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"Just a sec while I reset the neutrino detector," electronic engineer Abdul Nkomi Farouk replied as he<br />
pushed himself over to hover above the star image table. Seiko reached up to the ceiling and made some<br />
adjustments to the telescope controls. The disk of light on the table expanded to show an elongated<br />
twelve-pointed star formation in the southern hemisphere of the neutron star.<br />
Still the largest structure on the star, the Holy Temple had been raised by the cheela nearly 24 hours ago<br />
as they emerged from barbarism. Led by the ancient prophet Pink-Eyes (one of the few cheela who<br />
could see the visible light from the human's laser mapping beam), the cheela had raised the great<br />
mound-temple to serve as a place for worship of their pantheon of gods: the God-Star Bright (our nearby<br />
Sun hovering over the South Pole axis of the neutron star), Bright's Messenger (the large asteroid, Otis,<br />
in its highly elliptical orbit), the six Eyes of Bright (the six small asteroids in a circle hovering over the East<br />
Pole), and the Inner Eye of Bright (the tiny human spacecraft at the center of the ring of asteroids).<br />
After the humans had established contact and convinced the cheela that they were not gods, the Holy<br />
Temple had been neglected and was slowly fading away into the landscape. The shape of the temple was<br />
that of a cheela at full alert, a long ellipsoidal body, with the long direction aligned along the local direction<br />
of the magnetic field, and twelve round eyes perched on short, exponentially tapered eye-stubs. After a<br />
hundred generations of neglect, the ancient ruins had degenerated to twelve blobs that used to be eyes<br />
and portions of wall mounds that had formed the rest of the body. Now, however, one of the eyes was<br />
once again dark and round, while its eye-stub was easily visible in the telescope image.<br />
Abdul thoughtfully twisted one black whisker tip with his fingers as he pondered the scene. "Looks like<br />
they're fixing up the Holy Temple. Are they reverting to human worship?"<br />
"Absolutely not." Seiko pronounced her verdict in the authoritative Teutonic tone she had learned from<br />
her father. "They are too intelligent for that. Since they now have space travel, they must have looked<br />
down and realized that the most visible structure on Egg looks rundown. Unless your neutrino and X-ray<br />
detectors have responded to a crustquake recently, it must be some sort of historical renovation project."<br />
"No big quakes lately," said Abdul. "So they must be doing this on purpose."<br />
"It's about time," Seikohumphed in disapproval. "That is the trouble with egg-layers, especially those<br />
that let the clan Old Ones raise the young. With no direct family ties through parents, they have no<br />
personal links to history."<br />
Seiko had had no sleep for the past 36 hours. She looked up to adjust the solar image telescope<br />
controls to expand the view. The sudden motion made her head swim. She hit the wrong switch, and the<br />
filter that blocked most of the light from the neutron star flicked open for an instant. Her eyes shut against<br />
the glare.<br />
"Seiko ... Seiko ..."<br />
Seiko opened her heavy eyelids to see Dr. Cesar Wong holding her by the shoulders and peering<br />
through the wisps of straight black hair that had fallen forward over her face. Floating next to him was<br />
Abdul.<br />
"I told her and I told her she shouldn't have skipped her last sleep break," Abdul said. "Maybe she'll<br />
listen to you and take one this time."<br />
"Seiko, my dear." Cesar's deep brown eyes showed concern. "You have driven yourself much too hard.
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