Federation World (41 page)

"More bad news," she said quickly. "This isn't a simple plate movement along a fault line. The sensors in the crater have been reporting the levels of radioactive dust expected after a large, subsurface detonation. But now they are showing increasing amounts of steam, hydrogen sulphide, and other sulphur combinations indicative of an active volcano. The deep probes show a massive pressure buildup centered under the arsenal site where the old lava plug sealing the conduit which opens the crater to the underlying magma has been fractured and severely weakened by the detonation. We can expect a major eruption as well as earthquakes which are, in fact, the advance warning of the volcanic activity to come. The computer is predicting severe and continuing shocks all along the fault line, and it keeps reminding me that the induction centers are not proof against major earthquakes and that their matter transmission equipment is delicately tuned, sensitive, and susceptible to vibration damage.

"The good news," she added dryly, "is that the matter transmitters should remain operative for at least two hours after the last few groups are due to reach shelter, but it would be safer to transport all refugees to centers on the north and south continents as soon as they come in."

While she was speaking Martin had kept his eyes on the Keidi leader. He said, "Did you hear that?"

"I heard, off-worlder," said the First. "The Keidi are a stubborn race. The more obstacles are placed in our path, the harder we try to surmount them. They will reach your centers in time. My obligation will be discharged. I remind you of yours."

"I have not forgotten," Martin said angrily. "But surely you are being overconfident? We still have red lights on groups Seven-eighteen and Twelve-twenty-one, Both are large, widely scattered groups. What are you doing for them?"

"Seven-eighteen will go orange very soon and will reach shelter in time," the First replied. "The other group is encamped in thickly forested mountains on my western border and would have been difficult to move even without this latest complication. I am particularly sorry about them, but in an operation of this magnitude and complexity a certain level of casualties must be accepted."

"There is no acceptable level of casualties," Martin said firmly. "If you can't help them, maybe I can."

Not for the first time Martin wished that he was able to read those alien features as the First said, "It is a large training establishment, staffed by aged Keidi who make their experience available to very young trainees. The isolation and hostile environment aids the development of strong character. The camp instructors know of you and will not listen to or accept help from a Galactic, and the trainees will follow without question the orders of their superiors, whose minds lack the flexibility to adapt to the present situation.

"The loss of this group saddens me, off-worlder," the Keidi ended, "but this part of my obligation, you must agree, is impossible for me to discharge."

"If they won't accept help from an off-worlder," Martin persisted, "they might listen to you or the doctor. Can you spare him if he will come with me?"

"I will come," the doctor said. The First remained silent.

"Don't worry," Martin said impatiently, "we won't criticize you in any way. I won't even mention your name."

"In that camp," said the First, "your words of criticism would not be believed. You may have the doctor, off-worlder, and I wish you success."

THE two newly fabricated transports, which had the capacity to evacuate all of the training camp personnel in a single trip, were ready to leave within the hour. The delay had been due to the special equipment which had to be taken along: remote-controlled vehicles, life sensors, restraints and handling devices for injured, unconscious, or actively uncooperative refugees, as well as the external PA and translation systems. Ever since the original detonations, Beth had foreseen a probable need for a wide range of disaster medication tailored/ to die Keidi life form, and this had been synthesized in quantity-including, in case of dire need, enough anesthetic gas to stop a small war.

"I may be too old for this kind of work," the doctor said in a worried voice as they were about to leave for the launching bay. "I'm stiff in the mind as well as the joints. What can I possibly do, alone in an enormous transport vessel I cannot understand or control, if something goes wrong? You have already said that these vessels are untested. In the old days I couldn't even repair my grandchild's play cart."

Reassuringly, Beth said, "One of the transports will be remotely controlled by the other, which will contain you and my life-mate. If necessary I can control both vessels from here. And this is a hypership, Doctor. Its fabricator module does not produce substandard equipment. You will be quite safe."

The doctor did not speak until the hypership had shrunk to a blob of light behind them and their transport was encountering the buffeting characteristic of hypersonic flight through the upper atmosphere.

"Your life-mate," he commented sourly to Martin, "is not riding in this thing."

Storm-force winds and heavy rain were sweeping the area when the transports arrived above the camp. It was a collection of low, log buildings whose uniformity of structure and precise positioning made it plain that this was a military establishment and not a settlement of civilians. In no sense was it a covert approach as they dropped slowly below the level of the high, thickly wooded mountains surrounding the camp. Maximum external lighting on both ships brightened the noon overcast and brilliantly flashing communications probes shot ahead of them to spear the ground outside the buildings.

With the volume controls set on high because he was competing against the sounds of the wind and rain, the doctor began to speak-to only a handful of Keidi who opened up on them with small-arms fire.

From the scraps of translated conversation being picked up by the sound sensors, Beth was able to piece together the reasons for the hostility. Even in ideal weather conditions the surrounding mountains made radio communications with the rest of the Estate uncertain, she explained, and the last coherent signal to come through had been the news that a ship of the Galactics had violated Estate air space. Since then they had heard only incomplete messages, rendered almost unintelligible by radiation interference, ordering evacuations from many areas, and they had assumed that the Federation ship which had triggered the initial warning had been the forerunner of an invasion fleet. The manner of the transports approach had supported that assumption.

"We haven't time to argue," Martin said. "Patch the First through and let him explain it to them, but quickly."

'There's worse to come," Beth said. "The trainees have been scattered in small groups all over the valley, out of radio contact with the camp and each other. This seems to be common practice with them, aimed at instilling self-reliance, initiative, and character. The problem is.. ."

"That we have an unknown number of Keidi boy scout patrols to rescue," Martin finished for her.

"Not quite," she replied. "After the lander was first sighted, they were sent out with orders to disperse and conceal themselves as part of what could have been turned into a war situation. They had solid-projectile-firing weapons, and when they see you their response will be extremely hostile."

Martin swore but under his breath so as not to confuse the doctor's translator, and said, "We'll hold back until the First has tried to straighten them out. We need a reassuring message, couched in very general terms, which we can record and rebroadcast to all the trainee groups. Tell him to do it quickly."

"I'd better ask him to do it quickly," Beth said. "He's very busy just now."

"Who isn't?" Martin replied shortly.

He was already guiding the transports toward the nearest group of young Keidi. But the ships had been hovering silently, and Martin had been waiting impatiently, for nearly ten minutes in the rainclouds above them before the First came through.

"Off-worlder," he said briskly. "If I am to reassure the young people sufficiently to make them board your vessels, I must know something about them. Tell me their size, shape, the sounds they make, the method of boarding and their interior accommodation. Tell me quickly..."

In a surprisingly short time the First's message was blaring out of the soft-landed speakers, and the Keidi on the ground had overcome their natural suspicion and were obeying their leader's instructions. The unmanned transport dropped silently through the cloud layer and onto the wooded mountainside, where the sound of thunderously snapping tree trunks and branches stopped the trainees dead in their tracks. It took several additional minutes of reassurance from the First Father, delivered in a manner which would have been the envy of an Earth drill sergeant, before they boarded the transport.

"I could not have done that," the doctor said quietly.

"Nor I," Martin said.

Inside the transport there was more reassurance in the form of external view-screens which would enable them to see the takeoff and subsequent evacuations, comfortable seating, and the pleasant but authoritative voice of Beth speaking through the translator in the manner of one of the pre-Exodus air hostesses that they had been born too late to remember. She was telling them to move away from the entry hatches so as not to hamper later boarders who might be injured or in a greater hurry than they had been.

They did as they were told, and without the First having to reinforce her request. Within a few minutes the hatches closed and the transport was on the way to the next group.

The repeater in the manned transport was showing induction centers already covered by the fallout symbol and others where the angry red markers were moving dangerously close. But at all those centers the people were either already under cover or would reach it in time. Martin could not say the same for the groups of Keidi scattered all over this mountain valley.

In all, the sensors had located eleven groups of trainees, averaging twenty to a group. While Martin and the doctor went after those which were most likely to contain injured Keidi, Beth and her remote-controlled transport had been assigned the more simple and accessible pickups, and had done very well.

While she was boarding her seventh group and the doctor and Martin their third, the area was shaken by two severe, closely spaced ground tremors. Trees all around the last party of trainees uprooted themselves and toppled onto their sides. The situation was further complicated by a minor avalanche.

From the sound sensors which had survived the devastation came terrified appeals for help and the untranslatable and even more urgent cries of pain. Martin dropped the transport onto the bed of fallen timber as close to the trainees as possible, and the fear and confusion in the young Keidi voices increased. Many of them were assuming that the quake, landslide, falling trees, and the transport's sudden arrival were, in spite of the reassurance of their First, an attack on them by the off-world ship. Martin climbed quickly into a medium-weight excursion suit.

"You are wearing armor," the doctor said accusingly, "and a weapon."

"It fires bulbs of anesthetic gas which explode on contact," Martin said.

He opened the entry ports and dispatched the first of the ground vehicles, half of which had been converted to the casualty evacuation configuration.

"The young Keidi will think it is a weapon," the doctor said.

"You tell them it isn't," Martin said impatiently, "if I ever get close enough to use the thing. Take this mask. It won't fit over your head but, if you need to use it, press the filter tightly against your speaking horn."

Three-dimensional traffic jams had formed outside the ports as the vehicles tried to push through or rise above the tangle of branches which now sprouted vertically from the fallen tree trunks. The tune wasted extricating them, Martin thought, would be doubled as they pushed through a similar barrier above the trainees, and then they would have to do it all again, fully loaded, on the return ship.

"They're less than two hundred meters away," Martin said. "We can climb between the branches and get there quicker on foot. Coming?"

The doctor followed without replying as Martin led the way, swinging around the larger branches and steadying himself on the smaller as he jumped from trunk to trunk or moved along those which by chance had fallen in his direction of travel. He had to he careful not to fall into the tangle between the trunks and the ground, where the broken stumps of smaller trees bristled like the stakes in an old-time tiger trap. In spite of the obstacles he was making good progress, but the doctor was not.