Cheela - Starquake Part 23

Busy-Thoughts moved to the center of the cla.s.sroom and'trummed the cla.s.s to attention.

"Everyone finish his sculpture and set the control pattern in memory. When you finish I have an announcement."

There were whispered exchanges between the students as they made last minute adjustments to their pieces and closed down their generators. As they gathered around the teacher, Busy-Thoughts momentarily felt the instinct to reach out and cover them all with his hatching mantle. He shook off the feeling, then made a resolve to apply for rejuvenation again. He had been putting it off too long.

"The White Rock Clan has prospered this year," said Busy-Thoughts. "With the decrease in our egg quota from the Combined Clans Population Control Board, we have had fewer creche expenses. The elders of the clan have decided to send the entire creche-school on a trip to see the humans. After all, we are in a unique period in history, when all five humans can be seen, up close, at the same time."

Lovely-Eyes was ecstatic at the announcement. For the first time he would be able to see the humans he had been studying.

The cla.s.s took a glide-carrier to the West Pole and rode up the West Pole s.p.a.ce Fountain to the top.

Busy-Thoughts had arranged a special hookup to the Master Teacher. On the way up the cla.s.s was given a lecture on the geographical features of the West Pole hemisphere they could see below them. At Topside Platform they switched to a tourist ship especially made for viewing the humans. It had artificial gravity generators and tiers of platforms so that everyone had a good view, yet the human s.p.a.cecraft wasn't uncomfortably "overhead."

"Oh my! Theyare huge," Lovely-Eyes said as the tourist ship floated to a stop a meter away from the porthole that held the motionless visages of Pierre and Abdul. He formed a tendril and pointed it at one of the humans. "That's Pierre. You can tell because of the yellow patch all over the bottom of his head.

The other one is Abdul. He only has a thin yellow patch under his nose."

"What is the yellow stuff?" one of his cla.s.smates asked.

"Hairs. Humans are mostly hairless like us, but they have hairy patches like Slink hide on their heads."

"Ugly!!!" she replied.

The tourist ship moved on to the next porthole where Jean Kelly was looking out.

"They all look the same," someone said. "I thought they had hides of different color."

"They do, in the long wavelength portion of the spectrum where the humans eyes work," said Lovely-Eyes. "But they all look the same to X-ray vision."

The tourist ship set up a holovid projector with a time-lapse sequence. First they saw Abdul at the porthole calling Pierre, the appearance of Pierre at the window, then Abdul and Pierre talking and looking at the visiting s.p.a.cecraft. The jerky time-lapse photography had everyone rumbling their tread.

"Stop laughing!!!" Lovely-Eyes shouted into the deck.

Those brave humans have given up their lives to save Egg, and you laugh at them like Slinks in a zoo!"

"Lovely-Eyes!" Busy-Thoughts' tread rapped in the distance. "Behave yourself!"

Lovely-Eyes' tread fell silent, but his brain-knot was still seething. "Theremust be a way to save them,"

he thought. "And I will not change my accursed egg-name until I find it. When I do, the name I shall choose will be a better name, an.o.ble name."

01:30:05 GMT WEDNESDAY 22 JUNE2050.

"Look at those s.p.a.ceships!" said Abdul. "They are almost 10 centimeters long and have multiple decks.

They must be the equivalent of cruise ships, coming up to see the sights."

"They are no longer spherical." Seiko was peering out an adjacent porthole. "They have found an efficient method of producing gravity, so they no longer need to carry along miniature black holes. Their technological capability is increasing at an astounding rate."

"I wonder if they'll ever be able to move asteroids," Jean said wistfully.

"They have plenty of energy to do the job," said Pierre. "It's just that Oscar is so fragile, and they and their machines are so dense."

"Superman may be able to lift icebergs in the holovids," said Abdul. "But if he tried lifting a real iceberg he would end up with nothing but a pile of ice cubes."

"There is no way they could bring Oscar back any sooner than six months," said Seiko in her authoritative Teutonic tone. "We might as well stop wishful thinking; it's counterproductive. We're going to die, and there is not much we can do about it. I'm going down to the galley for something to eat.

Anyone care to join me?"

"I'm not hungry just now," said Cesar. The others kept looking out the windows at the blizzard of visiting s.p.a.cecraft.

03:54:50 GMT WEDNESDAY 22 JUNE2050.

The turn eventually came when Lovely-Eyes at last gave up on his quest and returned to White Rock City, the homeland of his clan. He found the creche-master and asked for a position tending the young ones.

"Few positions left," said Creche-Master/71. "PopCon Board decreasing cheela, more robots instead."

Lovely-Eyes didn't like the abrupt language style that had developed in the last 60 greats of turns. Now that nearly every cheela had a horde of robots at its beck and call, and seldom interacted with other cheela, politeness had nearly dropped out of the language. After all, robots didn't have feelings and didn't have to be persuaded to do anything, just told to do it. Since he was talking to a cheela, however, he thought that perhaps he would do better if he used the old style.

"I would really appreciate it if you could find a position for me," said Lovely-Eyes. "I have worked hard for 300 greats of turns and am looking forward to tending the hatc-lings."

"Experience?" asked Creche-Master/71.

"I have advanced degrees in Humanology, Human Medicine, Expanded Matter Science, Inertial and Gravitational Engineering, and Science Administration. I was also Leader of the Fourth Segment in the Legislature of the Combined Clans."

"Successes?"

"Not many, I'm afraid," Lovely-Eyes said. "I have spent most of my life trying to find some means to prevent the eventual starvation of the humans. I have studied human medicine to find some method like deep sleep to keep the humans alive without food. I have studied expanded matter science to find a way to make food with the equipment the humans have on Dragon Slayer. I have studied inertial and gravitational engineering to find a way to return the distant asteroid sooner. I was unsuccessful.

"I went into politics, became leader of the fourth segment, pushed through the funding to form a special task force to solve the human starvation problem, then left the legislature to run the task force. I had the brightest minds, both cheela and robotic, working on the problem for two generations. They were unsuccessful. When the funding for the task force was terminated I gave up and came here. I have no successes to tell the younglings about. I'm afraid I wouldn't be a good choice for that job."

"No," Creche-Master/71 agreed. Her tread was manipulating her touch screen. "One egg available for hatching in 18 turns."

"I'll take it!" said Lovely-Eyes.

The driven soul of Lovely-Eyes was, at last, at peace. The egg had produced a near-perfect hatchling, exactly as the geneticists had predicted. The hatchling had the official name of White-Rock/207891384, but Lovely-Eyes, recalling an old story he had read in his humanology studies, called him Grandest-Tiger.

Grandest-Tiger was dodging in and out from under Lovely-Eyes' hatching mantle, playing peek-and-chase with its robotic hatchling-mates. While Grandest-Tiger played, Lovely-Eyes picked up one of the hatchling's learning toys. It was quite expensive for such a simple toy, but the hatchling psychologists felt it was important for the young ones to have experience with the paradoxical phenomena early in their life.

The toy was a simple ring. It came with a dozen tiny metal spheres. When a sphere was pushed through the hole in the ring, it didn't come out on the other side immediately. Depending upon which side the ball was put through, it would come out at some different time, either in the past or the future. Right now there were six spheres lying on the crust. Idly, Lovely-Eyes picked up five of the spheres and poked them, one at a time through the ring. There was a long pause, then the five spheres popped out again.

Suddenly, Lovely-Eyes pulled back his hatching mantle and rushed out of the pen, leaving a bewildered Grandest-Tiger behind. The robotic hatchling-mates diverted the attention of Grandest-Tiger from the disappearing Old One while they sent emergency messages to the creche-master for a replacement.

03:55:03 GMT WEDNESDAY 22 JUNE2050.

The screen on the communications console flashed on to show the image of Sky-Speaker. Above the electronic chitter of data being transferred there came a calling signal. Seiko went to the console, and the image of Sky-Speaker started talking as she approached.

"You read fast," the image said.

"You listen slow. Read."

The image was replaced by text that scrolled rapidly up the screen, keeping in pace with the scan of her eyes. Seiko didn't know how the cheela had done it, but they had taken over control of the communications console display program.

"Pierre," said Seiko, still reading. "They are going to try to rescue us."

"Did they find a way to move Oscar?" he asked, floating over next to her.

"No," she said. "They found a way to move us." Pierre read the screen along with her, then said to the rest of the crew, "Everybody get into the high-G protection tanks," he said. "The cheela are going to take us for a ride."

04:02:35 GMT WEDNESDAY 22 JUNE2050.

Neutrino-Maker/84 watched as his swarm of robotic workers approached the gigantic viewport window at the south pole of the human s.p.a.cecraft. They stopped a few meters away from the hull and set up three neutrino generators that flooded the interior of the s.p.a.cecraft with beams of neutrinos at carefully selected frequencies. He then took his crew around to the other side where they set up a dense array of neutrino detectors. Each robot had the ancient cleft-wort symbol of Web Construction Company emblazoned on its back.

"One more imposs-proj for Web-Con," said the engineer proudly. Once the detectors were in place, a computer generated holo-image slowly began to build up in the display.

"Air, water, humans, steel, all like vacuum," said Neutrino-Maker/84 as he waited impatiently for the image to build up. If they had done a neutrino scan on a decent density object, the image would have formed almost instantly.

After a half-turn, the image was good enough for him to see that the humans were all in their tanks and the last of the air was being replaced by water.

Neutrino-Maker/84 switched his console to communicate with Void-Maker/111. An old and experienced Web-Con disinto engineer, she had been a.s.signed the delicate job of re- moving the laser communicator from the human s.p.a.ceship while leaving it in operating condition. The communicator was going to be delivered to another group of Web-Con engineers to calibrate some machines that would allow the ultra-dense cheela to power and control the tenuous human equipment without damaging it.

"Humans in tanks," said Neutrino-Maker/84. "Proceed."

"Proceeding," Void-Maker/111 replied as she set her crew of disinto robots to work.

The communicator had two connections through the hull to the electronics inside Dragon Slayer. One was an electrical power cable for the laser power supply, and the other was a fiber-optic modulator cable that carried the information. Moving carefully, the disinto robots formed microthin fans of disintegration rays and cut the two cables right at the connectors. Being careful to avoid the free ends of the cables as they waved slowly back and forth in the variable gravity fields outside Dragon Slayer, the disinto robots then attacked the mechanical support structure. The laser communicator came loose.

Void-Maker/111 rubbed her tread screen, and the image of another Web-Con engineer appeared. It was Graviton-Maker/321. His engineering badges had a circle for gravity instead of a triangle for disinto.

"To you," said Void-Maker/111.

"To me," replied Graviton-Maker/321. "Next to electromagnetic-makers."

"Don't touch!" chirped Void-Maker/111 at the screen.

"Nor you," said Graviton-Maker/321 as the screen went blank.

Graviton-Maker/321 set his crew of gravity robots in the path of the slowly tumbling laser communicator. His job was to get the laser under control and bring it to a halt. He had to catch it without touching it, for the fragile human instrument could not stand the lightest touch by any cheela machines.

His squadron of Web-Con gravity robots were specially designed for this job. They were spherical in shape, and each had a small black hole in the center. The black hole provided the basic gravity field that the robot used. The hull of the robots contained powerful gravity exchangers and diverters that modified the shape, strength, and even the direction of the gravity forces coming from the black hole. Staying care- fully off at a distance, the robots pushed and pulled at the tumbling laser communicator until they brought it under control. They then took it out through the whirling ring of compensator ma.s.ses to a safe place where the electromagnetic-makers could try to operate it.

Electromagnetic-Manager/1 was waiting patiently for the arrival of the laser communicator from the Slow Ones' orbital position. He had his team of electromagnetic engineers ready. There were young ones who would provide the drive that they needed and experienced ones who would provide the caution, for they were treading on new crust when they tried to couple their ultra-dense nucleonic machines to the expanded matter electronic machines that the humans used.

The electromagnetic-makers were a strange breed. It took a perverse type of personality to specialize in a field like electromagnetic engineering where there was almost no opportunity to practice the craft. In general, electromagnetic engineers just talked to themselves, devised exotic experiments involving electromagnetic conductors that stretched hundreds of meters across the surface of Egg to measure the ultra-long electromagnetic waves coming from s.p.a.ce, and worked on improving the instructional programs in the Master Teacher Program in case some other student was strange enough to want to become an electromagnetic engineer, too.

This was the first time there had been a need for the management of a team of electromagnetic engineers and Electromagnetic-Manager/1 was the first of his profession.

Graviton-Maker/321 and his crew of robots brought the laser communicator to a halt near the electromagnetic-makers' strange machines floating in orbit some distance away from Dragon Slayer. He stacked up most of his robots, but left a few at the job of keeping the laser communicator in place.

Electromagnetic-Manager/1, his team of engineers, and their hordes of specialized robots were waiting for him.

"To you," said Graviton-Maker/321.

"To me," said Electromagnetic-Manager/1.

"Don't ..." started Graviton-Maker/321.

"... touch," chirped a chorus of treads from the team of electromagnetic-makers.

The power cable for the laser was brought near an electron generator. It was difficult for the electromagnetic engineers to generate large currents at such low voltages, but soon four amperes of electrons at 500 volts were shooting from one end of the electron generator and four amperes of positrons from the other end. The Web-Con electromagnetic robots steered the beams with the electric and magnetic fields emanating from their bodies and directed them at the conductors in the cut end of the cable.

"Laser photons detected from end of human instrument," said Electromagnetic-Maker/32, who was monitoring the response of a long-wavelength photon detector in one of his robots that he had positioned in front of the laser communicator.

"Positron erosion?" asked Electromagnetic-Manager/1.

"Ten picometers per methturn," replied Electromagnetic -Maker/25.

"Good," said Electromagnetic-Manager/1. The technique for extracting the electrons from the return conductor seemed to be working. A set of ultraviolet generator robots kept the return conductor illuminated with ultraviolet photons which knocked electrons out of the metal. The electrons billowed up in a cloud over the end of the positively charged conductor where they were annihilated by the stream of positrons. Most of the annihilation gamma rays were scattered by the electron cloud, but some high energy photons reached the metal and caused the loss of copper ions.

"Wire temperature?" Electromagnetic-Manager/1 asked another engineer.

"Stablized at 352 K," said Electromagnetic-Maker/28. "Electromagnetic cooling working." His team of robots were monitoring detectors that estimated the detailed spectrum of the heat photons excited in the surface of the metal where the beam of electrons penetrated. The electron beam was then modulated to produce heat photons that had the same estimated spectrum but with the phases reversed, so that on the average, the new photons would tend to cancel the old photons. Being a statistical technique, it didn't work perfectly, but it did keep the wires well below their melting point.

"Modulation!" ordered Electromagnetic-Manager/1.

Electromagnetic-Maker/55 tapped his control console, and his 20,736 robots each started emitting long-wavelength infrared radiation from their bodies. The robots were arranged in a 144 by 144 array, and their infrared output was phased so that it focused down into a narrow waist just as it entered the optical fiber in the cut end of the communications cable.

"Modulation detected," Electromagnetic-Maker/32 reported.

"Good," said Electromagnetic-Manager/1. He was now sure that the cheela could find a method of getting information on and off the human electrical wires and optical fibers. He contacted Graviton-Maker/321.

"Turn laser toward St. George ..." said Electromagnetic-Manager/ 1.

No reply was needed. Graviton-Maker/321 proceeded to manipulate his crew of robots by treading touch-blocks on the sides of his touch-taste screen.