Forward, Robert L - Starquake by Chuck Darwin

Author:Chuck Darwin
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

"I've already found some," said Qui-Qui. "They are just as dead as everyone else. Except for one. I found him in a box at the West Pole Rejuvenation Center. He works perfectly, except he only wants to work on keeping rejuvenation machinery fixed. I tried all the robot control tricks I could think of, but the best I could do was make him fix the video link machines. Unfortunately, it was the only functional robot I saw. I'm afraid we can't use robots to repair the gravity catapults." Although disguised by the squeaky sound caused by the gravitational time shift, Qui-Qui could hear the overtones of dejection when Cliff-Web's voice finally returned.

"I'll have to think of something else," said Cliff-Web. "Well, goodbye for now."

"Goodbye, Engineer Cliff-Web," Qui-Qui said in her most pleasant tone. "It has been a real pleasure talking to you. I hope to see you in person real soon."

She spent the next two grethturns thinking of the many greats of turns she faced being all alone.

When Qui-Qui's gravitationally red-shifted voice finally reached Cliff-Web, it had been lowered from her normal contralto range to a slow, husky tone normally only heard in the privacy of a love-pad room. Cliff-Web stammered a reply. "... ah ... Yes. I've really enjoyed ... been a pleasure ... talking with you ... ah ... Qui-Qui ... really nice...." The link went dead.

Two turns later Qui-Qui returned to the Rejuvenation Center wearing a full panoply of M.D. badges. The maintenance robot had repaired the auxiliary power generator and had gotten one enzyme machine working. Once that was done, it had allowed itself to work on lower priority items and had cleaned out all the bodies and tidied up the place. It was now trying to get a second enzyme machine working. She slipped into the main office and tried to read the files to find out how the Center worked so she could do a better job of playing a doctor. There was no power to the memory banks, so she went back and complained to the robot. It took him two turns, but he finally got the main office memory powered and running.

She then found that the memory files were blank. They had been erased by the radiation during the quake. She went into M.D. Sabin-Salk's old office compound and took down a few scrolls from his scroll wall. Except for some very faint markings at the very center of the scroll, they were blank too. She reported her findings to the West Pole Space Station.

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