Starquake.pdf

"We would rather wait to taste the food that you brought," said Otis-Elevator.
"The food Slink isn't bad," said Letter-Reader, putting a couple of golden yellow crystals into a food
pouch. "But I don't understand why you would want to eat groundnuts and singleberries instead of these
tasty chunks."
"You will see after a few greats of eating nothing but meal-mush from the machine we will give you,"
Otis-Elevator told him.
"I'll never get tired," said Letter-Reader, sucking on the end of a yellow and silver stick. "I'm going to try
everything on the instruction scroll."
"Are you going to be operating the machine?" asked Otis-Elevator.
"Yes. I'm the only one in the clan who can read, so they put me in charge of running it."
"The turnfeast is ready,"'trummed Chef Pouch-Pleaser loudly into the crust. They all went into the
compound to the eating area where the pink and white food Slink, perched on a dressing of chopped
groundnuts and fresh singleberries, was waiting for them. It was soon surrounded by spacers, while the
members of the Dusty Crust Clan gathered around their new food machine. Letter-Reader almost forgot
to eat as he operated the machine, producing piles of golden yellow crystals, dark red balls, blue-white
eggs, and yellow and silver cylinders, each one tasting better than the next.
"It is truly a miraculous machine," Dented-Shield told Crust-Crawler as they shared squirts from a bag of
singleberry juice. "It causes me to worry, though. My workers will become restless if they do not have to
hunt for food."
"They could come here and we could teach them other things. We will teach them to read letters, work
with numbers, and how to operate machines. We will even teach them how to make machines of their
own."
"An excellent idea!" said Dented-Shield. "I will leave some of them here when we depart. Perhaps while
you are teaching
them, they may be of service to you in building your giant machine that will pull down the starships from
the skies."
Suddenly, three herders came into the eating area, moving as fast as their treads could take them. One of
them had dropped his herder pike in his panic.
"The Taker has come!" the first shouted.
"She counted the herd and was very angry," said the second, coming up to Dented-Shield. "She said for
us to take her to you, and we came as fast as we could."
An alarm rang through the crust. "Five Swifts approaching from the east," said a computer voice.
"Magnetic barriers are activated."
"Swifts?" said Crust-Crawler.