absolutely forbids it in a first-contact situation. Maybe your only hope of surviving this meeting is to go in unarmed as a demonstration that your intentions are good even though you may have stirred up a hornets nest. Going down there is stupid enough!”
Her face was without color, and it was plain that she was desperately afraid that she might never see Martin alive again if he returned to Teldi and the Masters. She wanted him to forget all about it, to return with their assignment incomplete and to stay alive, but she knew that he would not do that.
Reassuringly, he said, “I don’t expect to use the weapon on anyone. And I’m beginning to understand the setup here at last. I’ll be all right, you’ll see…”
Because of their deep emotional involvement, it was more than two hours before she was properly reassured and fully satisfied in all respects, and Martin was able to collect the Teldin from the observation blister.
He found that the teaching slave had not moved, seemingly, from the position in which Beth had placed it. Remembering the high acuity and tight sensitivity of Tel-din eyes, Martin could understand why. Not only could it see surface features on the planet below which Martin would have required high magnification to resolve, but from the now-orbiting hypership the number of stars it could see even in this sparsely populated region of the galaxy must have paralyzed it with wonder. He had to tell Skorta three times that the lander was ready to leave before it responded.
“Having looked upon all this splendor,” it said, and its four arms rose and its head bowed in a gesture which was like an act of worship, “how can I go on living as a slave?”
Martin was not surprised to find that the polar city was bitingly cold, that the level of technology apparent was much higher than that of the valley they had recently left, and that Skorta, who had been born here, was able to direct the lander to within a few meters of the entrance to the Hall of the Masters. What did surprise him was that the Hall was ablaze with artificial light.
“A courtesy extended to a highly placed slave of a strange Master,” the Teldin said, “a slave with imperfect vision. It means nothing more.”
The Hall itself was surprisingly small. He thought that the debating chamber of the legendary Camelot might have looked a little like this, except that the Teldin table was horseshoe shaped rather than round, and partially bridging
the open end was a small, square table and a chair. At a slow, measured pace, Skorta led him toward them and, when they arrived, motioned for him to stand at one side of the chair while it stood at the other.
“You are in the presence of the Masters of Teldi,” it announced, and bowed its head briefly. Martin did the same.
There were several unoccupied spaces around the horseshoe. Before every Master’s chair, whether it was occupied or not, the richly embroidered flags were spread so that their emblems hung down from the inside edge of the table. Lying on the flags were the swords of the Masters who were present. All of the Masters were adult, some of them looked very old and, so far as Martin could see, they showed no physical signs of the usual self-indulgence and excesses of beings with ultimate authority over a planet’s entire population. And these omniscient and all-powerful rulers of Teldi numbered only seventeen.
He stood silently as the teaching slave was questioned regarding Martin’s arrival and his subsequent words and actions by a Teldin whose flag bore the emblem of the Master of Sea- and Land-borne Communications. He thought that the Master of Education would have been more appropriate until he remembered that that Mastership was vacant and its authority shared by two other Masters on a caretaker basis. This particular Master was about to experience a lesson in communication that it would not soon forget.
They continued to ignore Martin’s presence while Skorta described the rockslide and the strange vessel’s protective device which had saved the students from certain death.
It’s trying to make a hero of me, Martin thought gratefully. But the interrogator was not impressed.
The master wanted to know where the students would normally have been had the invitation to see its vessel not been issued. It added, obviously for Martin’s benefit, that Skorta was no doubt aware that a slave was the property and sole responsibility of its Master, and that any serious wrongdoing on the slave’s part should result hi the punishment of that Master.
