Starquake.pdf

"I'm sorry, Chief," Shiny-Tread mumbled as he clumsily climbed down off his boss's topside onto the
curved deck. But no one paid him any attention. Even the chief engineer's eyes
were turned upward as sorrowful sounds murmured through the deck. Shiny-Tread looked up.
"Hard-Way!" Shiny-Tread shouted. "Come back! COME BACK!!"
They watched in silence as Hard-Way sailed high over the launch area and off into the distance. They
saw one of her eyes pop out for a look, then her tread start to move futilely in an attempt to return. The
cloud of particles floating around Hard-Way increased and cut off their view.
"You will have to jump slower or go around ..." Cliff-Web told the crew.
"We'll have no hide left if we try to go around," said Many-Rings, a new shift supervisor. "We've got to
cross." She formed manipulators and grabbed onto three of her crew nearby.
"Hold on, you lumps of flab," she said. "I'm going to play jump loop." She brought out most of her eyes
and, concentrating carefully, stretched her body out into a long bridge and grabbed the opposite side.
She moved her rear manipulators off her crew and attached them to the edge of the deck. Then she
pulled in her eyes and tried not to think of what she was doing.
"Get across, you Tiny-Shell-brained offspring of a Flow Slow!" her trailing tread roared. The crew
gingerly crossed over on the makeshift bridge, pulled their valiant supervisor over to safety and soon
were all crowded in the protective gravity of the shuttlecraft. Some of the crew had lost so much hide
they were starting to ooze through the muscle tissue underneath.
There was a rumble from below, and the deck lurched as Topside Platform started to break up.
"Raise shuttle," Cliff-Web ordered. "And take us up to the East Pole Space Station. We'll have to take a
jumpcraft or catapult-lift down and start helping get things restored back on Egg."
Captain Far-Ranger was discussing her warpfeast plans with the chef on East Pole Space Station when
Egg flared up. When the light became too bright to look at, she knew there was trouble and headed for
the Command Deck. Once there, she stayed in the background and let the station commander, Admiral
Hohmann-Transfer, run things.
"Communications Officer, any transmissions from the surface yet?" Hohmann-Transfer asked.
"None from the surface except a single navigation beacon," Lieutenant Giga-Byte replied. "But two
vehicles are sending transmissions. One is the jumpcraft in the abort orbit. The other is a personal flyer at
the West Pole. The West Pole Space Station has been unable to make contact with the flyer. They don't
have transmitters for the flyer band."
"How is the jumpcraft orbit?" Hohmann-Transfer asked.
"The pilot was able to circularize the orbit. But they are running low on power to operate the gravity
generators."
"How much time do they have?"