Starquake.pdf

terrifying image. With the rest of her eyes she looked at the nice flat crust all around her and tried to calm
herself. She tried to talk to the grown-up in the hole but found her tread was clenched tight to the crust.
She loosened her tread and, keeping her eyes from looking too often at the missing place in the crust, she
finally was able to answer.
"Hello, there," Speckle-Top said, her tread still shrill from tension. "How did you get down in that hole?"
"By elevator," Zero-Gauss replied.
"Elevator?"
"It is a machine for going up and down. But it won't work without power, so I guess I'll have to stay here
until they get the power fixed. Could you please tell your creche-teacher or some adult I'm down here
and have them send some help?"
"I don't have any spew-wiping creche-teacher." Speckle-Top said in an annoyed tone of voice. "I take
care of myself!"
"I'm sorry." Zero-Gauss was a little shocked at the vulgar language. "I couldn't see you, and I thought
you were a youngling. I'm stuck down here with some hungry research animals and I need to get power
restored to my elevator in a hurry. Could you please find a peace officer or someone to notify the
authorities?"
"I'm not finding no spew-licking clanker for nobody," said Speckle-Top. "Besides, they're all dead.
Everybody is dead. You and Fuzzy-Pink are the only things alive I've seen anywhere in Bright's Heaven."
As they talked, Speckle-Top slowly lost her fear of heights and moved over to one corner of the square
hole in the ground
until she and Zero-Gauss could see each other while they were talking.
"Youare a youngling." Zero-Gauss felt her protective instincts rising as she saw the skinny, besmirched
young cheela. "What happened to you? You are all covered with paint. Are any of your clan left to take
care of you?"
Speckle-Top hesitated a little before answering. "No."
"Then I'll be responsible for you until we can find a member of your clan. My name is Zero-Gauss. I am
a professor at the Institute. But first we've got to get me and the animals out of here. They are getting
awfully hungry, and I don't want them eating my research plants."
She ducked back under one of the massive leaning roof-plates and came back with an empty animal
cage. Then she pushed her body up the sloping ramplike intersection between two fallen roof plates at
one corner of her devastated underground laboratory and added the cage to the row already there.
Holding onto the cages with part of her tread, she stretched herself out until she had one eye perched up
above the top of the hole right next to Speckle-Top. Now that she was close enough, she could see that
Speckle-Top was one of those dump-hatchlings from West-heaven. That explained the filthy language.
Rin-Tin-Tin pushed its way between them to get a pat, now that it had done its duty.
"I can't get any more than one eye up here," said Zero-Gauss. "I've tried and tried for the last two turns,
but I can't get enough of me out to pull the rest of me up. I need more cages or something to climb on.