Starquake.pdf

It was turnfeast, and Time-Circle shuffled listlessly past the foodmats in the faculty dining compound. He
took a few staple items from the wide selection, stuffed them in a carrying pouch, picked up a large bag
of unfermented pulp juice and made his way to the eating area. Over the topsides of some diners already
enjoying their turnfeast, he saw three eyes up on
stalks waving at him. He cheered up a little and made his way over to join the newest member of the
faculty club, D. C. Neutron-Drip, who had received a Doctorate in Crustallography and chosen a new
name only three turns ago.
Time-Circle had taken part in the ceremony as the senior representative of her in-clan family and had
given the clan approval for the name change. The two were the only members of their clan at the Inner
Eye Institute, since the clan home was far from Bright's Heaven at the East Pole. He knew from her age
that she wasn't from one of his eggs so he didn't have to be concerned about his relationship with her.
Now that she was no longer a student, he intended to get to know her better.
Neutron-Drip moved over as he approached and spread out to share the resting pad with her. Reaching
into his pouch, he pulled out his food and set it on the eating mat.
"What an uninspired turnfeast you have there," said Neutron-Drip, her eye-stubs waving back and forth
in disapproval. "Three ground-meat loaves, two crunch-fruits, and a bag of pulp juice. Turnfeast is
supposed to be a feast, not a refueling stop." She formed a manipulator, picked up a small portion of
baked Flow Slow egg covered with a tangy pulp nut sauce and held it before his eating pouch.
"Here," she said. "Try this, maybe it will cheer you up."
He took the morsel, very much aware of the feel of the strange manipulator in his eating pouch as he did
so.
"Itis very tasty. I may have to go back and get some for myself," he said, his eye-stub pattern assuming a
more normal wave-pattern as the taste of the nut sauce penetrated the back of his eating pouch.
"I thought that would cheer you up," she said. "What is bothering you?"
"My research project," he replied. "It used to be fun, but now it is giving me nothing but trouble."
"Is there something wrong with the Time-Comm machine?" she asked.
"It could be something wrong with the machine or it could be I don't understand the theory well enough
yet. Either way I don't get any money for a new 24-channel machine until I figure out what this one is
doing. This first machine only has four channels each way and it takes forever to get any data. I even had
to turn down a graduate student last turn. He was eager to do research on time communication, and I
would have loved to have a bright youngling to work with, but I honestly
couldn't allow him to spend the next dozen greats waiting to collect enough data to complete a doctoral
project."
"I know the student," said Neutron-Drip. "It was Eager-Eyes. He came to me after you turned him
down. He and I are going to set up a crustquake detector array around the East Pole mountains. With
any luck, his thesis should establish the basis for a theory to predict East Pole crustquakes."