Starquake.pdf

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 class took a glide-carrier to the West Pole and rode up the West Pole Space Fountain to the top.
Busy-Thoughts had arranged a special hookup to the Master Teacher. On the way up the class 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 spacecraft
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 classmates 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 spacecraft. 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