Starquake

by Robert L. Forward

  " ... Be my friend, by my lover, Be my tread, be my cover. Twine thine eyen about mine."

  The male's voice trailed off as hers became louder.

  "I must really be going mad!" he said out loud to himself, throwing the half-finished bag of cheap pulp juice into the street.

  "No. You're not," said Qui-Qui, moving toward him.

  "Is this the way you die?" he said, still not sending his tread vibrations in her direction. "All my life I have longed for Qui-Qui. Now I imagine she is here."

  "I am here," said Qui-Qui in her unmistakable voice, "I am really the Qui-Qui you have longed for and I have come to take care of you." She moved alongside Heavy-Egg, gently twined three eye-stubs about his wounded stumps and led him off to a hospital she had noticed a few blocks away. As they moved along side-by-side, she sang to him.

  At the hospital she cleaned his hide, anointed his blisters, bandaged his eye-stumps, and filled his eating pouches with decent food. Then she made love to him.

  She concentrated on the bulk of the body of the male and ignored the lack of eye-balls. His tread massaged her topside with quivering delight, while his twelve eye-stubs wound tighter and tighter around hers until they were coupled eyeflap to eyeflap. The orifice at the base of his eye-stubs opened and droplets of fluid from his body fell into her waiting eyeflaps. A long yearning in each of them was finally satisfied. Qui-Qui

  relaxed under Heavy-Egg's limp body as the droplets made their way through her body to her eager egg-case.

  TIME: 06:58:11 GMT TUESDAY 21 JUNE 2050

  Pierre's hands and feet had been pulled through the water and slammed against the walls of the tank by some unimaginable force as the viewscreens had turned dark. For three long seconds alarms had rung throughout Dragon Slayer as the computer tried to repair its damage and return to operation. The multiple screens built into the walls of his tank finally lit up again.

  "Report status," he said.

  "Starquake on Dragon's Egg," the computer responded. "Systems suffered damage from gamma rays and gravitational waves. Status 82% operational."

  "We have received a significant dose of radiation," said Cesar from his portion of the multiple screen. "Those of us in the tanks have received 120 rems. Half-fatal dose is 500 rems."

  "Amalita!" Abdul shouted. "Amalita! Answer me!"

  There was no answer.

  "Something is wrong," said Abdul. He started to purge his tank.

  "I am the doctor," said Cesar. "I will check on her."

  "The surface of Egg has suffered severe damage," Seiko said. "All activity has ceased. I have activated the scanners."

  "All communications with Egg are gone," said Jean. "We do have contact with the East Pole Space Station." Her face on the multiple screen was replaced by that of a flickering cheela, checking in every tenth of a second.

  "Any life below you in Bright's Heaven?" Staring-Sensor asked.

  "No," said Seiko. "Saw thermal flare at East Pole."

  "We know," said Staring-Sensor.

  "High energy vehicle from West Pole to East Pole," said Seiko.

  "We know."

  One of Seiko's screens showed a flashing circle overlaid by the computer on a scanner display of Bright's Heaven. "Patch of new vegeta...."

  "Where!?!" Staring-Sensor interrupted.

  "Inner Eye Inst...."

  Seiko stopped talking. The cheela had gone.

  "Doc!" said Pierre. "Have you found Amalita yet?"

  "Yes," said Cesar. "She's dead"

  "I don't think we'd better take a ride with Otis until we get things straightened out here." Pierre commanded the computer to cancel the planned change in trajectory for the deorbiter mass. It would be nearly a day before the asteroid worked its way around to where they could call it again.

  06:58:20 GMT TUESDAY 21 JUNE 2050

  Qui-Qui reported in at the flyer. She had brought Heavy-Egg along with her. She could have traveled faster alone, and gone back to pick him up in the flyer, but neither wanted to be separated from the other.

  "Where have you been!" Hohmann-Transfer exploded when the call from the flyer was transferred to her. "I was worried sick that you'd done something stupid, and we'd lost our only operational vehicle on Egg. What took you so long?"

  "I found a survivor, Admiral. He needed medical attention. His name is Heavy-Egg. He was a shift supervisor on the Space Fountain project. He would like to talk to Cliff-Web."

  "I want to tell him I'm sorry we lost the Fountain," said Heavy-Egg.

  After the long wait, it was Cliff-Web's voice that answered. "I'm glad to hear another one of the crew survived. As soon as we get down from here, we're all going to start building the Fountain again. It is sure a relief finding an experienced construction worker on Egg. We've got a lot to do. The first thing is to have you look at the gravity catapults at the East Pole and tell me their condition. Then we can start working on repairs."

  Qui-Qui let him handle the reply.

  "I wish I could, Boss," said Heavy-Egg. "But I don't have any eyes left."

  "Heavy-Egg was the only one left alive in Swift's Climb," Qui-Qui explained. "So far there are only two of us."

  "There may be more," said Staring-Sensor. "The humans reported a patch of vegetation at the Inner Eye Institute in Bright's Heaven. The Polar Orbiting Space Station has now confirmed the report. It has been decided that you should try there next."

  "And this time keep in touch!" It was Admiral Hohmann-

  Transfer. "The constant worry has aggravated the chronic inflammation in my eating pouches. You are going to let the engineer be the pilot for the flyer now, aren't you Qui-Qui?"

  "I'm blind, Admiral," Heavy-Egg reminded her.

  Qui-Qui shut down the communications link and raised power on the flyer. Then she glided above the road that led directly west to Bright's Heaven. The broad highway had buckled in many places and was littered with the remains of glide-cars. She knew Bright's Heaven well and brought the flyer to a landing close to the Inner Eye Institute. Side-by-side, holding eye-stubs, they glided onto the Institute grounds. Plants were everywhere.

  There was every possible variety of plant one could imagine, but only a few of each type. Qui-Qui picked a few of the ripe fruits, and they both enjoyed the fresh taste after turns of packaged food. The plants obviously had been freshly transplanted, for the trays they had been in were stacked nearby. They both listened with their treads, but could hear nothing but some food Slinks in a distant pen. As they moved by a low-walled office compound, Heavy-Egg came to a halt, his sensitive tread having detected something.

  "There is someone muttering nearby."

  They made their way into the office compound and found someone busy at a writing pad. She was old and wore a circle of scientist badges around her body. Qui-Qui couldn't quite remember what the symbols stood for.

  "Hello?" Qui-Qui said tentatively.

  "Let me finish this line." The scientist finished her writing and then turned the attention of her eyes to them.

  "I am Zero-Gauss, Doctor of Magnetics here at the Institute. I'm glad to see someone has finally come to get things running again. We are in terrible shape here. Did you know that all the scrolls and molecmems in the library are blank? I have been doing what I can, trying to reconstruct all my research notes, but what with taking care of the plants and animals I just don't have enough time. I'm so tired. All I want to do is tend eggs and hatchlings until I die."

  "You can't do that!" said Qui-Qui.

  "Why?"

  "Not yet, at least. We three are the last ones left alive on Egg," Qui-Qui explained. "If the race is going to survive we will have to lay eggs, many eggs."

  "I'm too old and tired for egg-laying," said Zero-Gauss. "Besides, we are not the only ones left. There is one other."

  Zero-Gauss's tread sent off a directional call. "Speckle-Top, darling. Please come here. We have company."

  07:02:06 GMT TUESDAY 21 JUNE 2050

  Now that things had settled down into a
routine, Qui-Qui was only supposed to check in on the communicator every dozen turns. Hohmann-Transfer was in a meeting when she called this time, so Shannon-Capacity transferred the call to Cliff-Web.

  "We just had another hatchling last turn," said Qui-Qui. 'That makes eleven now. Pretty soon Heavy-Egg can start education classes to train the junior engineers you need. Zero-Gauss is finally resigned to the fact that she had to give up working on her research notes to tend eggs. She still thinks it's obscene hatching her own eggs, but being a genetics expert she understands the importance of having as diverse a gene pool as possible, so she does 'her duty' as she calls it and still lays eggs as well as hatches them."

  Qui-Qui giggled before she continued with her next sentence. She still felt embarrassed using the obscene words in polite conversation. "She is also keeping track of the 'mothers' of the hatchlings, so we can avoid inbreeding as much as possible." She giggled again. "No problem identifying Speckle-Top's 'children.' Her speckles sure breed true.

  "Speckle-Top is a genius with the animals. She can just look at the animals and tell how they are feeling. The herds are multiplying rapidly, and Zero-Gauss finally let us have some fresh meat four turns ago. I'm getting pretty good at tending the plants. The grounds of the Inner Eye Institute are now full of fruit and nut bearers, and I am starting wild patches outside the city."

  "I've got some good news, too," said Cliff-Web after the long wait. "We were finally able to establish contact with the rejuvenation robot at the West Pole Rejuvenation Center by sending commands with a tight X-ray beam from West Pole Space Station. The robot has been unable to restore more than one enzyme machine, but within five greats there should be enough enzyme collected for the rejuvenation of a male or a small female."

  "Wonderful!" exclaimed Qui-Qui. "I can take Heavy-Egg there and get his sight back. Then you'll have someone who can tell you what is wrong with the gravity catapults, and I'll have someone to help share the burden of tending plants."

  07:03:32 GMT TUESDAY 21 JUNE 2050

  This time Qui-Qui activated the communicator early. Her voice was solemn. "Heavy-Egg has just flowed. I guess the strain on his body was too much."

  "Our last engineer gone! We are doomed!" came the wail fromHohmann-Transfer. "We might as well give up."

  "I'm not giving up," said Qui-Qui. "Let me speak to Cliff-Web. I want the next assignment for Heavy-Egg's beginning engineering class."

  As she waited for Cliff-Web to respond, she mentally began to go over the parentage of the oldest of the younglings in the creche-school. If they were to keep the small group on Egg growing until the females became old enough to lay eggs on their own, she and Speckle-Top would have to start teaching the older males something other than reading, computing, farming, and engineering.

  Sacrifice

  07:08:13 GMT TUESDAY 21 JUNE 2050

  Qui-Qui had left her engineering class working on their lessons and was now out in the fields teaching the farming class how to tell ripe nut-pods from immature ones. Through her tread she could hear a loud commotion from the hatchling pens. Zero-Gauss, now very old, was always having trouble keeping the large numbers of hatchlings under control while still tending the eggs. Qui-Qui left her farming class and rushed to the hatchery.

  "Weak eyes ... weak eyes ... speckle-hides have weak eyes." The high-pitched sound of the taunting treads came from a group of unspeckled hatchlings who were keeping three speckled hatchlings from getting to the food troughs.

  "I'll show you who's weak," one of the speckled ones said, then rushed at her tormentors and managed to glide up on top of one of the males and started jabbing at him with a sharp crust-rock. Zero-Gauss was busy with a hatchling just emerging from an egg and could only shout at them from the egg-pen.

  Overworked, frustrated, and angry, Qui-Qui rushed at the brawling hatchlings and sent all of them sliding across the crust with swift slaps from a manipulator.

  "That will be enough of that!" she said fiercely, her dark eyes blazing down at them over her large eyeflaps. "You will stop fighting and eat quietly." Some still whimpering from the slaps, the hatchlings gathered around the food troughs and ate their midturn meal. Zero-Gauss finally came in from the egg-pen, pushing a new hatchling in front of her to the food trough.

  "I don't know what to do," Zero-Gauss said tiredly. "It

  seems like every turn they fight more and more. I keep telling them we all have to work together, but the won't listen to me."

  "Maybe it will become better when some of the younglings become old enough to help us," said Qui-Qui, who then checked in on her engineering class before going back out into fhe fields. The younglings there were now arguing.

  "Don't pick that one, stupid," a speckled youngling said to a non-speckled one.

  "Why not. It looks perfectly ripe to me."

  "It's got ground-slug eggs in it."

  "How do you know?"

  "It's obvious," said the speckled one. "Just look at its color compared to the good one next to it."

  "I don't see any difference," said the non-speckled one.

  "That's because you only have 'common' eyes." The speckled one extended its four pink eyes with obvious pride. "We speckle-hides have 'special' eyes that can see things you plain-hides can't. That's what makes us so special."

  "You're not so special," said the non-speckled one raising his pull-pike that he used to bring down fruits from the taller plants.

  "That's enough of that," Qui-Qui hollered from a distance. "You younglings are acting just like a bunch of hatchlings."

  07:12:02 GMT TUESDAY 21 JUNE 2050

  While Hohmann-Transfer was busy with her scrollwork, some of her eyes noticed that one of the stars in the sky was rapidly growing in size. She let the scroll roll up and went to the command deck as the star grew larger and larger. By the time she got there, she could see the yellow-white speck in front of the star. It was the last of the large interstellar exploration ships, the Abdul Nkomi Farouk. Now, all that were left out in interstellar space were a few scout ships.

  "East Pole Space Station calling Abdul," said Hohmann-Transfer. There was nearly two methturns delay while the signal traveled across the 30 kilometers that separated them. During the wait the spinor warp drives on Abdul were turned off and the star receded back into the heavens, while the ship stayed in orbit around Egg.

  "This is Captain Searching-Eye of the interstellar exploration ship Abdul reporting to base as ordered. Captain Far-

  Ranger and Admiral Steel-Slicer were given the last positions of our two scout ships and were still searching for them when we left Here X-l. What is the status of things on Egg? We are all concerned."

  "Terrible," said Hohmann-Transfer. "We are reduced to depending upon the capabilities of an entertainer, and she has been able to do nothing for two dozen greats of turns. I am calling a general meeting as soon as you get here."

  The main meeting bowl on East Pole Space Station was jammed with bodies. The larger assembly rooms elsewhere on the station were also crowded with concerned spacers watching the video links to the main meeting bowl.

  "It has now been two dozen greats of turns since the disastrous starquake destroyed civilization on Egg," Hohmann-Transfer began. "I have done the best I can with the inadequate support from the surface, but the situation continues to look completely hopeless. The one engineer we had left on the surface flowed before we could save him. We are now reduced to training our own engineers with an entertainer as the teacher."

  "She is doing a good job under the circumstances," said Cliff-Web. "The problem is that without robots and other labor-saving machines, everyone on the surface has to spend a good deal of his time just keeping himself alive. We give them as much advice as possible, but the two-grethturn time delay in the communication link doesn't help."

  "How much longer will it be before they will be able to get a gravity catapult into operation?" someone asked.

  "It all depends upon whether Qui-Qui can keep things under control down ther
e and keep the classes going," said Cliff-Web. "If she can, then by selecting out the ones most competent in gravitational engineering and keeping them free to go to classes, we should soon have someone competent enough to go to the gravity catapult sites at the East and West Poles and tell us how bad the damage is. If the damage is not too bad, then it will only be another one or two dozen greats until we have trained a batch of engineers who can fix the damage, repair a power plant to run the catapult, and get it into operation."

  "You are talking about generations!" exclaimed Hohmann-Transfer. "You didn't tell me that before! We can't wait that long!"

  "I told you, but you wouldn't listen," said Cliff-Web. "And

  we have no alternative but to wait as many generations as it takes."

  "But we're getting older all the time. Without rejuvenation we will all be dead before they finish!" said Hohmann-Transfer. "You will have to make some rejuvenation machines."

  "You forget we are limited to the materials that we have on hand in the space stations and spaceships. I have had my engineers look into the problem. We could easily rework some of the metal in the less essential portions of the ships into machines to produce the rejuvenation enzymes. But the actual process requires the use of a rare metal isotope. In the whole space fleet there is just enough to make two machines, each capable of making enough enzyme for one person every three dozen greats. Basically, only two people can be kept alive by rejuvenation."

  "Then the rest will have to die!" said Hohmann-Transfer. "What is the use of fixing the gravity catapult if there are only two people left to save?"