Starquake.pdf

"There is someone muttering nearby."
They made their way into the office compound and found someone busy at a writing pad. She was old
and wore a circle of scientist badges around her body. Qui-Qui couldn't quite remember what the
symbols stood for.
"Hello?" Qui-Qui said tentatively.
"Let me finish this line." The scientist finished her writing and then turned the attention of her eyes to
them.
"I am Zero-Gauss, Doctor of Magnetics here at the Institute. I'm glad to see someone has finally come
to get things running again. We are in terrible shape here. Did you know that all the scrolls and
molecmems in the library are blank? I have been doing what I can, trying to reconstruct all my research
notes, but what with taking care of the plants and animals I just don't have enough time. I'm so tired. All I
want to do is tend eggs and hatchlings until I die."
"You can't do that!" said Qui-Qui.
"Why?"
"Not yet, at least. We three are the last ones left alive on Egg," Qui-Qui explained. "If the race is going
to survive we will have to lay eggs, many eggs."
"I'm too old and tired for egg-laying," said Zero-Gauss. "Besides, we are not the only ones left. There is
one other."
Zero-Gauss's tread sent off a directional call. "Speckle-Top, darling. Please come here. We have
company."
07:02:06 GMT TUESDAY 21 JUNE2050
Now that things had settled down into a routine, Qui-Qui was only supposed to check in on the
communicator every dozen turns. Hohmann-Transfer was in a meeting when she called this time, so
Shannon-Capacity transferred the call to Cliff-Web.
"We just had another hatchling last turn," said Qui-Qui. 'That makes eleven now. Pretty soon Heavy-Egg
can start education classes to train the junior engineers you need. Zero-Gauss is finally resigned to the
fact that she had to give up working on her research notes to tend eggs. She still thinks it's obscene
hatching her own eggs, but being a genetics expert she understands the importance of having as diverse a
gene pool as possible, so she does 'her duty' as she calls it and still lays eggs as well as hatches them."
Qui-Qui giggled before she continued with her next sentence. She still felt embarrassed using the
obscene words in polite conversation. "She is also keeping track of the 'mothers' of the hatchlings, so we
can avoid inbreeding as much as possible." She giggled again. "No problem identifying Speckle-Top's
'children.' Her speckles sure breed true.