Starquake.pdf

were eager to learn more about the miraculous machines of the spacers. The memories of a life of ease
and plenty in the ancient days before the starquake had been passed down verbally from the tales of Old
Ones in their hatchling pens, so they were not afraid of the technology, but embraced it.
It wasn't long before the clans abandoned their homesites and resettled around the spacer's base. They
were careful to bring along the Emperor's herds of food Slinks; but instead of being allowed to wander,
the herds were kept in pens made of magnetic barriers and fed from food machines that had been
adapted to manufacture a feed for the food Slinks that produced optimum growth in the animals. But they
weren't eaten, for Chef Pouch-Pleaser and Engineer Metal-Bender had worked together to make food
machines that could produce chunks of food Slink meat that were indistinguishable from the real thing.
"It seems like my crew is spending half its time building food machines," Metal-Bender said one turn at
the meeting of the senior staff.
"One-dozeth is more like it," said Crust-Crawler. "Besides, with all the clan apprentices, your machine
construction team is twice as large as it was."
"My crust engineering team is five times as large as it was," Engineer Crust-Cracker told the group. "We
already have the support foundations under the gravity catapult and have excavated and lined the crust
under the central hole. We are now moving into road building. We will have all the roads in the base
camp plus clan compounds paved in the next four turns and the road out to the power plant site will be
widened to Flow Slow size in a dozen turns."
"With the extra crew and the road, the construction of the main power plants is way ahead of schedule,"
said Power-Pack. "The first plant will be sipping magma in six turns."
"Good," said Push-Pull. "My crew has finished reconnecting the tubing on the gravity catapult to turn it
from a flying machine into a standard catapult. One power plant should allow us to test it at one-quarter
power."
"When you think you are ready, I'll send a message up to
East Pole Orbital Station to send down a lightly loaded scout ship," said Crust-Crawler. "I want to bring
down a rejuvenation machine. Some of these clan leaders are getting old and nearly eyeless from their
encounters with Taker. Their experience is too valuable to lose at this stage."
"We can make our own rejuvenation machines," said Delta-Mass. "If the precision shops on the
interstellar arks can fabricate the delicate inner machinery, Metal-Bender's crew can do the rest of it."
"We still have the problem of getting the rare catalyst to promote the formation of the rejuvenation
enzyme," Crust-Crawler reminded his colleague.
'That's no problem," said Delta-Mass. "We have been shoving so much crust through the mass separator
machines to make metal stock that as a byproduct we have collected enough of the catalyst to activate
four dozen rejuvenation machines."
"How are our relations with the clans, Avenging-Eye?" asked Crust-Crawler.
"Excellent," said Avenging-Eye. "The members of the Dusty Crust Clan now almost consider themselves
spacers. They mix willingly with the other clans and have even taken over all of the beginner reading and
computation classes. There seems to be a tenseness in the actions of the elders, though. I think it is time