Earth Star

22

We got a noisy welcome when we rejoined the class. Playdon had just finished giving his afternoon lectures, so everyone was in the hall, shuffling furniture ready for dinner. They instantly stopped work and surrounded us, with everyone talking at once. I was struggling to cope with it, but Playdon quickly intervened.

‘Jarra and Fian have come straight from hospital, so please don’t mob them.’

The rest of the class retreated to leave us with just Dalmora, Amalie and Krath, and Dalmora gave us an apologetic smile. ‘Everyone’s just relieved that you’re both back. Lecturer Playdon kept telling us that you’d recover, but after Joth … Well, we couldn’t be sure until we actually saw you.’

I pulled a face. ‘I can understand that.’

‘Playdon hasn’t let us set foot outside the dome since the accident,’ said Amalie. ‘He said we all needed some time to calm our nerves, so we’ve just had lectures and watched some vids.’

‘Oh no,’ said Fian. ‘You haven’t had to repeat all the safety lectures again, have you?’

Amalie shook her head. ‘This wasn’t like with Joth. No one had done anything stupid. Technically, Fian should have run with the rest of us, but Playdon said Dig Site Command don’t even bother with standard reprimands in a case like this. They accept the tag support and tag leader relationship is always intense, and when people are Twoing as well you can’t expect …’

‘I should have been faster sounding the alarm,’ said Dalmora.

I shook my head. ‘Nobody could have hit the alarm faster.’ I suddenly realized that the person who should have been talking most of all was oddly silent. ‘What the chaos is the matter with you, Krath? You haven’t said a word.’

‘I feel so guilty, Jarra.’ Krath’s face was a picture of misery.

Amalie reached out a hand to casually slap him on the back of the head.

‘Ouch!’ Krath gave her a wounded look.

She turned back to me. ‘He’s been like this ever since the accident. I wouldn’t have believed it possible, but it’s even more irritating than when he talks all the time.’

‘But what have you got to feel guilty about, Krath?’ asked Fian. ‘The accident wasn’t your fault.’

Krath sighed. ‘I made that stupid remark about the huge bounty payment if anyone found the secret to making glowplas.’

I tried to make sense of this. ‘Yes, but we didn’t.’

‘I don’t want blood money,’ he wailed.

‘Shut up, Krath!’ Amalie hit him again, harder than before, and Krath gave a loud yelp of protest.

Playdon had gone over to get a drink from the food dispensers, but turned to call across the room to them. ‘Amalie, I’ve been treating you hitting Krath as some sort of Epsilon sector courting ritual rather than a violent attack that’s against the Gamman moral code, but please don’t injure him.’

‘I wish there was a brain to injure,’ muttered Amalie.

‘Dig Site Command studied the data from our sensor readings,’ said Dalmora. ‘A magnetic field that strong was completely unprecedented, so Earth 3 and Cassandra 2 research teams went to take a look.’

Fian stared at her in disbelief. ‘But it was lethal there!’

She pulled a face. ‘I know, but they went in without impact suits or sleds. They wore old style protective clothing and shifted rubble with ropes instead of beams.’

I shook my head. ‘Why did Dig Site Command allow it?’

Dalmora shrugged. ‘They’re highly skilled experts, and they knew exactly what they were doing. They found the source of the magnetic field and pulled its power cell to shut it down. They think they’ve found a research lab. It may have been in use until Eden was abandoned, because a lot of the equipment was left in stasis fields. They think one of those fields failed while we were there, and something became active which generated that magnetic field.’

‘If that lab has any clues to lost technology, the bounty payments could be big,’ said Amalie. ‘It’ll take ages to investigate properly, and the money would be shared around a lot. The research teams took huge risks, and the Dig Site Federation gets a share of big payments to help with dome and equipment costs, but we should still get …’

‘I don’t want it,’ said Krath. ‘When I went through that evac portal, I saw the state Jarra was in and …’

I hit him myself this time. ‘Playdon shouldn’t have let you see …’ I broke off. ‘No, that’s nardle of me. He had to get everyone out of the danger zone, and emergency evac portals are made the cheap way. No controls, they’re just set to transmit to a specific receiving portal in the nearest major casualty unit. Playdon had no way to recalibrate the portal, so …’

‘He told us to crawl through and keep moving straight ahead and out of the door,’ said Amalie, ‘but of course Krath had to stop and be nosy in the casualty area.’

Krath rubbed his head. ‘I wanted to check Jarra and Fian were all right, but …’

I grabbed his shoulders and shook him. ‘Krath, you just made a casual remark. What happened to me and to Fian wasn’t your fault. Playdon, and you, and Dalmora, and Amalie were all heroes. You took a huge risk and you saved our lives!’

Krath blushed. ‘You really think I’m a hero.’

I nodded, let go of his shoulders, and stepped back.

‘Don’t let it go to your head though,’ said Fian. ‘You’re still a nardle.’

Krath grinned at him. ‘But a heroic nardle!’

Playdon came over, carrying a large box. ‘Jarra, Fian, we’ll have to allow at least three days before either of you try getting into an impact suit, so you’ll have to stay in the dome until then. I made vids of the lectures you missed, so you can spend your mornings catching up with those while the rest of us get back to work on the dig site.’ He gave us one of his evil smiles. ‘Being in a tank is no excuse for missing my lectures.’

Fian laughed. ‘I guessed you’d have made vids, sir. Thank you.’

‘Dig Site Command had your suit completely serviced and reconditioned, Jarra.’ Playdon handed me the box. ‘You’ll find it’s as good as new.’

‘That’s very kind of them,’ I said, trying to control the shake in my voice. ‘I’ll just put it away.’

I took the box, carried it off into the privacy of the room I shared with Fian, and closed the door behind me. I opened the lid and looked at the impact suit that the Cassandra 2 team had given me. I’d been delighted with their gift, I’d loved it, and now it made me sick to even see the thing. The magnetic field had turned it from friend to foe. It had tortured and nearly killed me. I could never bear to wear it, or any other impact suit, ever again.

I put the lid back on the box, shoved it out of the way, and sat on the bed. I’d had no idea I’d react like this, and it took a few minutes to realize the implications. I had the key spot in my class, tag leader for dig team 1, but I couldn’t do my job without an impact suit. There were endless hazards on a dig site. Falling rocks, abandoned chemicals, decaying power cells that could explode. Never mind the hazards, I couldn’t even fire a tag at a block of Eden glowplas without a suit, because a ricochet could seriously injure or even kill me.

The grim facts started to sink in. I couldn’t even set foot in a ruined city without an impact suit. My career as an archaeologist was over and I’d have to aim at being a theoretical historian, like the members of team 5 who did the minimum they could on the dig site just to …

Panic hit me. No, I couldn’t become a theoretical historian either. If I couldn’t do the practical work on the dig site, I’d have to drop out of this course, and successfully completing your Pre-history Foundation course was a prerequisite for entry to a full history degree. It was a strict rule. I’d smugly laughed about how it forced norm history students to spend a year on ape planet Earth, but now that rule was going to destroy my future.

I’d have to leave the course, and what would that mean for me and Fian? He’d offer to come with me, because he was a zan person, but I couldn’t let him. Fian loved history as much as I did. Twoing with me demanded too many sacrifices already, keeping him chained to Earth, and causing trouble between him and his parents. I couldn’t selfishly make him give up his history studies and his career as well.

Being afraid of an impact suit seemed such a small thing, but it could systematically wreck my life. I wasn’t going to let that happen. I had three days before I needed to wear an impact suit again. Three days to force myself past my fear and into the suit that had tried to murder me. I could do that. I had to do that. It was the only way.