Starquake.pdf

"I see someone in the back."
"Bright's Curse!" Admiral Star-Glider quickly identified the missing cheela. "It's Talking-Tread of the fifth
sextant. He's bound to tally for holing the scroll. But he's only got three sethturns to get to his voting pad."
They watched the legislator moving down the ramp. He was one of the senior legislators, and his pad
was down near the center of the meeting bowl.
"One sethturn left," Star-Glider whispered. "Just 12 blinks ... 8 .. .7 ... 6 ... 5 ... 4 ... 3 ... 2 ..." A gong
rang out and the tally remained tied at 114Yes and 114No.
"A tie tally is no tally," the tally counter announced.
"We've won!" shouted Star-Glider's image so loudly that Cliff-Web felt his tread tingle. "Pack your
pouches. I'll see you at the East Pole Spacecraft Assembly Plant."
"Won?" Cliff-Web said. "They haven't even started to take a tally on the appropriation. How can we
have won?"
"Considering how easy it is on the brain-knot of a legislator to postpone things, that last tally was an
overwhelming victory. Take my word, when they finally do get around to voting on the appropriations
scroll, it will be 3 to 1 in our favor."
But Star-Glider was wrong. With the leader of the fourth sextant pressing for a tread tally, the vote was
unanimous.
Cliff-Web turned off the holovid and returned to his gardening. It wouldn't do to leave the border
unfinished, and he needed the little bit of peaceful relaxation that came from
working the soft crumbled crust with his manipulators before he went off to take personal charge of one
of the larger engineering projects his company was undertaking.
The gardening finished, he returned to his quarters and started to stuff his pouches with the things he
would need during his long trip away from the compound.
"Moving-Sand!" he called. "Where are my engineering badges and body paint? There's bound to be
some formal ceremonies and I will have to wear them."
"They are still in your travel bag," said Moving-Sand, bringing the bag to him. "You never unpacked
from the last trip. I took out a bunch of dirty wipers that had so much dirt and food stains on them you
could use them for compost. There are clean rolls of wipers and some glow-jewels in the lower left hole
of your dressing wall."
"Just put the wipers in the bag," said Cliff-Web. 'The glow-jewels can stay. This is a job, not a party."
"Youwill take the glow-jewels," Moving-Sand insisted. "You'll be visiting the space stations and Topside
Platform.You may not think much of yourself, but you're a celebrity to those people. There will be
receptions, and you should look like the owner of one of the largest private companies on Egg."
Moving-Sand pulled the radioactive jewels made of neutron-fat uranium crystals out of the hole in the
dressing wall. He gave them to Cliff-Web, who watched the jewels for a while as they sparkled with
gamma-ray emission from the spontaneously fissioning uranium nuclei, then tucked them into his travel