Starquake.pdf

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"This is for Qui-Qui." And Crust-Crawler sliced the last eye-ball from the Emperor of Dragon's Egg. "Who is Qui-Qui?" Dented-Shield asked. "Someone I knew long ago," he said. 21:04:17 GMT TUESDAY 21 JUNE 2050 "Excellent choice of frequency, Jean," said Seiko. "Short ultraviolet. Too long for normal cheela vision and too short to cause sexual side effects. It definitely affected the battle." "What is happening?" Abdul asked. "Happened. It was all over in a tenth of a second." "But whowon?” Abdul shouted. "The space cheela did, of course." Seiko was monitoring the snippets of condensed news from the crust below. "With a little help from their friends," said Abdul. "They need a little more help," Seiko said. "Then: libraries were wiped out by the starquake, and they want us to send back some of the information on our library HoloMem crystals. They don't want all of it, but they will let our computer know which sections." "I'll bring up the first crystal." Pierre, seated at the library console, reached up to the HoloMem rack and pulled out the first crystal. It was still labeledA toAME, but that human dictionary content had been replaced long ago with knowledge from the cheela. The crystal would transmit faster if it were in the communications console on the Main Deck, so Pierre pushed himself up the metal ladder as fast as he could go, knowing that no matter how fast a human moved, it was too slow for a cheela. 01:01:10 GMT WEDNESDAY 22 JUNE2050 Escape
"That's the last of the HoloMem storage crystals, Pierre," Jean said as she turned away from the communications console. "Most of the material on that one was encrypted. I hope they have the crypto-keys." She swiveled back as the image of Sky-Speaker flashed on the screen. "Keys obvious," said Sky-Speaker. "Goodbye." "I liked the old Sky-Teacher better," said Pierre. "He talked so verbosely that it gave you time to think." "We have plenty of time to think now," Jean said quietly as she shut down the communications console. She reached under the counter and extracted the HoloMem crystal that had come from the library and replaced it with the regular console crystal that kept a log of everything that went through the console. "Too much time," said Pierre. He followed Jean as she ottered her way down the passageway to the crew deck. Jean went to the library console and restored the HoloMem to its place in the storage rack. Pierre, driven by his command responsibility, returned to the galley and stared at the listing of the food supplies on the food storage lockers. There was food for eight more days at normal rations, sixteen days at half-rations, thirty-two days at quarter-rations ... only one month. It would take five more months after that before Oscar returned from its long elliptical orbit around Egg. His eyes didn't look at the bank of lockers with the blank label. Bouncing lightly in the low gravity, he passed Jean at the library console and turned into the lounge. Doc was talking with Seiko and Abdul was looking pensively out of the viewport in the floor. "HoloMems done?" asked Abdul, looking up. "Yep," said Pierre, floating lightly to the cushion beside him. "Anything left for us mere humans to do?" Abdul asked. "The cheela don't need us anymore. They should be well on their way to recovery by now." A tiny white-hot speck appeared outside the viewport window and stopped. "Smile," said Abdul. "You're about to have your picture taken by some tourists." The speck released a shower of sparks. There was a flickering of light, then the sparks rejoined the glowing speck and it sped away. "What are your plans for the rest of the mission, Pierre?" Seiko asked. "I have no plans." "You must!" Seiko sounded disturbed. "We must not waste our lives doing nothing until we die!" Pierre raised his gaze from the viewport. The anguish in his face showed through the ragged, unkempt beard. "I can't find a way to save us," he said, tears starting to well up in his eyes. "Of course you can't," said Seiko. "Thereis no way to save us. It is simple mathematics. There are five people to feed and only eight days of food rations. We might be able to stretch that out using our body reserves, but we will be out of food in a month. We could even consider eating Amalita's body. At best, we could only get about 50 kilos of meat from it." She turned to Doc Wong.
Page 1 and 2:
STARQUAKE Acknowledgments
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Prelude Burrowing through the dark
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science instruments and consoles, w
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Please take a rest." "Doctor Wong,
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about half a day we will be in prop
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Amalita floated over to the table a
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One of her near eyes caught him loo
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"All you need to do is shrink the h
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Pierre spoke quickly to the robotic
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slid open. He entered the security
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Slinklings, and Cold, Chilly's mate
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page and didn't like what he saw. "
Page 25 and 26:
He activated a conference link and
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egg-tending fever. Every time I see
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A glowing speck swung around the to
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"If only Dragon Slayer had some mea
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"That gives us four greats of turns
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"I see someone in the back." "Brigh
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with spots of different emittance t
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Web Construction is the biggest con
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activated. "There are 144 connector
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With the X-ray illuminators in plac
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up and wait. Then there would begin
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06:55:16 TUESDAY 21 JUNE2050 Quiet
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There was a loud clang from nearby.
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Hearing the decimal number for the
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walls made out of high quality supe
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It was turnfeast, and Time-Circle s
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"After the success with the three m
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"Renegotiate them," she replied. "J
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"Those machines produce both the an
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millimeters away it fades into the
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She started with the animals. Three
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idly to the surrounding crust. She
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06:58:07 GMT TUESDAY 21 JUNE2050 Qu
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kilohertz gravitational radiation t
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"We're losing it!" Heavy-Egg shoute
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y the errant streams. Treads grippi
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"Less than a turn," said the Comm O
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"Our total space force consists of
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"Bright has cursed us all!" Hohmann
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straight toward her, moving rapidly
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You should be able to find more cag
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close. She could have done a good i
Page 89 and 90:
"My plan is to use the robots on Eg
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were mixed to produce an ultra-hot
Page 93 and 94:
and gravitational waves. Status 82%
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"There is someone muttering nearby.
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farming class how to tell ripe nut-
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of engineers who can fix the damage
Page 101 and 102:
Eighty turns later, Qui-Qui returne
Page 103 and 104:
They worked their way through the m
Page 105 and 106: other two read zero. Must be breaks
Page 107 and 108: Qui-Qui would arrive at each clan c
Page 109 and 110: satiated, however, for he would nev
Page 111 and 112: They charged, the mounted warriors
Page 113 and 114: out that what was needed was a spec
Page 115 and 116: "You must be Qui-Qui," Ferocious-Ey
Page 117 and 118: stage' for our lander. We can store
Page 119 and 120: "We are aware of that," said Plasma
Page 121 and 122: "One," said Cliff-Web. "And an infi
Page 123 and 124: field. Cliff-Web had returned to no
Page 125 and 126: "There are flying animals on the hu
Page 127 and 128: nothing, tor the forces were gravit
Page 129 and 130: "We will need to have a new power g
Page 131 and 132: "Good. Let's cut it up and haul it
Page 133 and 134: The trade was made, with the captai
Page 135 and 136: operation," said Power-Pack. "My se
Page 137 and 138: "We would rather wait to taste the
Page 139 and 140: "But she only has eight eyes now!"
Page 141 and 142: her whip-sword and urged her Swift
Page 143 and 144: for the Taker to come again." "The
Page 145 and 146: As if to punctuate his offer, there
Page 147 and 148: As he flowed up over the crumbled b
Page 149 and 150: "Focus the laser on the landing bas
Page 151 and 152: "It has been a long time since the
Page 153 and 154: their quirrls sparred with each oth
Page 155: "The humans take forever to do anyt
Page 159 and 160: to the Science Deck. Pierre looked
Page 161 and 162: "Hey! Look at the sightseers," Abdu
Page 163 and 164: choose will be a better name, anobl
Page 165 and 166: The screen on the communications co
Page 167 and 168: This was the first time there had b
Page 169 and 170: "Coupling experiments successful,"
Page 171 and 172: Manager-Director/5 set up a confere
Page 173 and 174: "The cheela are bringing them now."
Page 175 and 176: "Mine," replied Abdul. "She's right
Page 177 and 178: Amalita and Abdul in two segments o
Page 179 and 180: 15 min 31 g cheela generation 29 se
Page 181 and 182: and behaves much like a young cheel
Page 183 and 184: Ngw* 5. CI»ft-Wort Plant Upon reve
Page 185 and 186: We wanted Dragon Slayer at a 406-ki
Page 187 and 188: Figure 10. Gravity Catapult The wor
Page 189: 6. F. J. Tipler, "Rotating Cylinder
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