Federation World (42 page)

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.

"YOUR target is unconscious," Beth said. "I heard shooting. Are you all right?"

Martin grunted again as he climbed awkwardly to his feet. "Yes," he said.

"My ears and the bio-sensors are calling you a liar," she said worriedly. "What happened to-"

"I'm all right," Martin said.

He could not incline the helmet far enough forward to see, but with his fingers he could feel the two long, deep trenches that the bullets had cut in the suit's chest and shoulder section. He could not move his left arm or inhale without pain, and he thought he had been very lucky indeed to escape with what felt like a broken collarbone and a couple of cracked ribs. But he could not afford to waste his breath on a verbal self-diagnosis-he might need all of it if he was going to recover the last runaway.

A few minutes later as he was struggling to lift the Keidi one-handed into the vehicle, Beth said, "Get in the back with the others and lie flat. I'll bring you in on remote. Your bio-sensor display worries me, and I don't want you to pass out, not now. There is another problem ,.."

It had been a mistake to show the young Keidi everything that was happening outside their transport, she said, because the sight of Martin knocking over their friends with his weapon had made their immature minds jump to a wrong conclusion-that the evil off-worlder's intention was to kill and ultimately eat all of them. She had tried to reason with them, and had played back the original words of reassurance spoken by their First, but they were too frightened to listen to anyone. She had been forced then to seal the entry ports to keep them from escaping again.