When these youngsters grew up, Martin thought, it was likely that they would never again be able to regard their Teldin way of life with complete acceptance. And if die Teldins were not judged suitable for Federation citizenship and were left to fend for themselves, it seemed a particularly lousy trick he was playing on them by talking like this.
“I can’t predict where exactly they will hit,” Beth broke in urgently, “but that area is in for a bad time. Cut it short!”
“I’ll answer a few questions, then send them to shelter,” he told her. “The mountain on this side of the valley will protect us, so there’s no immediate…”
The sky was lit by a sudden flare of bright orange, the sound of muffled thunder and the ground seemed to twitch under Martin’s feet. He broke off and looked around wildly, then up at the cliff. Everything seemed normal.
‘That was a big one,” Beth said, her voice rising in pitch. “It hit close to the summit directly above you and started a rockslide. You can’t see it past the shoulder of the cliff. Tell them to…”
But Martin was already shouting for them to run for the shelter of the school. Nobody moved, and he had to explain quickly, so quickly that he was close to being incoherent, about Beth and the orbiting ship and its instruments which had given advance warning of the rock-fall which they could not yet see.
Still they did not move-they were dismissing his warning as hearsay. He angled one of the tender’s lights upward to show the top of the cliff and the first few rocks bouncing into sight over the edge.
They began to run then, too late.
“No, come back!” he shouted desperately. “There’s safety here. Get back to the landed”
Some of them hesitated. Without thinking about it Martin sprinted after the others and managed to get ahead of them-they were young and their legs were slightly shorter than his-and wave them back. There were about twenty of them outside the protection of the lander’s force shield now, but they were slowing down, stopping. He did not know whether they were simply frightened or confused or, since his recent demonstration of foreknowledge of the rockfall, they believed him when he said that the area around the lander was safe.
The first rocks struck the ground between the lander and the school entrance, bounced outward and rolled toward them. Three of the Teldins were knocked over and another was down hopping and crawling on four hands and a foot, dragging an injured limb behind it. Martin pointed at the glowing line on the ground which marked the edge of the force shield.
“Quickly, move them to the other side of that line. They’ll be safe there, believe me!”
He grabbed one of the fallen Teldins by the feet and began dragging it toward the line. The rolling and bouncing rocks were being stopped by the invisible shield, and the other students had realized that the protection was not hearsay. But more than half of them were down, and the uninjured were trying to drag them to safety. Martin pulled his Teldin across the line and went after another.
“Get back, dammit!” Beth shouted. “Half the bloody mountain is falling on you…!”
A rain of fine dust and stones struck his back as he bent over the Teldin casualty, and suddenly a bouncing rock hit him in the back of die leg. He sat down abruptly, tears as well as dust blinding him. The rumbling sound from high up on the cliff was growing louder, and large rocks were thumping into the ground all around him with increasing frequency. The force shield and safety were only a few meters away, but he did not know in which direction.
He was grasped suddenly by four large hands which lifted him and hurled him backward. He tumbled through the shield interface closely followed by the Teldin who had saved him. Martin blinked, trying to clear his vision as expert hands felt along his limbs and body.
“Nothing broken, stranger,” the young Teldin said, “Some minor lacerations and bruising on the leg. You should use your own medication to treat the injury.”
‘Thank you,” Martin said. He climbed to his feet and limped toward the lander.
The sound of the rockfall had become muffled because the hemisphere of the force shield was completely covered by loose rocks and soil. Several of the casualties lay looking up at the smooth dome of rubble which had inexplicably refused to fall on them, with expressions which were still unreadable to Martin, while the others had obviously accepted the invisible protection as a fact and were busying themselves with the injured.
When each and every victim and survivor was a trained medic, he thought admiringly, the aftermath of even a major disaster lost much of its horror.
Another young Teldin intercepted him at the tender’s entry port. It said, “Thank you, stranger. All of the students who were trying to reach the school have returned or have been returned. There are no fatalities.”
Not yet, thought Martin.
He was concerned about the tremendous weight of rock pressing down on the force shield. That shield could handle the heaviest of meteor showers or projectile-firing weapons without difficulty, but it had not, been designed to support the weight of an avalanche. The drain on the small ship’s power reserves did not bear thinking about.
He looked at the hemisphere of rocks above and around him, knowing that Beth’s repeaters were showing her everything he saw, and asked, “How long can I keep it up?”
“Not long,” she said grimly. “But long enough for your air to run out first. There are over two hundred people in there. I’m coming down.”
He started to protest, then realized that Beth knew as well as he did that she could not land the great, ungainly bulk of the hypership-its configuration suited it only for deep space and orbital maneuvering. The ship could, in an emergency be brought close to the ground, but it was not the kind of maneuver to be undertaken by a trainee on first assignment. Worrying out loud, however, would only undermine her confidence, so Martin remained silent while he applied a dressing to his damaged leg and watched the pictures she was sending down to him.
He saw the valley city grow large in his main screen, saw the fresh meteor crater on the mountainside above the school, and the gray scar left by the rockslide joining it with the great pile of rubble at the base of the cliff where the lander was buried. He saw four large, shallow depressions appear suddenly in unoccupied areas of the valley floor as the hypership’s pressor beams were deployed to check the vessel’s descent and hold her, braced and immobile, on four rigid, immaterial stilts. Her tremendous force shield covered the whole valley, and for the first time in over a thousand years the Scourge was impotent against the city.
A tractor beam speared out, came to a tight focus, and began to pull at the pile of rubble.
“Nice work,” Martin said warmly. “Concentrate on digging us out and clearing a path to the school entrance. Some of these casualties will have to be moved there for proper treatment, and quickly.”
Clearing the rocks above the lander was taking much longer than expected; every time Beth pulled out a mass of nibble, more slid down to fill the space. He decided to run a quick computation based on the volume of air trapped inside the shield and the rate at which it was being used by two hundred Teldins whose lung capacities were almost double that of a human being, and his anxiety gave way to mounting desperation.
He went out to talk to the younger students and try to reassure them, and discovered that three of them were the children of Masters.