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
