Starquake.pdf

Amalita floated over to the table and glanced down for a moment at the image of Dragon's Egg on the
white frosted surface. There was now more to see on the star as the cheela technology became capable
of constructing structures large enough to be seen from space. The Bright's Heaven jump loop was now
visible below. It was already slinging payloads into space. Within ten minutes or so, a space fountain
should be pointing straight up into space from the top of the East Pole mountains off on the horizon. Just
before she flicked off the image, Amalita saw the Polar Orbiting Space Station of the cheela flash by
below like a white-hot tracer bullet.
06:45:10 GMT TUESDAY 21 JUNE2050
Captain Star-Glider looked up with three of his eyes as the six glowing masses that formed the Eyes of
Bright moved slowly by above him. The polar orbit of his space station carried him close enough to the
huge formation that he could see the cylindrical instrument tower sticking out from one end of the
spherical main hull of Dragon Slayer. The human spacecraft was as black-cold as a prostitute's eyeball
and could only be seen by the red reflections from the Six Eyes and the yellow-white glare from Egg
below. He shivered at the thought of living in such a cold place and thankfully spread out his tread on the
glowing warmth of the yellow-white deck. It took almost a grethturn before the huge circle of glowing
planetoids was far enough off from the vertical that it was no longer "above" him. His three anxious
upturned eyes stopped their relentless watch and returned to join the remainder of his twelve eyes in the
familiar cheela traveling wave pattern.
The wave pattern quickened as Captain Star-Glider tasted a message scrolling across the
communications taste screen built into the deck. They would be launching an exploration ark within a few
turns, and the exploration crew had been called for a final briefing. The briefing would take place in two
dothturns at the meeting area around on the other side of the space station. The jump loop at Bright's
Heaven had been busy the last turn sending up one jumpcraft after another with the crew, while the
gravity catapults at the East and West Poles had been busy tossing cargo and equipment into the sky.
The
catapults were ancient, over eight human hours old. Extremely inefficient, even when aided by the inertia
drives on the cargo shuttlecraft, they were slowly being replaced. Most personnel transfers now used the
jump loops, and soon nearly everything would come up by way of a space fountain.
Although it really wasn't any of his business, Star-Glider decided to attend the briefing. It wasn't often
that an exploration ark was sent off to visit some distant star. In fact, this was going to be the last one for
quite a while. The Deep Space Exploration Council had decided for budgetary reasons to limit the
number of exploration arks to six. The arks would spend a number of greats of turns at an interesting
star, then move on to another one. The rest of the Deep Space Exploration fleet consisted of a small
squadron of scout ships and a dozen cargo haulers that resupplied the exploration arks and rotated the
crews.
The initial exploration was done by the high-speed scout ships that visited candidate neutron stars
looking for interesting stellar dynamics or signs of life. One had recently returned to report that they had
found life on a neutron star some 12,000 light-years distant. This was the sixth report of possible life, and
the first one where the life forms seemed to be intelligent.
Star-Glider had seen the pictures of the aliens when they first appeared on holovid. They were the ugliest