Part 18 (1/2)
”Who is the Taker?” Otis-Elevator asked. ”And what is a dothbute?”
”Each 72 turns the Taker for the Emperor comes from Bright Center and commands us to gather the clan herd. We then give them a dothbute for the Emperor and they leave with the animals. They give us 144 more food Slink eggs of the type that they want for the next harvest, and we tend them until the next taking.”
”They take a dozeth of your herd and don't even pay you?” Otis-Elevator was incredulous.
”No,” Letter-Reader replied. ”We get to keep a dozeth of their herd if we have taken care of them properly.”
”Why don't you raise your own herd?” asked Otis-Elevator.
”We have no Slink eggs,” said Letter-Reader. ”The Emperor does not allow us to have animals that might eat his groundnuts. We ourselves must only harvest groundnuts in the hilly areas where the food Slinks are not allowed. I am afraid the clan will go hungry this great of turns. We lost six Zebu Slinks to wild Swifts, then your machine killed two, and six were scattered and lost. The meat you have belongs to the Emperor. The Taker for the Emperor will be angry that it is not fresh.”
'Tell the Taker that we will pay for the food Slink,” said Otis Elevator. ”Right now we need food, but by the next dozen turns we will have plenty of food. The Taker and all your clan can come and have as much as you want.”
”You do not tell the truth. You cannot grow food in a dozen turns.”
”We make the food,” Otis-Elevator said. ”We use a machine. It makes foods with many different flavors.
Come in a dozen turns and taste them.”
He reached into a pouch, pulled out a glow-jewel eye-ring, placed it on the ground, and moved back away. ”That is a present for you. We are sorry that our flying machine scared you and your herd Tell your clan leader we will not let the clan go hungry.”
Letter-Reader was not looking at the glow-ring. Instead four of his eyes were looking at the silvery metal scroll that Len-McCoy was still holding.
”Is that a scroll?” asked Letter-Reader.
”Yes,” said Len-McCoy.
”With letters and words on it?”
”Yes, and some pictures, too.”
”The ring is very pretty, but I would like something new to read,” said Letter-Reader. ”I would trade you my scroll for your scroll.” He reached into a pouch and pulled out a soiled and wrinkled scroll. ”It is old, and not s.h.i.+ny like your scroll, but you can still read the words on it.” He held it out eagerly.
”I'll give it to him,” said Len-McCoy. ”I can have the computer print out a new list when we get back to base.”
The trade was made, with the captain adding the glow-ring to the bargain. He looked carefully at the ancient scroll.
He unrolled it until he came to the personal sign at the bottom. ”It is a portion of a daily log. It was written by Qui-Qui!”
”We must find out where he got it!” whispered Len-McCoy.
”Later. Right now we have to get a gravity catapult activated, make sure that a clan doesn't starve, and somehow make friends with a dictatorial Emperor that seems to own every last food Slink and groundnut on Egg.” He stopped his electronic whisper, and his tread moved again as he spoke once more to Letter-Reader.
”Who is this Emperor you speak of?” Otis-Elevator asked.
”He is the Mighty One, the Terrible One, the Unforgiving One. The cheela that never flows-Attila-the-Speckled,” said Letter-Reader, his speckled tread trembling at the name.
Meanwhile, back at the base, Engineer Power-pack was setting up the power plant that would give them the energy they needed to survive.
”We are about twenty centimeters from base,” he said. ”That should give us enough separation so that crust cracks developing about the power plant won't interfere with the foundations for the gravity catapult, while the stray gravity fields from the gravity catapult don't disturb the power plant My crew will set up the bore rig here and start drilling.”
”You have enough hole liner pipe to get started,” said Engineer Delta-Ma.s.s. ”By the time you get down six centimeters my crew will have made the first dozen centimeters of liner for you. After that we can make it faster than you can drill.”
”We will see,” Power-Pack said. ”That antimatter-jet drill that Cliff-Web designed will poke through this crust like a black hole through a human.”
Delta-Ma.s.s returned to base, traveling slowly as she planned the route for the power lines that would have to be run over the twenty centimeters between the site of the power plant and the base. By the time she arrived at the base, her crew had the ma.s.s separator operating and were feeding it with ground-up loads of crust. Most of the crust emerged from the machine as dust, which was piped away to a dumping site. Rare elements and useful metals and compounds were col- lected, while the high-strength metals were combined into a strong alloy and extruded as a large diameter pipe.
”The first three centimeters are done,” Delta-Ma.s.s told her crew as the end of the long pipe fell to the crust with a ringing clang. ”Let's take an early break for turnfeast. My eating pouches are wet from thinking about the food Slink that is waiting for us. Groundnuts and singleberry together in the same chunk of meat. I can hardly wait.” She led her crew off while the finished pipe was lifted onto cargo-gliders by a transportation crew and hauled off to the distant power plant site.
Delta-Ma.s.s stopped at the outskirts of the base to ask directions. In the turn that she and her crew had been getting the ma.s.s separator into operation, the base construction crew under the direction of Metal-Bender had nearly dismantled the cargo and living platforms on Eagle and had rea.s.sembled them on the crust as a walled living compound.
”Do you have the eating area made yet?” Delta-Ma.s.s asked.
”It's the first thing we built,” replied Metal-Bender. ”Go through the east gate in the outer wall, then straight through to the center. That is the combined eating and meeting area.”
”Great!” Delta-Ma.s.s started to lead her crew to the east gate.
”You'll enjoy the food Slink,” said Metal-Bender.
”I hope you and your crew of Swifts didn't devour it all,” Delta-Ma.s.s replied.
”No, the food-service crew wants to make the food Slink last, so they only give you a small piece after you have eaten a big portion of meal-mush.”
The mention of meal-mush brought groans from the treads of the crew. The artificial food generators were quite versatile and could produce a great variety of flavors and textures, but after dozens of greats of eating nothing but artificial food, their pouches ached for something that was different.
The antimatter drill moved rapidly through the crust, and the hole went down millimeter by millimeter as Power-Pack's drilling crew developed a rhythm. They finally approached the magma layer. The temperatures, pressures, and densities were so high that the outer casing of the drill began to show evidence of trans.m.u.tation by neutron drip from the surrounding near-fluid of excess neutrons.
”Lower the last section of liner and put a pressure seal on the top,” said Power-Pack. ”Then put an antimatter bomb on the end of the drill string in place of the drill and lower it. We are going to make a volcano-a tame volcano.”
The antimatter bomb was lowered to the bottom of the hole, and the drill string was removed. Set off by a coded pulse of acoustic waves, the bomb fractured the remaining few centimeters of crust and the high pressure neutron fluid in the mantle pushed upward to the surface. As the fluid rose into regions of lower pressure, some of the neutrons decayed into electrons and protons, releasing energy and lowering the density of the fluid, so that it rose even faster.
”Here it comes!” Power-Pack shouted over the deep rumble in the crust. ”Open the valve to the power generators.”
The high speed, high density, high pressure, high temperature nucleonic fluid rose up through the drill hole and whirled through the power generator where its free thermal, kinetic, and nuclear energies were extracted. The resulting warm crust dust was piped to a nearby depression, while the power extracted from the bowels of Egg flowed over the transmission lines to energize the machinery at the base some twenty centimeters away.
Admiral Steel-Slicer, now Crust-Crawler, met with the senior staff. ”We're on our way,” he said. ”But we still have a long way to go. What is next on Cliff-Web's schedule?”
”The gravity catapult needs a power plant two dozen times more powerful than the one we just got into operation,” said Power-Pack. ”My seismic survey team has found a promising upwelling of energetic magma forty centimeters to the Bright-west. We have moved the drilling rig there and are already down a meter on the first hole, but we will need a power plant built.”
”My crew has finished with the living quarters at base,” said Metal-Bender. ”We've also installed magnetic barriers around the perimeter to keep out wild Swifts. We're now ready to build the power plant. We have plenty of computer controlled robot welders, nibblers, and cutters for the precision parts, but we need a forge for the larger components. We are ready to go as soon as we get enough metal.”
”The ma.s.s separator has been generating plate for the last few turns,” Delta-Ma.s.s told them. ”But we will have to s.h.i.+ft back to liner pipe at the rate Power-Pack's crew is going. Perhaps the first thing you should build is another ma.s.s separator.”
”You're right,” Metal-Bender replied. ”I'll get my team busy on that.”
”Anything else?” asked Crust-Crawler.