Starquake.pdf

page and didn't like what he saw.
"May Bright set!" he swore. "It's been over two greats of turns since we promised the humans we would
rescue them. I thought the Slow One Interaction Laboratory would have done more by now! This
Request For Plan is only for a preliminary design effort. They should have done that study in-compound a
great of turns ago."
Having stared down at many such documents in his career, he inserted another tendril about two-thirds
of the way through the stack. The "flow-plate" foils that the bureaucracy had inserted between the cover
sheet and the meat of the document rolled up again into a tight ellipse. He let a few more pages roll up,
back-rolled one page, then cursed again.
"Suck a Flow Slow! They only budgeted 144 great-stars for this contract! They must be expecting us to
add eggs to their pen."
He let a few more pages roll up until he got to the listing of the work items required. He didn't curse this
time, because he had seen the same thing happen too many times before.
"... and the only difference between this 'preliminary' design effort and a 'full' design effort is that we don't
have to submit firm price quotes as part of the final report." He moved his tendril and let the pages roll up
quickly one after another as he scanned them. His eye-wave motion slowed and his tread'trummed
nervously as his brain-knot thought of an alternate approach to the problem.
"That might work," he said to himself. He let the scroll roll up and put it back into the scroll wall as he
moved onto his touch-and-taste communicator. He was about to set up a con-
ference call to some of his chief engineers out in the field when a slowgonging sound penetrated the
crust. His pendulum clock was marking the end of the turn with the slow tolling of the twelfth dothturn.
He checked his nuclear chronometer—the ancient pendulum clock was still keeping perfect time despite
the large crustquake a few turns ago. No use calling anyone now. Everyone on Egg was settling down to
their main meal of the turn. He would get something to eat himself and make the call at dothturn one.
Lassie followed him to the meal room as he left the study. Lassie may have been old, but she wasn't
dumb; it would be her mealtime too. Moving-Sand had prepared a good turnfeast. A small pan with a
loaf of ground eye-anchor and spices surrounded by a dozen small parasol root-nodes was warming in
the oven. He lifted the lid of the cooler built into the meal-room floor and found a fresh salad of
petal-leaves with hot sauce made from crushed North Pole stinger-fronds. He also extracted a cooled
bag of singleberry wine. It was from the north slopes of the Exodus Volcano and was supposedly one of
the best.
He was busy thinking about the new project and normally would have just dumped the contents of the
food plates into an eating pouch and gone back to his study, but this turn he decided to stay in the meal
room and enjoy the excellent turnfeast. He put the plates on the temperature-controlled segments in the
floor next to his eating pad and settled his large body down. He moved two of his eating pouches around
until they were next to each other and in front of the two dishes. A manipulator held the bag of
singleberry wine above both pouches and squirted streams into one or the other as the taste called for.
The eye-anchor loaf was superb. There were still a few excellent flank slabs in the freezer that were even
better, but he was glad that Moving-Sand had settled for the cheaper cut, since he would rather have the
slabs when he had company. After all, it wasn't often that one had prime cheela meat for turnfeast.