Federation World

Chapter 9

HE had programmed the force shield to interdict inanimate objects and remain pervious to living beings. As a result, it was not the timer which awakened him but the excited voices of more than two hundred young Teldins who were surrounding the lander. The cliff-face and city were still shrouded in pre-dawn darkness, except for the intermittent illumination provided by the Scourge as it drew incandescent lines across the sky. He increased the intensity of die exterior lighting and went outside.

“I can’t answer all of your questions at once,” he said as his translator signaled overload, “so I will tell you about my vessel and some of the worlds it has visited…”

Except for a few of the older ones who muttered “Hearsay” they became very quiet and attentive. He began talking about planetary environments which were beautiful, terrifying, weird but always wonderful, and on the subject of the Federation he said only that it was a collection of people of many different shapes and sizes and degrees of intelligence who helped each other and who wanted to help Teldi.

When these youngsters grew up, Martin thought, it was likely that they would never again be able to regard their Teldin way of life with complete acceptance. And if die Teldins were not judged suitable for Federation citizenship and were left to fend for themselves, it seemed a particularly lousy trick he was playing on them by talking like this.

“I can’t predict where exactly they will hit,” Beth broke in urgently, “but that area is in for a bad time. Cut it short!”

“I’ll answer a few questions, then send them to shelter,” he told her. “The mountain on this side of the valley will protect us, so there’s no immediate…”

The sky was lit by a sudden flare of bright orange, the sound of muffled thunder and the ground seemed to twitch under Martin’s feet. He broke off and looked around wildly, then up at the cliff. Everything seemed normal.

‘That was a big one,” Beth said, her voice rising in pitch. “It hit close to the summit directly above you and started a rockslide. You can’t see it past the shoulder of the cliff. Tell them to…”

But Martin was already shouting for them to run for the shelter of the school. Nobody moved, and he had to explain quickly, so quickly that he was close to being incoherent, about Beth and the orbiting ship and its instruments which had given advance warning of the rock-fall which they could not yet see.

Still they did not move-they were dismissing his warning as hearsay. He angled one of the tender’s lights upward to show the top of the cliff and the first few rocks bouncing into sight over the edge.

They began to run then, too late.

“No, come back!” he shouted desperately. “There’s safety here. Get back to the landed”

Some of them hesitated. Without thinking about it Martin sprinted after the others and managed to get ahead of them-they were young and their legs were slightly shorter than his-and wave them back. There were about twenty of them outside the protection of the lander’s force shield now, but they were slowing down, stopping. He did not know whether they were simply frightened or confused or, since his recent demonstration of foreknowledge of the rockfall, they believed him when he said that the area around the lander was safe.

The first rocks struck the ground between the lander and the school entrance, bounced outward and rolled toward them. Three of the Teldins were knocked over and another was down hopping and crawling on four hands and a foot, dragging an injured limb behind it. Martin pointed at the glowing line on the ground which marked the edge of the force shield.

“Quickly, move them to the other side of that line. They’ll be safe there, believe me!”

He grabbed one of the fallen Teldins by the feet and began dragging it toward the line. The rolling and bouncing rocks were being stopped by the invisible shield, and the other students had realized that the protection was not hearsay. But more than half of them were down, and the uninjured were trying to drag them to safety. Martin pulled his Teldin across the line and went after another.

“Get back, dammit!” Beth shouted. “Half the bloody mountain is falling on you…!”

A rain of fine dust and stones struck his back as he bent over the Teldin casualty, and suddenly a bouncing rock hit him in the back of die leg. He sat down abruptly, tears as well as dust blinding him. The rumbling sound from high up on the cliff was growing louder, and large rocks were thumping into the ground all around him with increasing frequency. The force shield and safety were only a few meters away, but he did not know in which direction.

He was grasped suddenly by four large hands which lifted him and hurled him backward. He tumbled through the shield interface closely followed by the Teldin who had saved him. Martin blinked, trying to clear his vision as expert hands felt along his limbs and body.

“Nothing broken, stranger,” the young Teldin said, “Some minor lacerations and bruising on the leg. You should use your own medication to treat the injury.”

‘Thank you,” Martin said. He climbed to his feet and limped toward the lander.

The sound of the rockfall had become muffled because the hemisphere of the force shield was completely covered by loose rocks and soil. Several of the casualties lay looking up at the smooth dome of rubble which had inexplicably refused to fall on them, with expressions which were still unreadable to Martin, while the others had obviously accepted the invisible protection as a fact and were busying themselves with the injured.

When each and every victim and survivor was a trained medic, he thought admiringly, the aftermath of even a major disaster lost much of its horror.

Another young Teldin intercepted him at the tender’s entry port. It said, “Thank you, stranger. All of the students who were trying to reach the school have returned or have been returned. There are no fatalities.”

Not yet, thought Martin.

He was concerned about the tremendous weight of rock pressing down on the force shield. That shield could handle the heaviest of meteor showers or projectile-firing weapons without difficulty, but it had not, been designed to support the weight of an avalanche. The drain on the small ship’s power reserves did not bear thinking about.

He looked at the hemisphere of rocks above and around him, knowing that Beth’s repeaters were showing her everything he saw, and asked, “How long can I keep it up?”

“Not long,” she said grimly. “But long enough for your air to run out first. There are over two hundred people in there. I’m coming down.”

He started to protest, then realized that Beth knew as well as he did that she could not land the great, ungainly bulk of the hypership-its configuration suited it only for deep space and orbital maneuvering. The ship could, in an emergency be brought close to the ground, but it was not the kind of maneuver to be undertaken by a trainee on first assignment. Worrying out loud, however, would only undermine her confidence, so Martin remained silent while he applied a dressing to his damaged leg and watched the pictures she was sending down to him.

He saw the valley city grow large in his main screen, saw the fresh meteor crater on the mountainside above the school, and the gray scar left by the rockslide joining it with the great pile of rubble at the base of the cliff where the lander was buried. He saw four large, shallow depressions appear suddenly in unoccupied areas of the valley floor as the hypership’s pressor beams were deployed to check the vessel’s descent and hold her, braced and immobile, on four rigid, immaterial stilts. Her tremendous force shield covered the whole valley, and for the first time in over a thousand years the Scourge was impotent against the city.

A tractor beam speared out, came to a tight focus, and began to pull at the pile of rubble.

“Nice work,” Martin said warmly. “Concentrate on digging us out and clearing a path to the school entrance. Some of these casualties will have to be moved there for proper treatment, and quickly.”

Clearing the rocks above the lander was taking much longer than expected; every time Beth pulled out a mass of nibble, more slid down to fill the space. He decided to run a quick computation based on the volume of air trapped inside the shield and the rate at which it was being used by two hundred Teldins whose lung capacities were almost double that of a human being, and his anxiety gave way to mounting desperation.

He went out to talk to the younger students and try to reassure them, and discovered that three of them were the children of Masters.

Now I’m really in trouble, he thought.

All around him, the older Teldins were suggesting to each other, and by inference to Martin, that they should not waste air in needless conversation. He returned to the lander.

“You should seal yourself inside the lander,” Beth said suddenly. “It’s air-maker will easily produce enough to keep you alive while I’m digging you out, but the same amount of air distributed among two hundred Tel-dins wouldn’t last ten minutes. The unit is not designed to support that many beings. Think about it.”

For several minutes Martin thought very seriously about it. He thought about facing Skorta with the news that he alone was alive among two hundred asphyxiated students. Briefly, he thought about playing God and squeezing a few of the Teldins into the lander-young ones, of course, and probably the children of the Masters. What would Skorta think of that compromise? For some reason that particular Teldin’s good opinion of him had become very important to Martin.

Would it be better, he wondered in sudden self-disgust, simply to stay in the lander without speaking to any Teldin and-when he was able to take off-rejoin the hypership and return to Fomalhaut Three? He could tell the tutor that the problem had become too complicated, that the responsibility for assessing the Teldin species for citizenship was too much for him. In short, he should simply walk away from the whole sorry mess.

He was still thinking about it, and he had not closed the lander’s entry port, when Beth spoke again.

“All right!” she said angrily. “Be noble and self-sacrificing and…and stupid! But I have another idea. It’s tricky. I don’t think the equipment is supposed to be used in this way, and it could be more dangerous so far as you’re concerned…”

Her idea was to concentrate on clearing a small area at the exact top center of the shield, the point where it could be opened without the rest of the shield collapsing, and use wide focus pressors to stop the surrounding rocks from sliding into the opening for as long as possible-long enough, at least, for the stinking fog inside to be replaced with fresh outside air. The danger to Martin was that if the pressors slipped, the rocks which fell into the opening would smash through the canopy of the lander’s control deck some thirty meters below, and he would no longer have to worry about his assignment or anything else.

Bitterly he cursed the design of the super-efficient meteor shield that allowed access to organic matter down to the size of the smallest microorganism, and forbade it to the even smaller but nonliving molecules of the air they so desperately needed. And there was no time for the complex reprogramming necessary to alter that possibly fatal error.

For the next twenty minutes he divided his attention between the rocks visible about him and Beth’s outside viewpoint, which showed her doing things to the pile of rock with tractor and pressor beams which he had not thought possible. Then slowly, from both viewpoints, a gap appeared. It was about two meters wide and it was holding.

“Now” Beth said.

Very carefully he dilated the shield until the aperture was roughly a meter across. Stones and coarse gravel rattled down on the canopy, but nothing large enough to cause damage. The fine rock dust which had begun to fall was being blown out again as the hot, stale air rushed to escape. It held for one, two… nearly five minutes.

“It’s beginning to…” Beth began.

He hit the stud which returned the shield to full coverage and cringed as several small rocks which had slipped through banged against the canopy. The gap above was again completely closed with rubble.

“.. slip,” she ended.

Around the lander the uninjured students were on their feet, standing motionless and watching him in absolute silence. Martin gestured vaguely, not knowing what else to do, and they began sitting down again.

The next time they needed to freshen the air, enough rubble had been cleared to allow Martin to leave the aperture open. But the sun was close to setting before the lander and the school forecourt were completely uncovered and the students began moving in an orderly procession toward the entrance, carrying the injured with them.

Skorta came hurrying in the opposite direction.

It stopped in front of Martin and stood looking down at him for several seconds. The Teldin was trembling, whether from anger, relief, or fatigue Martin could not say.

“The students,” it said, “would have been safe inside the school.”

“There were no deaths,” Martin said, by way of an apology. “And, ah, three of the students are the children of Masters.”

The Teldin was still shaking as it said, “Those students are the property of their Master parent. They are loved and cherished, as are all children, but they are not yet Masters and may never be.” It gestured with three of its arms, indicating the lander, the valley city, and the hypership, which still looked gigantic even through it had withdrawn to an altitude of three miles. “Your activities here have been reported to the Masters. Now I have been instructed to proceed at once to the polar city to undergo a Masters interrogation regarding you. If you wish it you may accompany me.”

“I would like that,” Martin said. “I could explain to the Masters why I…”

“No, stranger,” the Teldin said, no longer shaking. “At most we can speak together and be overheard by the Masters, but nothing you say to me has any value. To them it would be hearsay and irresponsible. Martin, can you send for… can you urgently request the presence of your Master?”

“No,” Martin said. “My Master would not come.”

“Then the Masters of Teldi will not accept your words,” Skorta went on, “although I, personally, would like to speak with you at great length. But there could be grave danger for you here. I have no previous knowledge or hearsay which enables me to foretell what will happen when we meet the Masters.

“It would be safer,” it ended, “if you left Teldi at once.”

“That is good advice,” Beth said.

Martin knew that, but at the same time he was feeling confused by a sudden warmth of feeling for this large, incredibly ugly, and strangely considerate extraterrestrial. There could be no doubt that the Masters were going to give Skorta a hard time, and that Martin was directly responsible for its problems. His presence during the interrogation would relieve the Teldin of a lot of the pressure-especially if Martin pleaded ignorance and took the blame for everything that had happened. It would not be right to leave this senior teaching slave to face them alone. Besides, giving moral support to the Teldin might give him a chance to complete the assignment.

“I want to meet the Masters,” he said, to both Skorta and Beth. “Thank you for your concern. However, I can remove the danger of the long journey to the polar city. My lander can take us there very quickly, and a speedy response to their summons might favorably impress your Masters. Are you willing to travel in my vessel?”

“Yes, Martin,” die Teldin replied with no hesitation at all, “and I am grateful indeed for this unique opportunity.”

There was a feeling in Martin’s stomach not unlike zero gee, a sensation composed of fear and excitement at the knowledge that, within a matter of hours, the empty spaces in the Teldin jigsaw puzzle would be filled in, and he would know the full extent of the trouble he had caused and, perhaps, the penalty to be paid for causing it.