When the vehicle stopped at what was obviously the administration center, their Keidi entered quickly and without any hesitation moved deep inside the building- obviously he knew his way around-to stop finally in a large, long room containing a line of beds, only one of which was occupied. Excluding the doctor, there were eight other people in the ward.
They could follow his movements because the sensor display had the doctor tagged, but the others were just hazy, insubstantial shapes standing deep inside a structure whose corridors, rooms, and walls showed as ghostly transparencies. As the others were identified in conversation they, too, would be tagged.
“I’m getting something now,” Beth said.
They heard the doctor asking the patient how she felt and, interspersed with untranslatable sounds of pain, the female’s reply. Another Keidi, a medic judging by the language, joined the conversation with a fuller, more clinical description of the case history.
“She’s in very bad shape,” Beth said. Her concern for another female at a time like this, regardless of species, was reflected in her voice.
“That she is,” Martin said. “But I think our friend is talking to the First. He’s pointing his horn at that Keidi who is standing alone halfway down the ward. Listen!”
If it was the First he was addressing, then the doctor was sounding both insubordinate and very, very angry.
“This patient’s condition was described to me with minimum accuracy and maximum optimism,” he was saying. “Not only was such behavior professionally inexcusable, it means that had I come here by the usual method my journey would have been wasted, because the patient and unborn would have died long before my arrival. Distasteful as it is to all of us, the obligation to the Galactics is truly a major one. Now will all nonmedical personnel please withdraw.”
A bitter argument broke out among the people who had left the bedside to join the First during which, as is the way with all eavesdroppers, the listeners heard nothing good about themselves. They were hated, intensely and bitterly, by all Keidi for no other reason than their identity,
“The First shows some grandparental concern, at
least,” Beth said after one particularly vicious outburst. “I’m trying to tighten the sensor focus on him, but there’s some interference which… Oh, no.”
Figures and graphics chased each other across the sensor screen for a moment, then she looked up with the color draining from her face. Dully, she said, “The First has been in recent proximity to shielded fissionable material.”
“That’s impossible!” Martin burst out. “Are you tell-(.T ing me that there are nuclear weapons in the Camp? And
-· if so, why the blazes didn’t your sensors spot them at I… once?”
r “Three reasons,” Beth replied angrily. “I did not expect to find radiation, so the sensors were not instructed: to look for it, and they haven’t spotted it now because it “; isn’t here. The original source of contamination is some-f where beyond the range of the lander’s sensors. The hypership is scanning for it now.”
.. It was the Federation’s policy to forbid all nuclear power sources and weaponry to Undesirables and, long. before an Exodus was complete, die supporting technology and fissionable material were invariably dismantled and buried beyond all possibility of recovery by the limited technical resources of those left behind. This was done because of another inflexible rule, that a species which had developed such dreadful and long-acting mass-destruction weapons was required to keep them on-planet as a constant reminder to the Undesirables remaining of the principal reason why they had been rejected as Federation Citizens.
Atomic weapons in the hands of Undesirables was something which just could not happen. But it had somehow happened here.
“The radiation dosage is minimal,” Beth went on. ‘ “Not enough to have any but very long-term effects. Could that be the reason why the First stayed so far; away from the patient? Out of consideration for his unborn great-grandchild.”
The possibility that a group of Keidi Undesirables was in possession of nuclear armaments, or even a single.device, had driven all thought of the patient from Mar-; tin’s mind. But before he could reply, the argument which had been raging in the ward died away to be replaced by a single authoritative voice.
The First had reached a decision.
“Degrading and abhorrent as it is to all of us,” he began, “I am heavily obligated to these Galactics, and I see no other course than to try to discharge this obligation as quickly as possible.” He swung his horn to point at the doctor. “Can a meeting be arranged?”
“Ask them,” said the doctor, looking up briefly from his patient. “They seemed quite happy for me to discharge my obligation by supplying information. Now get out of here.”
“A meeting with the First,” Martin said grimly, “can most certainly be arranged.”
Chapter 22
THE First’s invitation was not transmitted until more than an hour later-plainly they were dealing with a very cautious Keidi-and within a few minutes there was a convoy of three open vehicles moving toward the lander. The one in the middle contained only the First and his driver while the other two were crowded, presumably with guards. But Beth’s attention was concentrated solely on the hypership’s sensor data which was being relayed to her screen.
“Look at this,” she said excitedly. “Just there, on the inner slope and floor of that inactive volcano.”
She enlarged the area to show the piles of recently dug rock and soil which glittered as if they had been seeded with diamonds, large numbers of tents, three tall log buildings which looked like wooden lighthouses, and a high, uneven stockade enclosing everything. The crater walls and floor were overgrown but not wooded, so the timber for those structures must have been brought in from many miles away.
“The records show that to have been the original site of a large underground missile storage facility,” she went on, “later encased in a thick shell of fused earth to render it impervious to the limited technology of the natives. But that was before volcanic activity smashed the protective shell and opened the original artificial cavern to the surface. Now the Keidi could dig down to it with their bare hands, but they’ve brought in some old earth-moving machinery and are…”
“They’re moving soil, not earth,” Martin said. He felt suddenly afraid of what he was about to hear, and was trying vainly to change the subject. “Remember, this isn’t Earth.”
“Don’t be so pedantic, dammit!” she said angrily. “They’ve uncovered three long-range missiles, and it looks as though they’ve salvaged enough of the ancillary equipment and solid fuel boosters to reconstruct a surface launching facility inside those wooden towers. From what I can see, the missiles are ready to launch. It looks as if we’ve arrived in time to stop a small nuclear war. We’ll have to do something about this. Shall I instruct the hypership to knock it out?”
This was what he had not wanted to hear, Martin thought as he stared silently at the screen. Beth was able to abstract more information from sensor displays than he could, but she had not yet noticed or did not remember the significance of the area of cleared ground in die shadow of the stockade, and the matrix of tiny, evenly spaced white dots covering it.
They were graves, each marked in Keidi fashion with a single white stone, and almost certainly radiation casualties of the salvage operations. There must have been hundreds of them.
“Naturally,” she went on when Martin did not respond, “a prior warning would be sent to evacuate the area. But these people are stupid I There are so few of diem left, this is their only temperate and fertile land mass, so why do they want to start a nuclear war?”