Federation World

Chapter 29

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.

Martin stopped and tried to curb his impatience by reminding himself that the doctor was a very old Keidi who might not have enjoyed climbing trees even as a child.

Beth used the delay to report.

“I have you spotted,” she said briskly, “about halfway to the trainee group. The other transport is loaded up and headed for the First’s center. He wants the young Keidi sent to him there because most of them are the offspring of his special group. It’s going to be pretty crowded in that center, but he insisted so I agreed. There was no need to worry you with it.

“But there is something you should be worrying about,” she went on. “The crater sensor readings don’t look good. There is a steady buildup of pressure on that weakened lava plug, and they are predicting an increase in the severity and frequency of earthquake activity…”

He lost her then as both the transmission and the noise of the wind and rain were drowned out by a roaring, crackling tidal wave of sound that swept toward and then around them. The tree trunk twisted alarmingly beneath his feet, and he wrapped one arm around a branch to steady himself. The doctor, who had almost caught up with him, had no handholds and was falling. Martin stretched out his free arm and felt the Keidi’s fingers lock around his wrist in a grip so tight that he grunted with pain.

For the longest few seconds of his life Martin held on with the branch digging painfully into the crook of his elbow and his arms feeling that they would tear off at the shoulders. From all around them came the deafening crepitation of the fallen trees and branches grinding against each other. Then suddenly it was quiet again except for the almost comforting sounds of the wind and rain. The pull of the doctor’s weight on his arms was relieved as the other found a hand-hold and climbed up beside him.

“I lost you,” Martin said, “We were having an earthquake.”

“Oh, very droll,” Beth said, her voice angry with relief. She went on, “The seismic activity is incidental, it’s that volcano we have to worry about. An accurate prediction is impossible, but the computer thinks it could go any time between three to five hours from now. We should start transferring refugees to the north and south continent centers as soon as possible. Shall I ask the First to advise on the best locations?”

Martin shook his head, not in negation but in an effort to stir his brain into constructive thought. He looked at his helmet status display. Many of the rescue vehicles had become hopelessly entangled in the shifting branches and were in need of rescuing themselves, so much so that it could take the rest of the day rather than a few hours to move the trainees-more if some of them were badly injured. It was a time for not wasting time.

“Send the loaded transport on automatic to the First’s center,” he said quickly. “Tell him to ready his people for moving out, explain the matter transmitter linkups and tell him again, if he is still worrying about it, that he and all of his special group will be sent to the same location.

“While you’re doing that,” he went on, “bring the hypership down to, say, half a mile above the valley. I know it’s tricky handling that monster in atmosphere, but you did something like this on Teldi, and this area has to be cleared quickly if we are to do anything for these people.”

Quickly and carefully, he added under his breath. There were a lot of valuable and fragile organic objects, himself included, buried by the fallen trees she was about to clear.

“Twenty-three minutes,” she said.

Once again they began climbing and crawling through the branches in the general direction of the trainees. Martin told the doctor to speak to them about the giant space vessel that was coming to help with their rescue, and try to describe its shape and size, and tell them that they had nothing to fear from it. But when the hypership broke through the clouds to darken the sky above them tike some gargantuan, metal overcast, even Martin and the doctor, who knew it for what it was, had an instinctive urge to run and get from underneath before it could fall and smash them fiat.

There was a sudden, unnatural stillness as it deployed its force shield and the wind and rain ceased. The voices of the young Keidi sounded loud and very close. Martin pointed to a tiny clear area of ground below them.

“Climb down there and lie flat,” he said urgently. “Don’t move no matter what happens. And tell your people they have nothing to fear.”

“I will try, off-worlder,” the doctor said. “But I am fearful myself.”

For a few minutes nothing moved except for the small, irregular tremors which were shaking the ground on which they lay. Then the invisible, immaterial cylinders that were die hypership’s tractor beams speared out, came to a focus, and whole trees were lifted gently into the air and, when it was clear that nothing was entangled in their branches, tossed away. The sound of discarded trees crashing onto the lower slopes became continuous.

Beth began by clearing the area outside the transport’s entry locks. Martin watched admiringly, marveling at her precision of control as she raised one particular tree into the air and shook it gently to dislodge a vehicle which had trapped itself in the branches. Plainly she wanted to gain experience rescuing inanimate objects before trusting herself to extricate the living. But very soon her confidence and speed increased and the splintered tree trunks and branches were lifted from above them so that they were able to stand again.

A broad pathway of tumbled soil and small branches lay between the transport and the Keidi trainees along which the rescue vehicles were already moving.

“Oh, nice work”“ Martin said enthusiastically. The doctor did not speak. He was already hurrying toward the group of young Keidi who were lying in their newly created clearing. Some of them were moving and trying to crawl away,

“It was just like weeding a big garden,” she said modestly, “except that the object was to rescue the creepy crawlies as well as remove the weeds.

“But you have another problem,” she went on seriously. “All of the trainees who are able to move have taken to the woods. When I tried to lift the trees off one of them he just took off in a different direction. Talk to them, dammit, we haven’t time to play hide and seek!”

“The doctor will talk to them,” Martin said.

But the doctor had time only for a few hasty and general words of reassurance because he had casualties lying on the ground all around him awaiting attention. Most of them were young Keidi who had suffered limb fractures, heavy bruising, and lacerations from the tree-fells. But there were two older trainees in very bad shape indeed. They had been trying to protect a couple of their smaller charges with their bodies-successfully, because the young Keidi had been seen wriggling from under them and running away.

When Martin tried to lift one of them onto a vehicle, the doctor told him to please go away because his presence was distressing the still-conscious patients.

“I’m just an off-world bogeyman,” Martin said bitterly. “But there’s something I can do. Point me at the nearest escapee.”

Beth did so and reminded him, unnecessarily, that his gas bulbs exploded on contact, that he would have to get close enough to hit his target so as not to waste them on any intervening foliage, and that he should be very careful because the sensors showed most of the escapees to be armed.

Martin was too busy forcing his way under fallen branches to reply. In the unnatural stillness he must have sounded like the Keidi equivalent of a rampaging elephant, which would have done nothing at all to reassure the people he was trying to help.

Suddenly he caught sight of a small Keidi crawling slowly under the branches, dragging one leg stiffly behind him. Martin waited until he had a clear shot and fired. The gas bulb plopped wetly against the back of the target’s head and the Keidi went limp. As he went forward to check on the other’s condition, there was movement in the leaves of a thick bush about twenty meters to his right. Since the arrival of the hypership there had been no wind in the valley.

He swung his gas-gun to bear and fired twice at a tree stump close behind the suspect bush, then dropped flat. There was the sharp crack of a solid-projectile-firing weapon, but the bullet went nowhere near him. Probably the Keidi had pulled the trigger instinctively as the anesthetic took effect.

By the time he had the two sleeping forms draped one over each arm, Beth had cleared a path back to the other casualties. As he placed them in one of the vehicles he announced loudly that they were asleep and uninjured, but it was plain that only the doctor believed him.

Although they had scattered at the arrival of the hyper ship, Beth reported, the remaining trainees had joined up again in a small ravine which ran up the mountainside before dividing into three. When he reached it Martin saw that the rock walls were so narrow that the fallen trees formed a roof over their heads rather than an obstruction. The runaways were climbing fast, much faster than he could manage hampered as he was by the protective suit.

“Can you squeeze a vehicle in here?” Martin asked quickly. “I might as well climb fast and in comfort. And can you block the top end of the ravine before it divides, to keep our friends from scattering all over the mountain. How long do you need?”

“In order:” Beth said, “just barely, but you’ll have to keep your head down if you don’t want it knocked off; can do; and three minutes.”

With its gravity repulsers whining in protest at the steep gradient, his vehicle rounded a bend in the ravine in time to see the log roof ahead of the Keidi collapse into a solid plug of splintered wood, soil, and loose rock — the hypership’s tractors could push just as hard as they could pull. He was still at extreme range for the gas-gun, but there was so much dust and noise up ahead that he doubted if any of the Keidi could hear or see his approach. When he was certain of maximum effect, he loosed off a short burst. In the confined space it did not matter whether he hit his targets or not.

A few minutes later the dust had settled, the fog of anesthetic gas had dispersed, and the four sleeping runaways were in the vehicle.

“There should be five of them,” Beth said. “Wait, I see him! About thirty meters behind you, on the left top edge of the ravine behind a stump. He isn’t moving, but that doesn’t mean he’s unconscious. Be care…”

Martin jumped quickly to one side as he turned, only to be knocked to the ground by two savage, irresistible blows to his chest and shoulder. He blinked the tears from his eyes as a third shot buried itself in the soil a few inches from his helmet.

There seemed to be a small patch of haze, which dispersed before he could be sure it was really there, high on one side of the ravine. It could have been smoke from the Keidi’s weapon. He swung his gas-gun to bear, grunting with the pain which the movement caused in his chest and shoulder. His eyes were watering so badly that he could scarcely see. He fired in the remembered direction and kept on firing until his weapon was empty, then rolled painfully onto one hand and his knees, wondering if he could reach the cover of his vehicle before another bullet found him.