Starquake.pdf

"If only Dragon Slayer had some means of propulsion," she said to Pierre.
"It'd have to be faster-than-light propulsion to get away from the neutron star before the tides tore us...."
Suddenly something clicked in Pierre's mind. In special relativity, faster-than-light travel was equivalent to
time travel—and he knew the cheela could travel faster than the speed of light. Pierre turned back to the
console screen.
"Sky-Teacher," he said. "You can travel faster than light. Do you have time travel?"
"Yes," said Sky-Teacher. "A Doctor of Tempology communicated through time two minutes ago, just
after your accident."
"Then send a message back in time and get someone to deflect the meteorite!" said Pierre.
"Unfortunately, our time machines don't allow communication with times before the machine is first
turned on," said Sky-Teacher.
"Then we've had it," said Pierre, his body jerking about in his console chair. "The hull won't last more
than two minutes."
06:53:40 GMT TUESDAY 21 JUNE2050
Rescue
An intermittent buzzing sound radiated through the crust. Cliff-Web tried to ignore it and continued with
the pleasurable task of setting out tiny parasol plants in a border around his back garden to replace the
old ones that had gone to seed. He pulled up the old plants and put them in a pile for Moving-Sand to
haul away, then replaced them with new little shoots. They were a new variety he and Moving-Sand
were developing from a mutant form he had discovered on his last engineering job.
The normal parasol plant had twelve supporting rods that grew up and out from the single tap root to
support the reddish, cool concave top surface that radiated to the sky. These shoots had twenty-four
rods. The doubling was not simple, however, but was more like two plant skeletons trying to exist under
the same skin, for the glowing pollen tips of the cantilevered rods alternated in sex and color. Normal
parasol plants slowly pulsed with time, the pollen tips turning from deep red-black to a bright white-hot
glow, then back again. The two sets of tips on the double parasol were out of phase. While one set was
dark, the alternate set was bright, producing a pleasing blinking effect.
The buzzing persisted.