Pierre checked her tank, then as the water splashed up on the porthole, he made his way around the central column, trying to stay as close to the center of ma.s.s of the ship as possible to keep the gravitational forces down. Just before he closed his own hatch door, he noticed that the latching mechanism for the metallic shields over one of the outside portholes had failed and he could look out and see the deadly neutron star whirling by the porthole five times a second. Fortunately the gla.s.s was still holding pressure. As he was closing his hatch door, he saw a cl.u.s.ter of bright, starlike objects appear just outside the porthole.

06:55:05 GMT TUESDAY 21 JUNE2050.

"Holy Egg!" exclaimed one of the cheela crew as the small armada of cheela s.p.a.cecraft drifted in between the large glowing condensed asteroids. Engines working continuously to compensate for the constantly changing gravity field pattern caused by the out-of-position asteroids, the s.p.a.cecraft settled into a synchronous position some fifteen meters out from the hull of Dragon Slayer. They were near one of the viewing ports where the metallic shield had been drawn back.

"Break out a flitter for me," commanded Star-Glider.

"Yes, Admiral!" replied his second-in-command, Captain Bright-Star. Her tread'trummed a command into the crystalline hull of the s.p.a.ceship where it was picked up by the flitter launching crew on the opposite hemisphere of their spherical s.p.a.ceship.

"May I accompany you on another flitter?" Bright-Star asked with an electronic whisper.

"Certainly. It is not often we get a chance to look at a human in the flesh. I understand they look very strange since the X-rays penetrate right through them and you can see the manipulator bones inside them.

In fact, I'm sure most of the crew would like an opportunity to see the Slow Ones. Break out some X-ray illuminators and take them over to that porthole to illuminate the inside."

With the X-ray illuminators in place, the crew could see through the heavily tinted, fuzzy gla.s.s. The main deck was empty except for two large, jagged objects floating slowly by. They were nearly transparent except for a bent piece of metal embedded in a hole in one of them. Using the map of Dragon Slayer obtained from the archive files, Star-Glider was able to identify the hatch door to Pierre's tank. The hatch door was half open, and in the hatch Star-Glider could see a strangely shaped and colored blob. It was Pierre's head. At the center of the blob was a relatively dense violet structure with four holes in it. The bony skull was covered with blue-white flesh, while the top and bottom had faint yellow-white strands of hair.

"Why doesn't he close the hatch door?" Bright-Star asked.

"He is. It just takes a long time for the Slow Ones to doanything" Star-Glider replied. "If you come back in a few turns, you will be able to see that the hatch door is shutting. But it will take a dozen turns before he gets it closed and latched."

Another flitter joined them. Riding on top was Watson-Crick, Professor of Humanology at the Inner Eye Inst.i.tute and Chief Scientist on the expedition.

"Admiral Star-Glider," he began. "I recognize that our original plan had been to study the humans and their s.p.a.cecraft after the herder rocket has been fixed. But with all the humans in the protection tanks but one, and only the head of that one available for a.n.a.lysis, I was wondering if you might allow us some research time now, before Pierre closes his hatch door."

"You wouldn't be asking if the legislature had only moved ahead on this project more quickly," said Star-Glider. "We would have been here two minutes ago and had three humans to study."

"It is really too bad," Watson-Crick agreed. "Our modern instruments are much more sophisticated than the ones used the last time cheela had the opportunity to a.n.a.lyze a human."

"When was that?" Bright-Star asked.

"Over a thousand greats ago," Watson-Crick replied. "Could we have a dozen turns, Admiral?"

Star-Glider considered. "I'll give you a half-dozen. Then we'd better get on with the main purpose of the mission-fix that rocket and rescue the humans."

The humanologists were greatly disappointed that all they had to study was a human head, andit was over two meters from the porthole. But they did what they could and were finished when only five turns were up.

06:55:06 GMT TUeSDAY 21 JUNE2050

"Well," Star-Glider prompted as soon as Watson-Crick told him they were finished. "A whole human second has gone by. Let's get busy and rescue them. Head out to that malfunctioning herder rocket, then ready the cargo ship to put its replacement engine in place."

Bright-Star tapped the message into the hull with her under-tread. Soon the giant cheela s.p.a.cecraft, as big as a basketball, smoothly moved over toward one of the six glowing red ma.s.ses surrounding Dragon Slayer.

The tiny glowing ship approached to within a few meters of the gigantic stainless steel girders that held the failing rocket engine to the main body of the herder rocket.

"Be careful," Star-Glider warned. "Don't get too close. That stuff is as fragile as a Tiny-Sh.e.l.l hatchling."

"Launch the cutters and collectors,"'trummed Bright-Star, and a collection of smaller spheres emerged from depressions in the side of the large spherical cruiser. The smallest of the tiny ships were one-cheela flitter spheres, not much bigger than a cheela body. Each cheela brandished a long dragon-crystal cutter.

As large as swords, they were especially designed for this mission.

They approached the girders at selected joints and proceeded to slice through the hard steel of the beam as if it were fog. Other cheela directed larger robotic s.p.a.cecraft in a zig-zag pattern through the thrust chamber of the sputtering rocket engine. The extreme gravitational tides of the black holes inside the cheela s.p.a.cecraft tore the steel chamber into incandescent threads, the material compressing and sucking down onto the surface of the s.p.a.cecraft where it disappeared in a flash of light, leaving a tiny lump of degenerate matter on the surface of the sphere that rapidly spread out into a thin incandescent sheet. With the rocket chamber removed from the herder rocket, it was time to install the replacement engine that the cheela had brought with them.

"Bring up the cargo ship," said Star-Glider. "But, take your time and do it right, we have a whole turn before the rocket is due to fire again."

The cargo ship moved up into the void at the rear of the herder rocket where the engine had been. The cargo ship, a sphere 360 millimeters in diameter, carried embedded in its surface the 144-millimeter doughnut-shaped engine. Both were dwarfed by the gutted remains of the 10-meter diameter herder rocket body.

"Engine in position," Bright-Star reported.

"Release engine and remove cargo ship," Star-Glider commanded.

The Jumbo Bagel and the cargo sphere separated. As the sphere moved off, violet force beams shot out from tiny b.u.mps on the glowing white doughnut, to grasp the girder cut-off points on the frame of the herder rocket. The violet beams varied in brightness as they brought the rocket under control. The tiny, but ma.s.sive, engine was now installed.

Star-Glider felt the sethturns tick away on the chronometer at the top of the console under his tread.

When the proper time came he gave the order.

"Activate inertia drive."

The violet traction beams holding the engine brightened, and there was a warping of s.p.a.ce emanating from the hole in the doughnut. The star field to the rear of the herder rocket wavered. After a long wait of nearly a dothturn, the engine cut off, its job on this cycle of the rotation done. They would have to wait for eleven more dothturns before the engine would be called on again, so there was little to do but clean up and wait. Then there would begin the long tedious process of checking out the operation of the engine for a number of cycles before the expedition left the engine operating on its own and returned to the surface of Egg.

Star-Glider was pleased. The mission had been a success. Three of his eyes focused on those of his first officer.

"Announce a rest-turn, Bright-Star," he whispered. "And pierce the pulp-bags!"

But before the captain could'trum the official command, the admiral's electronic whisper had been picked up by the bridge crew. Soon Star-Glider heard subdued tappings echoing throughout the s.p.a.cecraft. He flipped a tendril at the captain, silencing her before she started to'trum the command into the deck. The two listened with their treads. They heard a rustle of eager treads hurrying toward the recreation area where the pulp-bags were stored. The wave-pattern of Star-Glider's eye-stubs developed an annoyed twitch. Bright-Star knew what was coming and picked up the sensitive edges of her tread as a roar shook the crystal hull undertread.

"BUT FIRST!!!" came the Swift-stopping shout from the Admiral's tread. "An INSPECTION!!! A wet-eye-ball inspection!"

A shocked silence followed throughout the ship. The only sound coming through the hull was the throb of the idling inertia drive engines.

"Look at this place!"'trummed Star-Glider as he moved about the bridge, his tread tossing up bits of trash and dust, his tendrils flipping at offending insignia on junior officers that weren't held exactly horizontal to the local vertical.

"How can I expect the rest of the crew to keep this place ship shape when the bridge looks like a Flow Slow wallow!" He glided over a display screen in the deck, then exploded again.

"What Tiny-Sh.e.l.l-brained offspring of a Slink dribbled pulp juice on the screen?!? The taste of those spots burns my tread. I want that screen cleaned and I want this ship cleaned until I can put a wet eye-ball on any spot without blinking!!"

He stormed off to his private quarters and slammed the sliding door. He waited a few methturns, then concentrated on the vibrations coming through the hull. There was a subdued murmur as Bright-Star and the rest of the officers spread throughout the ship. Then there came the shuffling sound of the crew as they started the long overdue cleanup of the ship.

Star-Glider formed a tendril, inserted it into a pouch in his side, and pulled out a magnekey. He inserted the key into a slot in the side of his locker, slid open the door and pulled out a small bag of West Pole Double-Distilled, the best on Egg. Carrying the bag, he shuffled tiredly over to his resting pad, his body seeming to deflate as he relaxed his command posture and spread out on the soft decorated mat. He put the bag of pulp in his drinking pouch and with a powerful squeeze from his pouch muscles, broke the bag and started to squeeze the pungent juice through the thin membrane at the back of the pouch. He fluffed up his manipulator pillow, formed a small holding manipulator and laid it on the pillow. He then used a tendril to extract one of his twelve-pointed star-shaped admiral's insignia from its holding sphincter in his side. He brought the star near his drinking pouch, spit some pulp-juice on it, transferred it to his holding manipulator, and proceeded to buff it to a high polish with a well-used rag. To help pa.s.s the time, he flicked on his holovid and watched the final segment of theQui-Qui Revue. Qui-Qui was a little past her prime, but she was still the s.e.xiest female on holovid.

06:55:07 GMT TU6SDHY 21 JUNE2050.

"The cheela must have fixed the herder rocket," said Amalita from her tank, her voice altered by the breathing mask. "There is still no rocket exhaust, but the gravity tides are getting weaker."

Pierre shifted his glance from Amalita's image in the upper left of his split screen to the view seen by the one remaining outside camera.

"I noticed some activity at the rear of the rocket just a second ago and now there is a brightly glowing framework where the engine used to be," said Pierre.

Amalita activated the miniaturized engineering control panel in her tank and zoomed the camera in to focus on the rear of the herder rocket. Five times a second the star field in back of the rocket wavered.

Slowly, the wandering compensator ma.s.s was moved back to its correct position and once again began to coordinate its motion with that of the others, the invisible warping of one of its herder rockets contrasting with the brilliant rocket blasts from the rest.

Soon the humans in the tanks could no longer feel the residual tidal tugs and their ears stopped sensing the ultrasonic beams that had protected them from the pulls at their extremities.

"I guess it's safe to come out," Pierre said looking at the five faces in the split screen display inside his tank.

"What about Seiko?" Jean asked.

Pierre looked at the screen next to the one that held Jean's image. Seiko still had her eyes closed and was breathing very slowly.

"I recommend we let her sleep," said Doc Wong's image from the screen below. "I'll keep a watch on her in case she has trouble with her breathing mask."

"Last one out of the water is a wrinkled prune!" Abdul was already starting the purge of his tank.

"Wait!" said Amalita. "Let me go out and check first for problems. The interior pressure monitor is holding steady, but there may be leaks or weak spots." From her console she canceled Abdul's purge command and started her tank draining instead.

"Put on your s.p.a.ce suit before you go wandering around the ship banging on walls," Pierre reminded her.

"Of course." Amalita opened the hatch and listened carefully. Hearing nothing unusual, she pulled herself out of the emptying tank and into the main deck area and ottered up the pa.s.sageway to the suit storage locker.

Quiet

06:55:16 TUESDAY 21 JUNE2050.

When the Rescue Expedition returned from its successful mission, the Commander of the East Pole s.p.a.ce Station arranged a formal reception for Admiral Star-Glider and his staff. Admiral Milky-Way and a number of the s.e.xtant leaders from the Legislature jumped up for the occasion.

Cliff-Web dutifully shined up his engineer badges, painted his body in a pattern of silver and yellow that Moving-Sand had a.s.sured him was stylish, plugged his remaining holding sphincters with glow-jewels, and suffered through the event.

The reception started at turnfeast and lasted three dothturns. The foodmats were covered with enough food and drink to gorge a Flow Slow. There was a whole roasted hatchling with its pouches full of triposter-nut stuffing and tastefully garnished to cover the accident scar, cubes of Flow Slow marinated in a pungent sauce that Cliff-Web didn't care for, a chopped fruit he hadn't seen before, topped with pickled Tiny Sh.e.l.l eggs, and baskets piled high with tiny bags of sparkling juice from White Rock City.

Cliff-Web took two and broke one in his eating pouch. The delicate flavor of the distilled pulp juice was heightened by the spurts of energy from the fissioning uranium nuclei added just before the distillate was bagged. Cliff-Web stayed until Admiral Milky-Way climaxed the event by a promotion ceremony for Admiral Star-Glider. Three s.e.xtant leaders and three s.p.a.ce Force officers formed a circle around Star-Glider and each replaced a single twelve-pointed star with a two star cl.u.s.ter. Star-Glider took the opportunity to choose a new name for himself. He was now Admiral Steel-Slicer.

Cliff-Web decided it was time to leave when Schuler-Period started making eyes at him. She was at least two pulp-bags past her limit and was trying to get him to come to her quarters to sample her locker.

She wasn't bad looking and would have been fun to tread, but he made it a point never to get involved with government officials. He did too much business with the government. He slipped away while she was admiring Steel-Slicer's new stars.

A dothturn later, stripped of his reception finery, he was at the launch deck of the s.p.a.ce station, waiting for a Web Construction Company shuttlecraft to pick him up. The launch deck was on the Egg-facing side of the spherical s.p.a.ce station. He looked out at his glowing home world and tried to make out the cities below. At 406 kilometers distance the cities were blurred patches on the yellow crust, and the only thing that showed up was the cool patch of the East Pole mountain range with his s.p.a.ce Fountain rising up from it.

The top of the s.p.a.ce Fountain stopped at 405,900 meters, while the East Pole s.p.a.ce Station was in synchronous...o...b..t at 406,300 meters. The s.p.a.ce station was located slightly to one side of the s.p.a.ce Fountain so he could not only see the nucleus of what was to be the Topside Platform, but the long stalk that held it up over the East Pole mountains. As he watched, a glowing dot rose from the platform below him. It started to drift off to the west, but thrusters brought it back under the s.p.a.ce station. The speck grew larger, turned into a Web Construction shuttlecraft, and settled on the launch deck. Cliff-Web recognized the pilot as Heavy-Egg, one of the shift supervisors for the Topside Platform crew. With the two stations this close together, it didn't require a trained s.p.a.ce pilot to move from one to the other. Just another example of how the s.p.a.ce Fountain was going to revolutionize s.p.a.ce travel on Egg.

Cliff-Web moved along the curved ramp that allowed his body to transition from the gravity field of the black hole in the center of the s.p.a.ce station to the field of the tiny black hole in the center of the four-cheela shuttiecraft.

"How is the job going, Heavy-Egg?" Cliff-Web asked.

"Like a greased Swift, Boss," Heavy-Egg replied, lifting the shuttlecraft vertically out of its dimple in the launch ramp area. "We're way ahead of schedule. We stopped 100 meters short of top-out three turns ago. I've got the crew making Topside Platform look decent for the topout ceremony. The Chief En- gineer says there's going to be a bunch of big badges from Bright's Heaven and the s.p.a.ce Force coming for it."

Cliff-Web was not looking forward to another formal reception, especially one he would be paying for; but it was all part of doing business. They berthed in a hemispherical cradle near the middle of a 50-millimeter flat disk covered with busy workers engaged in the long task of expanding the disk into a large, 200-millimeter diameter platform that would have low walls to divide the deck into offices and compounds for the operations crew, and shops and eating places for the pa.s.sengers and tourists. This was the top of the three decks in Topside Platform where the pa.s.sengers and cargo would be transferred from the Fountain to various s.p.a.ce stations and s.p.a.cecraft and back again.

Cliff-Web and Heavy-Egg glided off the spherical shuttlecraft onto the flat deck.

"It sure feels good being on a flat surface again after all that time in s.p.a.ce on curved decks," Cliff-Web remarked.

"I know what you mean," Heavy-Egg agreed. "I never did trust them black holes. I like to be under Egg gravity, even if it is kind of weak."

"During top-out just make sure you stop your crew after 100 meters," said Cliff-Web. "The gravity from Egg will still be strong enough to keep us together. But if you go 300 meters more, the gravity will drop to zero...."

"Andwhooshl We get as big as humans."

"Become a cloud of plasma, is more like it," said Cliff-Web. "Things are progressing well here on Topside, let's take the elevators to the middle deck."

They went to a special freight elevator reserved for the operations personnel. The tread pad in front of the elevator door recognized Heavy-Egg's tread and let them board. They stopped at the middle deck and moved off into a cavernous room. The deck beneath their tread vibrated with energy. The bottom of the deck above was not cooled to simulate sky, but was only covered with silver paint. It helped some, but even though he was an experienced engineer, having something overhead still bothered Cliff-Web.

There was a loud clang from nearby.

"Still getting pushouts?" Cliff-Web asked.

"Three or four per turn," Heavy-Egg answered. 'The Chief Engineer makes us save them and send them to Quality. An up-deflector on platform 200 caused some trouble, but that got fixed. Now Quality says we are just weeding out bad rings."

They moved over to a ma.s.sive tube that rose out of the deck, curved into a large arc that touched the ceiling overhead, then came back down to penetrate the deck again. Six of them were equally s.p.a.ced around the center of the deck. In a bin near the tube was a glowing-hot ring suspended in a magnetic field. A young roustabout was fishing out the ring with a hook. As soon as the ring was placed on the deck, she sucked her manipulator inside her body to cool it off.

"Bright's t.u.r.d!" she swore. "That eye-ball-sucking catcher field ishot!"

She hadn't sensed their approach on the noisy deck, but now saw them coming with one of her eyes.

She didn't know who the stranger was, but from all the metal hanging off him, he must be some sort of big badge. She pulled her still stinging manipulator out and picked up the ring.

"I'll get this right over to Quality, Supervisor," she said.