Earth Girl (28 page)

‘Correct,’ said Playdon. ‘One of the subway lines runs under our dig area and we’re going to excavate it. You can consider yourselves flattered. Dig Site Command doesn’t usually let novices try that, but we did well in that rescue, and we have Earth 3 just down the clearway from us if we get in trouble, so they’re letting us have a go.’

As we were the working team, we were talking on the team circuit, so the whole class could hear us. In a way, it was handy having Krath around, because people could always depend on him to ask the tactless questions for them. He did it now. ‘Earth 3 … Those were the people who visited us last night?’

‘That’s right,’ said Playdon.

‘Then they were apes?’ Krath seemed grazzed. ‘But … my dad wouldn’t like me sharing food with people like that.’

‘I see,’ said Playdon. ‘If your dad would object to you having your life saved by people like that, then please tell me now. I’ll make a note that in case of accidents, I should ask Earth 3 to leave you buried in the rubble until your suit fails and you get slowly crushed to death. Anything to make your dad happy.’

There was a gulping noise from Krath. ‘I didn’t mean …’

‘I have a strong personal dislike of hearing remarks like that about the Earth dig teams,’ said Playdon. ‘They’re people I respect, and they’ve saved my life several times. Now, I don’t hand out warnings just because a student offends me, but the Betans have a Handicapped child. I hope I’ve already made it clear that making comments like that in front of them will earn you warnings under the Gamman moral code.’

He paused, and there was a nervous affirmative noise from Krath.

‘Good,’ said Playdon. ‘Let me make something else clear. I’m prepared to give warnings for comments made on a dig site, no matter who is present, because I don’t want all the Asgard teams to be embarrassed by one of our students saying something offensive about the Handicapped on the wrong comms channel.’

He paused for a moment. ‘All of you should bear in mind a few facts. Earth teams opened this dig site a hundred and fifty years ago. Earth teams made the clearways. Earth teams taught the first teams from off world. They were the experts and we were clueless. We got into trouble and they dug us out. I know that was a hundred years ago, but teams from new universities still keep showing up and making all the novice mistakes, and the Earth teams patiently help them out.’

‘It’s still the old joke,’ Playdon continued. ‘Expert apes and clueless exos. That’s the only phrase I ever want to hear on a dig site that includes the word ape. The Earth teams are professionals, Krath. If you said something rude about them on the broadcast channel, they would still come and dig you out from under rubble at the risk of their own lives, but frankly the rest of us exo teams would then quietly take you back out and bury you again ourselves.’

There wasn’t another squeak out of Krath, and the rest of us were very quiet as we continued our preparations.

When I arrived at the tag support sled, Fian locked the beam on to the tag point on my suit. Then he very carefully checked he wasn’t transmitting on the team circuit or any other comms channels before daring to speak. ‘What’s an exo?’

I carefully set my comms to listen only. ‘Rude term for people not from Earth,’ I explained. ‘It comes from people running off during Exodus.’

‘I see,’ said Fian. ‘I hate to admit this, but I think my mother would feel exactly the same as Krath’s dad. She wasn’t keen on me coming to Earth in case it means my kids are born Handicapped.’

I giggled. ‘You can’t catch it. Your kids don’t get it because you visited Earth.’

‘I know,’ said Fian. ‘Whatever you do, it makes no difference. It’s triple ten. One in ten risk if both parents are Handicapped themselves. One in a hundred if one parent is Handicapped. One in a thousand if neither parent is. My mother still follows all the superstitions though.’

‘So, she didn’t eat Karanth jelly?’

Fian laughed. ‘She wouldn’t even go in a shop that sold it. But don’t worry; you’ll like my mother when you meet her. She isn’t really silly. She admits herself that she got a bit paranoid when she was pregnant with my sister. Her one month scan showed my sister had a potential heart condition. They did preventative treatment immediately of course.’

‘Everyone ready?’ asked Playdon. ‘Jarra?’

I hastily set my comms back to speak on team circuit. ‘Yes, sir.’

I used my hover belt to skim forward over the first bit of rubble. The conversation I’d just had with Fian was bothering me a little. I suppose it was that comment about meeting his mother. Meeting parents was … well it was a bit serious.

‘Everyone, be aware that Jarra is working over a large underground void,’ said Playdon, ‘so we have to react fast if there’s a cave-in.’

I dismissed worries about meeting parents and concentrated on what I was doing. The first thing needed, obviously, was to level out the site a bit. I started shifting some of the unstable heaps that had been left after we blew up the building yesterday. There were some large girders involved, one of which was so long that I decided I’d better chop it into three sections.

The laser gun made short work of that. I’d just turned it off, and was tagging the pieces when two things happened simultaneously. One was that I felt myself being yanked upwards, and the other was something hitting me in the back. The impact suit triggered as I headed on upwards, and I dangled in midair, frozen like a statue for a moment before I could move again.

‘What happened?’ I asked, thoroughly confused. There hadn’t been anything behind me that could have hit me.

‘A rather young and clueless wolf decided to have you for lunch,’ said Playdon. ‘He knocked himself silly on your impact suit. The rest of the pack is skulking over behind that wall.’

I looked down. A stunned wolf got uncertainly to his feet, whined, and then limped off rapidly to rejoin the pack.

‘There goes a sadder and wiser wolf,’ said Playdon. ‘He’ll know to leave dig teams alone in future.’

‘Poor thing,’ I said.

‘Serves him right,’ said Fian. ‘They’re still hanging round behind that wall. Should we shoot them?’

‘I think throwing a large rock in their direction might be enough,’ said Playdon. ‘Amalie, pick something big up and throw it their way.’

Amalie locked her beam on to a large section of girder, and sent it flying forcefully towards the wolf pack. They instantly turned and fled.

‘That seems to have convinced them,’ said Playdon. ‘I think you can put Jarra down again now, Fian.’

I was lowered back towards the ground and my hover belt engaged. I carried on shifting rocks and girders. There was an awful lot to move, but after a couple of hours the site was nice and stable and we were gradually working our way downwards. Playdon brought team 2 in to take over for a while, and sent team 1 back to the dome for a two hour break. I was reluctant to hand over my nice tidy dig site to someone else, in case they messed it up, but a break from being in my impact suit was very welcome.

There were just the five of us back at the dome, so we could make the most of the limited facilities of the bathrooms, and pick out the best of the packaged food. Fian still seemed unnerved by the wolf.

‘I didn’t know they were there until that one suddenly ran out and leapt at you,’ he said. ‘Scared me to death.’

‘It wasn’t going to be able to bite through my impact suit,’ I reassured him.

‘If it had jumped at you when you were using the laser …’ Fian let the sentence trail off into grim silence.

I hadn’t thought of that. A wolf knocking me over while I had the laser beam active could have been very nasty. I pictured it, and instantly wished that I hadn’t.

We headed back to our work site after our break, and found team 2 had worked their way down through several more layers of rubble. We took over again, and team 2 went happily off on their break.

Progress continued steadily. Just after team 2 rejoined us, we reached what appeared to be solid ground, and Playdon spent a while working on the sensors and deciding where we should place charges. We could place the charges manually this time, rather than using a charge gun, which kept things simple. Playdon called in for clearance, he fired the charges, and a huge circular crater appeared in the ground.

‘I think we’re through to the subway,’ said Playdon. ‘Tag support and heavy lift sleds will need to move closer and use the hoist extensions so we can have beams working vertically down the hole. Team 2, we need your tag support sled over here as well.’

There was a delay while Playdon went round the lift and tag support sleds, checking the hoist extensions were set correctly. I took my chance to do a bit of watching and listening, since I’d never used a hoist extension.

‘Team 2 tag support, you’ll be lowering the sensor probe into the hole,’ said Playdon. ‘It has glows, vid, and sensors, so we get to see what’s down there. Sensor probes are expensive, and unfortunately are easily damaged, so treat it just as carefully as if it was your tag leader. Pull it out fast if anything nasty happens.’

The sensor probe went down and Playdon projected the image from it above the crater, so we could all see. Even with the glows, it was still a bit gloomy down the hole. There was a heap of rubble at the bottom obviously, and a tunnel went off at either side into darkness. Playdon sent a beam of light first one way, and then the other.

‘One direction seems to be blocked by a cave-in,’ he said. ‘Possibly an old one, or possibly triggered by us blowing up that building. The other way seems clear but we aren’t playing around far from the hole. If someone got buried in another cave-in along that tunnel, then we’d never get them dug out in time. I’ll run some sensor scans now to see if there’s anything interesting.’

I went over to the sensor sled to take a look. Images from the sensor probe were appearing on a secondary bank of displays. I couldn’t entirely figure them out.

‘These displays aren’t the same as the ones from the usual sensor net,’ said Dalmora. She was sounding a bit overwhelmed, and I could sympathize. Standard sensors are complicated enough, without having a whole new secondary bank added to them.

‘They’re similar,’ said Playdon, ‘but with several key differences. The sensor probes are Military issue, and designed for a rather different specialist job than the one we use them for. Hmmm, I wonder …’

He was silent for a moment. ‘I can’t be sure, but there might be something interesting down there. There’s a lot of luck involved in subway excavations. It was a transport system, and whole stretches of it are empty tunnels, but it was abandoned just after halfway through Exodus century. The people of New York were rapidly leaving, they gave up using the subway, and the looters moved in. Gangs had their headquarters down here, and sometimes they left things behind when they left or got killed by police or rival gangs.’

I peered at the displays from the probe. There might be something. ‘If that’s a stasis box, then it’s big, and a very strange shape.’

‘Yes,’ said Playdon. ‘If it’s a stasis box, it’s definitely not one of the standard home memorials. Well, only one way to find out. It’s under the edge of the heap of rubble, so we have some digging to do. Fian, you’ll have to lower Jarra down carefully, so she can take a look and tag things. We get her and the sensor probe out before anyone tries lifting any rubble. Then the sensor probe and Jarra go back down again, and we keep repeating that. Slow, but safe.’

Fian lifted me up in the air with the lifeline, and dangled me over the hole. ‘Jarra, I’ll be watching the sensor probe image,’ he said, ‘but that’s not the same as being able to see you myself. If there’s a problem, then just scream “pull”.’

‘I’ll do that,’ I promised. Fian sounded nervous, and I was a bit nervous too as I got lowered into the hole. I’d never deliberately gone underground on a dig site before. Once I was down in the hole and tagging rocks, I was very aware my only escape route was that circular hole above my head. It was out of my reach using a hover belt, but I trusted Fian. Lifeline beams are designed to be completely reliable, and Fian wouldn’t do anything insane like detaching it from my tag point. I concentrated on tagging as many rocks as was sensible.

‘This batch is tagged. Lift me up please,’ I said.

I soared up through the hole to safety. The sensor probe came up next, and Amalie and Krath shifted the first lot of rocks. Then the probe went down again and checked the situation before I joined it to tag more rocks.

We went round that loop about four times. The messiest bit was trying to shift the small scale rubble out of the way. You couldn’t drag net in the usual way, Amalie and Krath had to lift out batches, and that only worked for little stuff. I learnt that I had to individually tag smaller rocks than usual.

‘If there was a whole lot of interesting stuff down there,’ Playdon said, ‘we’d approach this differently and blow out the roof along a whole stretch of subway so we were working on a giant open trench. That’s a large scale operation though, usually involving several teams working together.’

Finally, I was down to the last level of rubble. I was getting used to the strange working conditions, and relaxing a bit now. I examined the rocks closely, and found some of them weren’t rocks at all. ‘There are a few old metal containers here. Most have fallen apart, and whatever was inside is dust or rotted.’

‘I’m getting some chemical signals from the sensor probe,’ said Playdon. ‘It’s low level, degraded by time, and won’t hurt you in an impact suit. We’ll have to decontaminate you before you take that suit off though.’

‘Oh nice,’ I said. ‘I’m a skunk.’

The class gave confused giggles.

‘That’s dig site terminology,’ said Playdon. ‘It means that Jarra’s suit is contaminated, so the rest of you don’t touch her or you need decontaminating too.’

‘I can see two intact metal containers, and I think …’ I peered closely. ‘I can only see through a tiny gap in the rocks, but I think it really is a stasis box.’

The class cheered.

‘We’ll dig out and retrieve the two intact containers and the stasis box,’ said Playdon, ‘but I’m really suspicious of them. We’ll put them on the clearway, and I’m running Stasis Q tests on them right here before we risk transporting them on sleds.’