William E. Cochrane - Earthquake [Novelette]

Predictions can only be based on experience. When there is no hard data to go on, and no prior experience for a guide, how can you predict anything?

"This is surely the strangest earthquake-watching job I've ever heard of." The voice was Lorraine's and it was slightly fuzzy.

Sid Thomas glanced down at the hem of her skirt and the bare leg close beside his in the skimmer cockpit. Her skin was gleaming in the dim instrument lights; lights that softened her small face and turned her hair night-black with gleams.

"How so, Miss DeStamm, ma'am?" he asked and made a course correction on the autopilot. He wasn't drunk, but there had been enough liquor at the party so that the autopilot was steadier than his coordination. "So, how?"

"This is our first job, for one," Julie piped up from the back seat. "We signed on to monitor and predict earthquakes. Instead, we barely get time to see our quarters before you get orders from a general to bring us to a real slushy party. I mean, oh boy. This is nothing-ab-solutely nothing-like the training manuals. Do you people always stay up so late on Canis IV, Commander?"

"No, Miss McBride ... Julie ... we don't. That shindig was a special idea of General Derrick's." Sid frowned to himself. "He thinks stuff like that is harrassing me- keeping me from earthquake monitoring ..."

"Hey, we're flying out to sea," Julie called out. "I can see the waves. They're all lit up; just like me! What is this, a midnight tour?"

"That's right," Sid said cheerfully. "Behind us, ladies and gentlemen," his voice took on a circus cant, "is the mighty mountain scarp of the North Fault. In front of you, also unseen in the mysterious darkness, is the South Fault. These two Faults, ladies and gentlemen, are the father and brother of all earthquakes in this area.

"Di-rect-ly below us, my friends, you can see a moving granite plate. If you watch closely you can see it charging up out of the sea at full speed ... oh, two or three centimeters a year, easily." He finished weakly and began laughing at his own image. The girls joined him.

"That's the fifty-cent tour," he said, when he had recovered. "Good enough? Actually I'm flying across the twin bays because it is an easier way of navigating back to the bunker. My checkpoint is the center finger peninsula. We turn inland there. We'll be at the bunker a few minutes after that."

"Pretty beach; blue waves." Julie's voice lost a little of its bright edge; became tired for a beat. "Oh, no. You're just taking the long way home to make up for the facts you didn't get to dance with Lorraine ... or me. Spent the night arguing with the big general. So now, you're flying us home slow, to keep us up late and get even."

"Could be," Sid said laughing. "It's a good idea.But we'll get you both to sleep shortly, I promise."

"No hurry. It was a good party and I'm still glowing," Julia said, "like the waves. Anyway, Arthur has gone to sleep already, I think." Arthur was A. Mendenthall, Sid's oversized laser expert who had appointed himself Julie's protector at the party; hovering over her blond lusciousness like a furry lampshade. He was the other, sprawling passenger in the back seat.

"Yep," Julie announced. "His hands have stopped moving. Well, call me when we get there. I'm going to sleep with him."

Lorraine snickered.

Sid raised his eyebrows. He hadn't gotten used to Julie's way of speaking.

"I've only had five minutes with your service files," he said to Lorraine. "Ensign McBride has an impressive specialty and record in gravatic physics ... very rarefied mathematics, that. But the way she talks ... sometimes I think EDT operations sent out the wrong girl."

"Wait until Arthur wakes up and finds out what he missed," Lorraine said. "That'll straighten out his mathematics."

"Oh, no. Not you too?"

"It's catching," she laughed.

"What did you mean, 'strangest'," Sid asked, after a moment of silence grew between them. "The party?"

"Partly that I guess, Commander." Lorraine was hesitant.

"Keep it 'Sid'. I answer to that."

"If you like. Well, I haven't been here long-it's a snap judgment, but ... Well, General Derrick seemed to be trying to pick a fight with you all night. Is he always like that?"

"No, he was pretty smashed tonight," Sid temporized. "But your intuition was right. He was picking a fight.

"General Derrick considers that I am in his way. He has Contract Articles to build the colony and dock complex and we, Earthquake Detection Telemetry, forced him to put down our bunker and instrument sites first. He did it, with a lot of hollering, and now he acts like we are here on-planet for no other reason than to provide him with service and information.

"He manages to be very petty. The general is like that. But he throws a good party ... likes his men to relax often. They work harder. How did you like his heavy-handed hospitality?"

"The party?" Lorraine lifted her hands to her hair. The skimmer was open, side wind-screens kept the slipstream out of the cockpit, but the coolness of the night felt good. "Well, it was pretty unexpected, and ..." She looked sideways at Sid. "... pretty masculine."

"And too much booze," Sid agreed. "Well, that's the general again. The bunker is practically dry, so don't worry. I didn't think you were drinking too much ...Is that what you're worrying about?"

"Oh, no, not that," Lorraine said. "You would be surprised what being the only woman in a room with seventy or so males does to your drinking ... very sobering." She laughed shortly. "No, I didn't mean the party, or General Derrick, really. It's just being here ... finally. After all the training. And it's that, down there, I guess." She pointed forward and down at the coastline. The skimmer was flying on a course that took it out over the water, cutting across the two large bays. The waves, rolling ashore, defined the coast in parallel rows of glowing phosphorescence. "Your Canis IV is a little overpowering ... at night, Commander ... Sid." She was quiet for a moment, then she said, "It's like, looking at a lighted map.

"They called it the Thomas Site in the training runs," Lorraine said. "Is that you?" The change of subject wasn't really abrupt. She was remembering the printing on the geological maps they'd given her in training.

"I'm afraid so," Sid admitted. "That is another one of the little things that General Derrick holds against me. He doesn't like to work on projects that aren't his brain children. And then, I'm EDT-under Fleet Command-while he's a civilian contractor. He runs the construction, but he can't run me. Then too, I carry safety responsibility for the colony site, because of our quake prediction function, and he thinks that lets me run him." Sid shrugged his shoulders in the dark. "It makes for friction ... in little ways. The general is like that."

"Oh, he's not a Fleet general, then. I wondered about his rank and his uniform-or lack of it."

"Nope. That is just his idea of a public image. You get into the habit of calling him 'General', though. He's good at it." Sid reached for the controls to turn inland for the Bunker. He'd crossed the center finger of land that was the checkpoint for his navigation.

"It all looks so peaceful and beautiful," Lorraine sighed, referring to the ground below. "You don't think of danger; even earthquake danger."

"Oh, we thought of danger," Sid said. "We are a long way from Earth, and Fleet planning is thorough in that respect." He turned his head up, oriented himself and pointed. "Look!"

Lorraine followed his gaze. "The distorter ship?" she asked.

"Uh-huh," Sid agreed. He was indicating a group of four bright disks, bunched close in the sky, almost at the zenith. The large disk was the distorter ship; the link between Canis IV and the Fleet supply base on Earth. The ship maintained a distorter link, a controlled discontinuity, that connected Canis IV to the Earth-base-twenty thousand light-years through space; zero distance through the link field. When the distorter field was on, there was literally no distance between the ship and the base station.

"The distorter ship; and three lifeboat satellites," he said, his voice taking on a little deeper tone. "One keyed to our EDT snatcher belts and two for General Derrick's crew. He's got a safety chamber on-planet too-for ordinary accidents-but the satellites are our last-resort safety devices.

"All of our instruments, wire, steel, concrete ... everything it took to build the EDT Bunker and the general's colony and docks, came through the distorter ship's discontinuity," Sid said. "Even pretty ensigns. But if we need help fast, even that link can't get it to us. So we have the snatcher belts and the lifeboat satellites.

"They are a comfort sometimes, up there at night. You can see them until about midmorning, too. A real comfort sometimes."

Lorraine shivered. She knew the reasons behind snatcher belts, distorter-operated safety devices, and she didn't find them comforting at all.

"What makes the phosphorescence so bright?" she asked, changing the subject. "It glows."

"Food polyps," Sid said. "The water is like a thick soup. Wait a bit! You will never get a better chance to see ..." He curved the skimmer around in a circle and began to climb. "Want to put off getting to sleep for a little?"

"See what?" Lorraine was definitely interested. "You've got me hooked. I'm awake now."

"It's below our horizon, right now," Sid answered. "Look out to sea, while I climb a bit."

"What am I looking for? An island? I don't remember one on the map. Oooh ... !"

Sid had worked the skimmer up to about three thousand meters and the sight suddenly became visible. He curved toward it, flying out over the bay.

A flowing band of phosphorescence glowed on the sea. It stretched along the coast us far as they could see, running across the tips of the land fingers from northwest to southeast.

"What is it?" Lorraine asked. After her first cry of wonder, the beauty of the flickering blue-green band caused her to whisper. "The water is dancing, like it's alive."

"Fish," Sid said. "A river of migrating fish, five to ten kilometers wide. They swim on the surface and come down from the north to feed in the underwater trench southeast of here."

"Oh, that's right. Our South Fault runs into the sea, doesn't it."

"And a good way out to sea," Sid agreed. "Clear to the edge of the continental shelf. It makes a deep, food-filled trench and supports that massive herd of fish all year long, as far as we can tell. They never seem to stop. Do you like it?"

"Oh, yes. They're marvelous. The water looks like it's on fire. It's magnificent."

"It's all of that," Sid said. "And that river of fish will be Canis IV's major food supply and export crop for years. The fishermen will come to this colony because of that blue river. They won't worry about the earthquakes at all."

"There will be earthquakes here though," Lorraine said. She had seen the seismological maps of the site.

"Oh, yes." Sid turned the skimmer back inland. "That was inherent in picking this site-the Thomas Site. I am an earthquake specialist, but this colony was sited for fishermen, because of the sea herd. I don't kid myself on that account. The Fleet Planning Board went along with my theory about monitoring and predicting the quake activity ... I've even got my reputation, and my neck, stuck out to the extent of commanding this first on-planet EDT team. But it is that unlimited sea herd, that glowing river of food, that will bring people into this colony whether I say it's safe or not.

"General Derrick, of course, has a big financial stake in the fishing colony. He tends to discount the danger. He says it won't make any difference to the profits whether we have earthquakes or not. He may be right, I've got to give him that.

"Fishermen have found fish in dangerous places before this, and lived there for generations. The Timor Shallows on Bysalt II, for example, where the fisherfolk farm the hot water seaweed beds and die when the steam jets blast from the bottom fumeroles; and the Grand Banks, Newfoundland, Earth ..."

"Newfoundland? Oh, yes. I've seen that," Lorraine said. "We did four days in the orbit lab over there, during senior summer ... Because of the way the continental shelf forms there, like a river delta of rock, isn't it?"

"Uh-huh," Sid agreed. "And it's a graveyard of fishermen and boats, too. But they still fish it ... Well, maybe the Thomas Site won't be so notorious..."

"You think it's that bad?" Lorraine picked up the note of worry in his voice. "A dangerous site? Because of the earthquake hazard?"

"No, not really," Sid said. "The fault system is almost a classic one ... easily predictable. I don't know the energy levels of ground transmission, of course. This is a new planet, but the first temblor we monitor will give me that data.

"Oh, I expect the Thomas Site will have a quake, all right. But not many. Experience with this type of system says the fault slippage will be well spaced out ... ten-year periodicity... maybe thirty years, for a good long lull."

Sid let his voice trail off, then cleared his throat. "I didn't intend to talk business tonight," he apologized. ""Especially not so late." He laughed softly. "You know, there are about a hundred and fifty guys on this site that will try to take you out to see that river of fish in the dark; and they won't talk shop."

"I'll tell them the skipper already showed me," Lorraine said. Her laugh was a delight. "That will put them off ... and boost your reputation."

"No need of that," Sid chuckled. "What reputation? Fleet has ruined everybody in the Bunker, just posting you two girls here. The general-probably thinks I'm-"

"Bunker One to EDT skimmer!" The dash speaker cut into his sentence. "Emergency call! Come in please. Bunker One to . . ."

Sid caught up the hand mike and switched the transceiver to XMIT. Bunker One was Daniel Ames, on duty with the seismographs at the EDT Bunker. His emergency could be an earthquake.

"EDT skimmer to Bunker One," Sid called. "Acknowledging. What is your emergency, Dan? A quake? Listening out."

"Negative on the quake, Skipper," Dan's voice crackled. "But there is an accident at Site Four-the docks. Injury. The general's HQ said to contact you. They want the skimmer down there for an ambulance. You are in the air and closest."

"And General Derrick needs me as an errand boy again," Sid said into a dead mike. Then he thumbed the switch and went on: "O.K., tell them I will cover it. I'll have to come into the bunker and let off my passengers first. I've got a full boat. Have a stretcher outside waiting for me, Dan. I'm over you now, coming down. Skimmer out."

He tipped the skimmer around in a flat spiral and dropped it fast.

"Wake them up back there, Lorraine," he ordered. "The party's over. Ah, there. The pad lights came on." He took the skimmer into the ground.

"Julie!" Lorraine yelled. "Wake up. Quick. Flash Red!"

Julie came awake and gasped as she felt the skimmer falling, but Sid landed before she had time to get scared. She was awake though, shocked and sober-neither of the girls had done much drinking.

"There has been an accident, Julie. The skipper needs us out of the skimmer," Lorraine explained, throwing off her seat straps. "Get Arthur awake and moving."

Julie nodded, pushed at Arthur's inert body, with no result. He was still out.

Sid saw Dan Ames lugging the stretcher out of the Bunker and ejected the side wind-screens, letting them fall to the pad. "Move it, Ensign!" he ordered briskly, all informality turned off like a light. "The stretcher goes where you're sitting."

Julie looked up, and took in the approaching stretcher. She stopped trying to shake Arthur, leaned over him and kissed him full on the mouth. Then she lifted her head a bare inch and screamed. Loud. Piercing.

Arthur's eyes flew open. He registered Julie's face, the kiss, her scream ... and his reflexes took over. He unsnapped his seat belt and ran.

Julie jumped out and joined Lorraine on the ground. The whole operation had taken a flat five seconds and she looked a little pleased with herself.

Dan Ames slammed the stretcher across the back seat and Sid stood up to reach the hold-down clamps on his side of the cockpit. His shoulders were shaking with silent laughter.

"Can't we help at the accident?" Lorraine asked. Her voice was controlled, but she was also close to laughing.

"No thanks," Sid said, sliding back into his seat. "You get some sleep. This may take the rest of the night. I'll see you later on, when you get up ... about noon. Good night, both of you. Now, stand clear!"

Riding empty, the skimmer punched a hole in the sky, dragging a rolling thunder behind it. In minutes, Sid had the lights of the Site Four docks below him and was racking the skimmer around in a circle to lose altitude. The location of the accident was very evident. One of the concrete-mixing Dewars was tilted out of line with a skip loader trapped under the support frame.

Sid took the skimmer down into the lights.

Two of the work crew broke away from the organized confusion around the skip loader and came over to unship the stretcher Sid carried. Sid followed them back to the accident without giving way to his desire to ask what happened.

"Hi, Sid," Ramierez greeted him. Ramierez was General Bat Derrick's operations boss: a short, western-hemisphere, Spanish type. His usual veneer of polished neatness was rumpled and the leg of his coverall had a smear of bright red blood on it from hip to knee. "Ah, Sid, this is a bad one." He was trying to straighten his dark hair with a dirt-covered hand. His eyes were bright, tired, but shining with adrenaline stimulation. "They are still cutting him out of the loader cab. I'm glad you could get the skimmer here. I don't think he would survive the truck trip to Site Two."

"Why didn't he pull the panic ring," Sid wondered. "His belt would have jerked him out. Nobody could tag a 'bug out' on him, with that coming down on top of him. Coward or not, he wouldn't be broken up ..." Sid let his voice trail off. "For that matter, why is he still here? He should have passed the critical limits for his snatcher belt ..." The construction snatcher belts were set to transfer a wearer back to the rescue chamber at Site Two. The safety limits of pain, shock, and blood pressure should have been exceeded long ago. But they were still cutting the man out of the wreckage ...

"Ramierez, you are working without belts again," he said. "Good God, you know better, even if General Bat doesn't seem to. Night work too ... What were you doing? Swinging that Dewar? Eight thousand kilos, and wild mass, too. God! No belts! How could you be so stupid?"

"There were belts, Sid." Ramierez was tired; he didn't react to Sid's anger. "Of course there were belts, but this one did not work. There are not enough belts, of course. We use only five-for hazard jobs-so even this work ..." He gestured around him; they were beside the skip loader cab now, among the workers trying to free the trapped man. "Even this work is not safe. But it must be done."

The laser cut off and somebody shouted: "That's got it! Ease him out!"

Hands helped lower the limp body into the stretcher.

"Get him back!" Ramierez snapped. "To the skimmer! Everybody get back out of this. Behind the ropes. Luis! Morgan! Come out of there, fast!" This last was to the two rescuers in the wrecked cab. "Come on, you timberjacks! Eddie, get this thing stabilized. Back to work. The show's over!" He moved away, directing material in to bolster the tipped Dewar.

Sid followed the stretcher back to the skimmer where an aidman had it grounded while he worked on the bleeding and strapped on some narco-spray nerve blocks. There was a lot of blood, the injuries were messy, probably serious: that hip bone had to be shattered. The man himself was mercifully unconscious, but alive.

Sid had seen blood before. What he was interested in was the snatcher belt that didn't work.

He caught a glimpse of it as the aidman opened the victim's jumper. The sight and the color of the belt jogged him into instant alertness. He bent over, shouldered his way next to the medic, and said: "Give me his safety belt!" in a flat order.

The aidman squeezed two narco buttons on a nerve block strap he'd fitted to the man's arm, then unbuckled the snatcher belt and held it up over his shoulder, absently. He went back to his clean-up work as soon as Sid took the belt from him.

"O.K., break it up! Find things to do!" Ramierez pushed into the crowd around the stretcher. "This shift has four more hours to run. Go earn your bonus, you millionaires." He turned men around and shoved them back toward the job.

"Ramierez," Sid said, "come here a minute, please." He had backed away with his prize, the belt, and was leaning against the skimmer.

"Sure, Sid," Ramierez answered. "What do you need?"

"Is General Derrick coming down?" Sid asked, still trying to get his thoughts straight. He was fingering the belt, checking the power supply leads.

"No, Sid, he's not. The general is, how do you say it-out of it ... for the night, at least. You were at the party, weren't you? No, we will put a report of this accident on his morning report, but not tonight. That is why I am working on the night shift. The general doesn't help when he's ... and he knows it, Sid my friend.

"What is that you have? Oh, a snatcher belt." Ramierez broke off because of the way Sid was looking at the belt. Sid might look at a snake with the same expression.

"Barney's huh?" Ramierez prodded, trying to find out what was wrong. Barney was the man on the stretcher.

"Ramierez," Sid's voice was shaky with emotion, "it's a good thing he didn't try to pull the panic ring. He would have ended up in our EDT lifeboat: out in orbit. With his injuries and the satellites powered down, he might have died before the alarms got a rescue boat out to him."

"Lifeboat?" Ramierez was bewildered.

"This is an EDT belt. It's keyed to our satellite lifeboat," Sid repeated. "The panic ring would have jerked him out there, not back to Site Two.

"An EDT belt, Ramierez. Somebody must have stolen it from the bunker. This is an EDT snatcher belt; out of the locker in my bunker. See the nameplate."

"I see it, but what does that prove?" Ramierez shrugged. "The belts are all Fleet issue. They are emergency safety devices, not personal property. Who could steal one?"

" 'EDT belts are designed to provide escape for technicians who may be observing earthquake phenomena up to and including terminal building damage, ground fractures and volcanic activity,' " Sid said in a singsong quote. "My crew plans to stay here, on the colony site, through an active earthquake. We may get a temblor big enough to wreck your buildings. With that in mind, Ramierez, can't you see? Our EDT belts are set for those stresses ..."

"You mean ... the belt didn't work ..." Ramierez let his voice run down again. The realization of the stresses the belt was set to accept, before it performed its snatching function, built up in his mind. "Holy Mother ... !"

"Yeah," Sid agreed. "That cab was just crushing him slowly. No shock waves, no violent accelerations ... EDT belts are set to much higher tolerances. Whoever gave him that belt might just as well have murdered him. If the accident had caught his head or chest, it would have been murder.

"Also, if it had worked, the belt would have jumped him to our EDT satellite; up there. Who would have looked for him there, huh?"

"He's strapped in, Commander," one of the workmen called.

"Pierce, you go with him," Ramierez shouted to the aidman. "Take your kit." Pierce nodded and slid into the skimmer beside the blanket-covered stretcher.

Ramierez turned back to Sid. "If what you say is true, you take the belt, huh? You take that belt back to your bunker." He shuddered. "I don't want it around here. I want it caged up like a snake."

"Right! And you find out who stole it." Sid slid in behind the controls. "You better check your stock and see if any more of these are loose. I'll count our bins when I get back."

"Take my man in, Sid," Ramierez said. "Get out of here fast. I will hunt my snakes. You fly that thing!"

Sid nodded and took the skimmer up and headed northwest, to Site Two, Derrick's headquarters. He kept the skimmer low, flying parallel to the main road, to save time with his injured passenger.

There was no time for sightseeing along the coastline this time, but the irony of the trip was not lost on him. He was flying back toward the party, but for a drastically different reason. One way or another, General Derrick had managed to ruin the evening.

The valley and the colony town were still in early morning darkness when a sensitive instrument emplaced on the hills changed its position. Six minutes later the timesharing telemetry net sampled the data from this instrument, compared it with the others placed in the valley and began to input data directly into its T367 computer station.

At the same time, the telemetry link stepped up its sampling rate and closed an alarm signal in the barracks section of the EDT bunker. The alarm was part of the computer's programmed instructions to put a human operator into the data link at this point.

The Earthquake Detection Telemetry system on Canis IV had exhausted its ability for action, except in an emergency and with human help. The data indicated the emergency; the alarm output called for the help.

Dan Ames was sacked out in the duty bunk, so the alarm woke him up. He came awake alertly and swung his feet onto the floor. The floor was steady. He hadn't had enough sleep to make him groggy, affect his sense of balance. If the floor felt steady, it was steady... what else? There wasn't anything in the small room that could give him a swing indication ...

He thought back over his dreaming. It had been about the newly arrived blond, EDT Technical Ensign Julie, and martini drinking ... The alarm hadn't been triggered by a temblor, then. Or if it had, the shock was so short ...

Nuts! There was no use second-guessing. His mind kept up its silent monologue as he stepped into his boots. He slept in his pants, but he didn't take time for his shirt or socks. The bunker had instruments to tell him exactly what had happened. He wouldn't have slept through anything stronger than a 3.5 quake anyway. Also, the effects of anything stronger would still be going on ...

Dan went down the hall and through the door ports to the instrument room.

The alarm lights were lit on the tilt meter panels. He scanned the telltale panel for the laser grid. The lights there were all green.

Well, not too bad, he thought. Something was moving, but no fault slippage had registered yet. He went over to the computer in front of the instrument bay. He keyed in the program code for the tilt meters and the instructions:

WRITE ORIG.

ALARM UPDATE.

DISPLAY ESTW.

The computer began to trace curves on its display console that were stylized cross sections of hills and the valley floor at each of the tilt meter locations. The computer program took the tilt meter telemetry input and used it to show the change in the valley cross section that would produce that particular reading.

Dan watched two of the UPDATE displays from the timesharing samples, then he picked up the hot phone. The rest of the EDT team was asleep in the detached living-quarters building. The hot phone went to Commander Sid Thomas's room. Picking it up was a routine gesture and Dan put it right back in the cradle. He remembered; Sid was out of the bunker on a flight.

He hung up the phone and went back to prowling the ranked banks of instruments. Nothing was registering with enough importance to feed into the computer, except the tilt program.

The microseism plotter caught his eye. The trace on the drum grew wider and thicker as the needle recorded tiny ground quakes-less than .5 intensity. For a moment he tensed, then relaxed. The pattern on the drum had a familiar shape. It didn't record the beginning of a large temblor, the pattern was the microquake that the instrument recorded whenever the skimmer landed or took off. Sid Thomas was back.

Sure enough, the door slid open and Sid came in. He was rumpled and tired and holding a snatcher belt in both hands. His expression changed from tired worry to a one-eyebrow-up query as he noticed Dan's concentration on the instruments. He looked quickly at the alarm panel, but the lack of red lights only increased his puzzlement.

"What have you got, Dan?" he asked, and located the one red alarm light at the same instant.

"Better wake up the troops, Skipper," Dan said. "I have a tilt alarm, as of ten minutes ago." He pointed to the cross section display, then crossed over to the seismograph drums and peered into their recording surfaces. "Nothing on the seismographs. But the tilt is building up."

"I see." Sid was standing before the computer console, watching the traces develop.

"Do you know the status of our snatcher belts, Dan?" he asked with apparent irrelevance. "Stock levels?"

"Why yes, I think so." Dan was puzzled by the question, but he had just checked in the equipment for the two new girl techs. He'd been in the belt storage bins as a matter of course. "But it's just a tilt, Sid. I don't think it will be a belt situation for some time. Do you?" Sid didn't answer, so Dan, remembering, gave him a stock count. "The two girls brought their own belts-set for their female heartbeat, physiology and pain tolerances. I racked them in the emergency locker along with ours. They brought one spare each, per regulations. I put these in the safety bin in Stores Five. There were six there; still packaged ... no-five. I remember the hole. Five and two ... seven in storage; five in the emergency cabinet; that's twelve plus the one you're holding ... thirteen. That counts right: something wrong?"

"Yeah," Sid took the belt he was holding and opened the bunker safe. "This belt was on that accident victim at Site Four."

"You mean he got snatched out to the lifeboat satellite?" Dan asked.

"It didn't snatch him anywhere," Sid snapped. "Think, Dan! How could I have the belt if he ... The belt is set for earthquakes. Force 9 earthquakes. Not for industrial accidents. Damn near killed him." Sid shook himself like a wet dog.

"I'll look into that later," he said, taking a deep breath and closing the safe. "Meanwhile, let's take care of EDT business. This tilt look like something interesting to you, does it?" He put his hand on the intercom switch to the sleeping quarters.

"You bet it does, Sid," Dan said, rubbing his hands together, all thought of snatcher belts cleaned from bis mind. "This is just what we came here for, Skipper. If this is starting off with tilt indications in the basalt sheet, it's proving out your theory. The quake will be a nice normal one with all the symptoms and we've got it instrumented within an inch of its life. It couldn't be better. Ring up all hands on deck, Sid! I think we are going to have Canis IV's first predicted earthquake."

"I think so too," Sid said. "We've been waiting for it long enough." He pushed the alarm switch to wake up the rest of the team.

Arthur Mendenthall bumped his way into the instrument room, hitting both sides of the door hatch. He was still half asleep and trying to get his left boot on, as he moved. He ducked his head instinctively to avoid the top of the hatch-Arthur was tall enough to make that a habit-and the duck threw him off balance. He missed putting his foot in the boot, hopped into the room on one foot and sat down backwards. He spun around to scan the alarm lights. They were still green, so he grunted: "I didn't feel the quake. Where was the epicenter?" And put his foot into his boot in disgust. He thought he'd missed a short temblor: missed the whole thing.

"Get off your butt and check your beams, Art," Sid said. "You haven't missed anything." He pointed at the writing console in front of him. "Our tilt meters are recording, but nothing shows on your laser panels yet." Sid waved him toward the indicator panels. "Check your beams for collimating. Nothing shows now, I expect, but there ought to be some creep pretty soon."

Arthur grunted happily and edged his way through the recorders to his consoles.

Sid had been reading the individual scope curves as they appeared. He thought that there were enough for the computer to handle. "Let me see the grid display, will you, Dan?"

Dan nodded and typed in: display norso.

The computer began writing curves for the tilt meters that were facing up and down the valley. These showed up as short, near vertical, lines crossing the curves already displayed.

"Dan, I want you to run a test of every snatcher belt we have in the bunker," Sid said abruptly. "Just as soon as you get a break in this. Test the one in the safe, too. I'll open it for you."

"What? Huh?" Sid's change of thought took Dan by surprise. "Sure, if you want it, Skipper. But my tester just runs a standard continuity check, you know." His mind was digesting the implications of Sid's request. "I haven't got any way of stressing the belts to actually check their tolerance settings. That is a Third Echelon maintenance-Fleet Base ..."

Dan shivered a little. The chill wasn't all because of his lack of clothes. "Sid, you've got me worried. Maybe we'd better plan to get a boat down here to take us off. I mean with the girls and all ... Let's scrap your plan to stay here through the quake-just for the first one anyway. We would get data from the instruments and there will be other times."

"Don't make a big thing out of it, Dan," Sid said. "There's too much work sunk into this bunker to abandon our planned stay. I don't expect to need those belts. All I want is a safety check of a piece of equipment. A simple check. Don't build it into something it isn't. Understand me?" Sid's voice took on a stern tone he rarely used.

"Sure, Skipper," Dan said. "I'll test them. At the first break." He wasn't really sure why he felt squeamish, he'd been training and planning for this job and he knew as much about the bunker's design as Sid, but there was a feeling, a tension ... He shrugged and went back to the tilt program.

"The computer's got enough grids now," he said. "Here's the picture." Dan had waited until about ten of the vertical lines had appeared, then he typed an operation code and an expanded scale factor.

The screen display turned a little and the curves separated, appearing to take on a perspective illusion. Now they were displayed as a three-dimensional view of the valley. A view drawn by the east-west cross section lines and the north-south grid lines.

"The whole northeast end of the valley is coming up," Dan said. "That's what set off the tilt alarm, for sure."

"No beam slippage," Arthur reported. "But the collimator circuits all along the North Fault are drawing current. That's a data check. The laser beams are being adjusted downward to stay in register. It must be a slow movement." His rumbling voice was gleeful. His instruments were working, showing the earth movements they had been designed to register. "Slow movement," he repeated. "However, movement we do have: and all very suddenly. Your alarm was right on the money, Dan. I would say we are going to have an earthquake-very, very definitely."

He turned to look at the display console and stopped, staring at the doorway. He grunted happily.

"The rest of our team has arrived," he announced. "Sid, you really must post the regulations requiring all station personnel to answer emergency calls without stopping to put their shirts on." He pounded his hairy chest. "Traditions of the service."

"I didn't consider we were station personnel, yet," a cool female voice answered him. It was Lorraine, the brunette Technical Ensign. "Although you keep such a short night-sleep schedule around here I'm not sure whether we are on duty or not." She stepped aside to let her partner Julie come into the bunker.

Julie said, "That's right. What day is it? My orders say I don't get personnel until Monday."

Dan began coughing.

"I really admire your ... traditions, gentlemen," Lorraine said, looking pointedly at Dan, who hadn't bothered to put on a shirt yet, either. "However, I think you will find that the regulations, call for Class C uniforms, even for emergencies. Although I admit, 'Undress tropics' is an unfortunate choice of words." She wasn't being stuffy, in fact she was trying hard not to laugh. The men had been at their humorous best at the reception party last night ... There had been a lot of sex-based, me-Tarzan-you-Jane, viva-la-difference humor bandied about last night and Lorraine was trying to revive the mood. That sort of stuff was good for relieving tensions, and she had some tensions of her own to relieve. As a good seismologist, trained on an EDT Bunker simulator, she knew how to interpret the red light on the warning panel and the way the men had been tensed before the recorders when she walked in.

"She's right, Arthur. Right she is," Dan said. "You'd best read up on your regulations. Besides, you can see that the ladies hurried to answer the call. Miss McBride's blond hair is somewhat uncombed and she is not completely dressed. She's not wearing her ..."

"A gentleman wouldn't notice," Arthur bandied. "A sneaky gentleman would notice and never tell."

".... wearing her boots," Dan finished, smugly.

Julie McBride put one hand to the top button of her straining blouse and a glowing blush declared that she had indeed hurried her dressing.

"The call was supposed to be an 'all hands'," Lorraine cut in. "Do you want to put us to work?"

"Yes. Is there an emergency or not?" Julie asked "Do we go back to bed or take off our shirts?"

"The first man who answers that gets cited for not watching the instruments!" Sid Thomas cut in. He was laughing. Julie McBride was a top graduate, specializing in gravatic physics, but she had a passion for dumb-blond sentences. The party last night had been almost a one-girl comedy routine.

"We certainly can use you... put you to work," he went on, trying to get things back to business. "Miss McBride, we appear to be getting a very widespread tipping effect... apparently of the whole crustal section, locally. You ought to check out your gravity detector. The system is complete-the disk was mounted and instrumented a week ago. We performed the instrument check, according to specifications-they were all green. I understand that those specs were set up according to your senior study program.

"Well, I mean that hunk of aluminum ought to be reacting more than somewhat under these conditions, if I read your graduate reports correctly, don't you think?" Sid smiled as he noticed Julie's increasing interest.

"Oh, my yes, that should be ... oh, very interesting." Julie almost quivered with excitement. "How do I get to the detector installation, Commander?"

"It's in a separate building, fifty meters north ... No need to go out there, however, your sensors were all remoted into this bunker ... that panel over there. You'd better see if they are giving you any good data. The calibration charts are all there." He ran his hand tiredly through his hair. "I think that if you concentrate on your detector it will be more valuable than helping with the standard instruments in here. Don't you agree?"

"Whoa, Chief!" Arthur said. "Stop her. If she says, 'Measurements are my business,' like last night, we won't get any work done."

Julie laughed and went over to her panels to begin consulting them. Her blue fuzzy slippers gave her a delightfully unprofessional look.

"Lorraine," Sid went on. "Will you start setting up the inside cameras, please. Judging from the time we have spent in desultory conversation without anything interesting happening, it appears as if our earthquake isn't going to happen right away. So, I'd like to get a backup data system going. The cameras are all in place. They need film cassettes and you should set them for one-minute time-lapse shooting. Also set up a log for changing cassettes, in case this stretches out. Will you do that, please?"

Sid rubbed his neck and rolled his shoulders tiredly. "I won't have time for a guided tour of the bunker just now. However, our layout here is the same as the simulator at the Academy. You shouldn't have any trouble finding things. The job of loading the cameras will let you see all of our equipment, on your own, in the fastest possible time. Does that sound all right to you?"

"Surely, Commander. You won't want us actually monitoring your equipment while you are trying to work out a prediction. Julie and I have trained on a simulator station like this, but you three have spent a year setting up the equipment. You can work it more efficiently by yourselves. I understand; don't give it another thought."

"Don't flatter yourself, Miss DeStamm," Sid bristled. "I am going to assume that your training qualifies you in every way. The informality I maintain on this station is not meant for an R&R assignment. You are on duty, as of now. Your training status stopped when that alarm bell rang, this morning. I don't intend that film job as make-work. There will be plenty of real work for all of us, you and Miss McBride included, but right now, I need you to fill cameras. If somebody else needs a hand, it won't be because he wants to hold it in the moonlight-Canis IV doesn't have a moon-it will be because he needs a seismologist. So, jump to it When you are called, Ensign."

"Aye, aye, sir."

"Dan, what have you got plotted?" Sid turned to the display screen.

"Normal to tilt: plan view, Skipper," Dan answered. "Here's the map overlay." He punched MAP-OVER, then let out a whistle when he saw the display.

The screen had been filled with a rainstorm pattern of short arrows displaying the direction and angle of tilt of the ground around the station. Now it was obvious on the map that the arrows were centered on the colony town site location, just eighty kilometers away, to the south.

Dan put a plastic straightedge on the screen and ran two or three of the arrows out to check for convergence, lit up the point with a light pencil, and instructed the computer to verify the area of convergence.

All but six of the arrows blinked out. They didn't converge; the rest did.

"It's going to be right under Sites One and Two. Just at the north end of construction," Dan said. "The whole section of crust between our two local faults is tilting toward the bay-and the pressure is still building. Arthur, do you get any foreshocks that we might have slept through?"

Arthur had been checking the seismograph rolls.

"Nothing at all," he reported. "The microseism recorder is full of hash, though. All three stations in that net are showing tracings. The local ones too. Who had the skimmer out?" Arthur recognized the little flier's signature.

"The skipper," Dan said. "He was out helping General Derrick ... being an ambulance driver. The close-in stuff won't mean much;" he mused, tapping his teeth with the light pencil. "But the rest of the activity is good data. We could sort it out Think it means enough yet, Sid?"

"Probably not yet. That kind of activity is to be expected with this tilting going on," Sid said. "That tape probably shows the five of us running around in here, too. It's sensitive enough."

"You want to tie up the computer with the microseism program now?" Arthur asked. "Or wait for something bigger to happen?"

Sid considered. The answer was a matter of time and priorities on the equipment in the bunker.

The microseisms, hundreds of tiny earthquake waves coming from the crust strains, could help predict the location and force of the major quake. By timing the arrival of a single wave at each of three seismograph stations, a circle could be drawn through the origin of the microquake-three intersecting circles, one from each station, and the location was pinpointed.

The trouble was with the micro-quakes, themselves. There were hundreds of them an hour; coming from everywhere. They were caused by wrinkling and resistance in the crust to the pressure that would produce the major earthquake. Measuring the waves at each of three stations-you had to be sure you had the right wave-calculating the radius and intersection point, was a job the computer was programmed to handle. The number of microquakes, the number of operations involved, loaded the computer's capacity seriously.

"Can you put a number to the tilt movement, Dan?" Sid asked. "Any guess as to our time?"

"The build-up was fast, Chief." Dan had anticipated the question. "And it is still moving. One of our two faults is going to give way, pretty fast. Any time between now and ten days, by the math.

"Sorry to be so vague, but the only tilt figures the library tapes have under this rate are from Hawaii Museum on Earth and Vulcanii Laboratory V, out in S Doradus system. Those both record volcano action with lots of fore-shock activity-doesn't apply here."

"Milne transforms?" Sid referred to the classic prediction equations.

"Of course. That's what I used. But you know how good they are, until we get more data."

"Yeah. Might as well use the California Approximation ... one minus the square root of the logarithm of three guesses.

"O.K. Plus ten days is a fast earthquake, but it does give us time to try for a prediction. That's what we're here for." Sid had made his decision. "Dan put your tilt program on timesharing. I want to keep sampling that data."

Dan nodded and set up the appropriate instructions.

"Arthur," Sid directed, "start the microseism program. Let me see your first approximation on depth of locus."

"Right, Skipper." Arthur keyed: MICROPLOT OUTPUT PLOT. The display screens went blank and the X-Y plotter began moving to mark the intersection points as the computer calculated them.

"I'll need to change paper now, too," Arthur said. "Half of my recorders are due to be changed-repapered-around 6:00 hours, this morning. I'll do it now, so we don't get caught in the middle of any activity."

"Good enough. One more thing." Sid raised his voice. "Listen, everybody. Girls, you especially.

"I have a hunch that this is going to be a good-sized earthquake. It's got all the signs, so far, and it looks like we are right on top of the focus. Now, nobody knows what that means on this planet. We are the only seismo station on the ground and this is our first quake.

"You all have seen the geophysical maps of this site area and you know why we picked it. It is an active area, but if past experience on other planets can be used, it is a safe enough area. We will know a great deal more about how safe after this quake.

"In any case, the bunker has been designed to stand up to very high stresses-protect the instruments-and, even though that design was set up for a manned EDT bunker, I still think there is some hazard level for people-for us.

"So, as of now, we go on a Class A alert. And, since we are going to stay in the bunker during the worst of the activity, that means snatcher belts on all personnel. Now and always.

"Lorraine, you are standing by the emergency cabinet. Your two belts are in there. Take one and give the other to Julie. The other three are for us. Pass them out, will you?"

Lorraine popped the door off the green safety cabinet and silently took out two metallic web belts and their power packs. She handed one set across to Julie and put the other around her waist. She energized the power pack with a little nervousness, then distributed the others to the waiting men.

"Remember, all of you, EDT set the tolerances on these belts for severe earthquake stress. That means these belts are dangerous. They won't protect you from ordinary accidents, so keep your fingers off hot circuits and don't trip and break a leg ..." He brought up a mental picture of Lorraine's legs, crushed and bloody like the construction man, Barney, and shivered. "We've already had one accident with one of these EDT belts. I don't want another one. Don't get careless!"

"Accident, Sid?" Arthur asked. "Where?"

"One of the general's jacklegs," Sid said shortly. "He got hold of one of these belts and got trapped in a falling scaffold. A normal industrial belt would have distorted him to the safety chamber at Site Two. The EDT belt didn't work and he was broken up. Whoever gave him that belt might have killed him, if things had been a little worse."

"Skipper," Arthur's voice was deeper than usual, "the general got that belt out of our stock. His rec-slip is in the locker; signed and thumbprinted. I saw it last Monday when I ran the qualification tests on the belts in stock. He must have picked it up himself. There's no charge record."

"The general," Sid said. "Yeah, he might. Well, that's another bone I've got to pick with him. Forget it for now.

"But remember what I said about these belts of ours. Keep them on, but don't get careless. You understand? I mean this seriously. The belts will distort you out to the orbit lifeboats if their safety limits are exceeded-heat, shock, G-load, your own pain or fear levels-but they won't save you if you aren't wearing them. Keep them on! Wear them all the time. I mean, all the time. They are waterproof and shockproof, so that means in the showers, too. Shower in bathing suits, if modesty worries you."

"That is a heartless order, detrimental to troop morale," Dan quipped. "How can I survive a disaster without anything to look forward to when I arrive at the lifeboat?"

"What do you suggest?" Julie said. Her voice had just a little quaver in it. "Doubling up the number of showers to increase the statistics and prevent infection?" That wasn't one of her best sentences. She couldn't prevent a few twinges of fear from showing. She and Lorraine had used the belts in training rescues, but she hadn't liked the feeling when the distorter circuits warped her into the rescue chamber-instantly, regardless of what she was doing. Julie did not like snatcher belts.

"Doubling up in the showers?" Arthur got into the game. "Nominations for a new station commander are now in order. That's the best policy statement I've heard in this bunker."

"Better save the politics until after the quake, you clowns," Sid said, laughing. "Meanwhile, get where you can all see me and I'll pull the lifeboat handle. Regulations call for an 'All Hands Witness' when I do." He waited until they were in position, then pulled a red handle on the safety board. The handle came out of its clips, opened a switch and then came away from the board in his hand. The switch couldn't be closed again. "The life-support systems in the satellites are officially powered up. It will be so logged." Sid signed his name to the safety log and put the handle away in a drawer.

High over the station in a stable orbit, the spherical hull of the EDT lifeboat satellite began to increase its interior air pressure and warm itself. Lights, came on in the padded central chamber. This chamber was the center focus of the distorter mechanisms in the lifeboat's hull. When the snatcher belts activated, the space between the belt and this focus didn't exist and the person wearing the belt was snatched into the safety of the padded lifeboat. These snatcher distorter circuits worked continuously, and had been working since the lifeboats were left in orbit. The switch Sid had operated had no control over the distorters. He had activated the survival and life-support systems only. But he had set up the lifeboats in anticipation of a catastrophic accident-that was what the red handle meant; it never meant less.

The concept was, of course, sobering even to EDT personnel and the noise of the recorders and instrument relays grew very loud, as the crew thought their own thoughts. Even Julie's forehead held a frown of worry; her eyes darkened and became serious.

One by one, the three lifeboats completed the power-up cycle and three repeater telltale lights on the switch panel lit up green.

"That does that," Sid said into the silence.

"Look," he said to the solemn faces around him, "it's not that bad. We are all set up here to get as much information out of this quake as these instruments can give us. The bunker is designed to stay intact through a catastrophic quake ...

"And remember, about the bunker ... it's not tied down to the foundation slab-or to the barracks section either. The bunker will move around. So, when things get close to the trigger point, I want everybody inside here-the doors may not be safe.

"As I said, the bunker is safe; you've all been trained for this. It's been done before by other teams, so we shouldn't have any trouble. We are all set up to ride out Canis IV's first official earthquake and it's just a job. Right?

"Stick with the job and try to ignore the fear symptoms. With any luck, we'll be too busy to do any screaming.

"O.K., everybody, speech over. Back to work. Get the pick and shovel stuff done, troops. I'd like everybody to stay on duty until about noon. Then I'll set up a shift roster and we can settle down to a long watch. That sound reasonable?"

"Commander," Julie said, "the gravity experiment is all on automatic and working. I can't do anymore until I start reducing data. What do you want me to do next? Where can I help the most?"

"Give Arthur a hand with the seismograph papers, will you? Then let him brief you on the microseism program we use here. That should be interesting and it will need two people shortly.

"Dan, stay on the tilt machines, please.

"I'm going to put on a clean uniform and call up the colony brass. General Derrick has to know that he's sitting on a fuse."

Sid left the instrument room, trotted to his quarters for a quick change, then pushed into the radio shack-the south end of the barracks section. The radio shack was his communication center, completely enclosed in beryllium copper screen so that the stray broadcast signals would not disrupt the" sensitive earthquake instruments. Only shielded cables to the focused antennae, and equally shielded and grounded FM intercom connections to the Bunker, led outside the protective screen.

He opened the single circuit vision-phone to the colony construction site and let it ring. There were only two people on the other end: General Bat Derrick or his night duty man. Sid didn't care if he woke them both up. In fact, if they didn't answer the phone pretty soon, he'd kick on the alarm repeater and wake up the whole camp.

The raster cleared and General Bat himself was on the screen. The phone had gotten him up, but not fully awake and he was looking very un-generalish. His military title was largely fictitious, maintained by him as part of his public personality. This morning he was showing a different personality. Bat Derrick had fought and punched his way through all of the bad jokes generated by his two names, and this morning his face showed most of the lines. He had a new, unlit cigar clamped in his teeth and his eyes were almost hidden by the scar tissue around his eyebrows and eyelids, still swollen with sleep.

"Well," he said, then cleared his throat with a noise very like an Afro-lion. "Well!"

"Class A alert: earthquake emergency, General," Sid said crisply. "We are running a prediction on a major earthquake. Your camp and building at Site Two will be very close to the epicenter."

"When? How safe are the barracks?" General Derrick's eyes gleamed open. He took out the cigar.

"One to ten days. We are refining the prediction, now."

"Ten days! You woke me up to tell me- Two weeks from now! What do you expect me to do about an earthquake anyway? What's so urgent that you have to get me ... Do you know what time I left that party of yours, last night, Thomas? What kind of a gag are you pulling?"

"You sent the invitations to the party, General," Sid said. And this call is no gag. We will have a very real earthquake. The first one we've had on Canis IV."

"And timed to impress those two stacked bunnies you shipped in to share your loafing time, huh?" Derrick lit his cigar. "You real sure you got a groundshaker, boy? Have you checked on your women? Maybe their bunks ain't spring mounted. Heh, heh, heh."

"Clean up your mind, General. I'll be over at 11:00 hours to brief you and your staff-if we have that much time."

"I'll be over at Site Four, pouring concrete for the fishing dock complex. I haven't got the time."

"Scrub it, General. Site Four is only ten kilometers from the South Fault line. An earthquake can be serious there. Besides that you had an accident at Site Four last night- this morning about 01:00 hours. The concrete Dewar collapsed. You should get a report..."

Bat looked down at his desk, picked up a half-page card-he liked condensed reports. "Oh, yeah, it's on the morning report," he said. "One of your snatcher belts didn't work. Hm-m-m. Your earthquake's a week off schedule; your dumb safety belts don't snatch: I'm getting tired of your incompetence, Thomas. Don't you EDT have any reliable equipment?"

"Why you ... !" Sid snapped. "You can't blame that accident on me. I know where that EDT belt came from and you had no business using it on that job. General, you know the tolerance levels for Earthquake Detection Team equipment. You know them as well as I do. If you try to pin that accident on me-faulty equipment or any other reason-I will have you up before a Fleet court for criminal negligence. You left a thumbprint and a requisition in the storage locker ... Or, I'll get you for stealing."

"Cool off, Commander." General Derrick lit his cigar. "I have the right to requisition any equipment or supplies on this planet. It's in my Contract Articles, it always is. That rec-slip is right in line with the book, Mister. I am running this construction project and I am the boss dog on this planet until the Colony Administration takes over. Read my contract, Commander. Read it! Don't threaten me.

"And while you are reading. See if you can find a regulation about nonstandard safety equipment- your equipment; nonstandard and nonworking snatcher belts. Nuts! Sissy stuff. That jackleg wouldn't have got hurt if he'd run instead of waiting for your belt to save him. That Dewar structure must have collapsed slowly. They don't go all at once."

"Unless it's overloaded so you can work all night to make a schedule," Sid said. "O.K. Don't start anything, General," he added, trying to find something specific that would impress Bat's stubborn face. "I'd shut down Site Four, if I were you. I wouldn't want to be responsible for a skip load of concrete under these conditions. If it starts to slosh because of ground wave action, it will tear your rig apart ..."

"You are not responsible, Thomas. I am," Derrick cut in. "Let me do my own work, Commander. My schedule is tight and I always make my schedules. I have to work for a living."

"Very well," Sid's anger reached a plateau. His voice got stiffly formal. "You may use your own judgment about whether to stop work right now, or not, but the regulations do require you to be aware of some routine safety precautions.

"For instance, your snatcher belts will no longer return men to your chamber here on-planet. It is automatically cut off when the lifeboat satellites are powered up.

"And be advised, General, that I have activated all three lifeboats at 5:45 hours in accordance with my emergency authority."

"I'm proud of you." Derrick's sarcasm was as thick as his cigar, smoke. "Now get off my phone. I want to order breakfast." Derrick cut the connection from his end.

Sid let his anger ride up; trying to suppress it only made him madder. He switched off the comm with a violent thumb jab and began to swear. His vocabulary was specific, pungent, physiologically impossible-even for Bat Derrick- and soothing to his, Sid's, emotions. His anger drained.

"That guy just rubs me the wrong way," he muttered. "That was no way to handle him-giving him orders like a sub-lieutenant. There must be a way to deal with him without making everything a personal conflict."

He shook his head. A course in Business Sensitivity ought to be included in every seismologist's training ...

One more chore. He coded the Class A notification, Dan's prediction, and his power-up of the lifeboats, into space code, transferred the code symbols to the minicomputer tape printer linked to a repeater on the orbiting distorter ship. In one three-second burst, this repeater made a punched computer tape and injected it directly into the distorter link. The output of this system was a printout terminal at the Fleet Base on Earth, twenty thousand light-years away. This terminal gave Sid a direct command link with his EDT Headquarters when he wanted to use it. A link that was monitored, by means of a copy tape, by Captain Henery in the orbit ship.

"There," he said, talking to himself, "my personnel, construction personnel-assuming Derrick tells anyone else-and Captain Henery and his crew in the orbiting ship: The whole human population of Canis IV-notified of Predicted Earthquake Number 0001. Duty done: by the book ... hm-m-m, let's see now ..."

Sid reached into a cubby and took out the red volume of Fleet Regulations. The phrase "by the book," had started him on a line of worry. He didn't think that Derrick meant his threat about blaming the accident on EDT equipment. A simple test check on the belt's tolerances would prove that they worked and Derrick would figure that out before he filed formal charges. But he might try something else. Sid turned to the section of the Manual covering his duties as Safety Officer on Canis IV. The construction of all the installations on-planet was Derrick's contract, his responsibility, but, since there was an EDT team involved, the field safety of those operations was a Fleet responsibility-Sid's second-hat job. He skimmed the regulations, refreshing himself on things he had been told in pre-posting briefings. His reading didn't seem to be telling him anything. After a time he closed the book and stuck it under his arm.

"There's supposed to be a Fleet regulation to cover every problem," he mused. "Even Bat Derrick's ..." His hand strayed to his snatcher belt. "And snatcher belts that don't work ..."

Suppose, he thought, suppose these belts aren't working ... or set too high-which could be just as bad, if this quake we are predicting is really bad. He shook off the mental picture of the man at Site Four. The belts would work, they had to ... The earthquake data was vital to this colony site.

"Aargh! Nuts," he said. The bunker was built well. He had to give Derrick credit for that at least. The bunker would ride out any earthquake. That was the plan and he would stick to it. Besides, he had a good team-a very good team. They'd get the data and see the job through. The rest was just nerves- pre-quake tension. Sure, that was it. He hadn't felt this way in so long, he'd forgotten the symptoms.

"Just normal earthquake jitters, you dope," he told himself and dismissed his morbid worries. "Get the belts tested and you will feel better."

Thomas let himself out of the radio shack and ran into Lorraine. He folded her in his arms to keep them both from falling.

"Hey, sorry," he said. "This building has room for everything but people." He kept his arms around her. Her warm softness was the kind of personal conflict he liked. She didn't struggle, merely stood in his embrace until he became embarrassed and released her.

"How's our earthquake doing?" he asked weakly, trying to sound businesslike.

"Dan says the tilt activity has leveled off," Lorraine said calmly, as if nothing had happened. "So I came hunting breakfast. Is the galley in the same place as the simulator?"

"Yes, but the radar oven doesn't work. Arthur had two circuit panels out for repair and spilt honey on them. Earth-base hasn't sent us replacement yet. I don't think they believe the requisition chit."

Lorraine laughed. "You three have been alone too long. This place needs a woman's touch."

"Give that line to Julie and you will stop work."

"Maybe I will: it will go with her collection."

"So!" Sid smiled. "She does do those sentences on purpose. I might have guessed. Those one-liners are just overcompensation for her ... brains, huh?"

"Something like that," Lorraine laughed.

"Go on and get breakfast," Sid said. "Ring the dinner bell when you're ready and I'll come help with the trays."

She turned away and disappeared into the galley. Sid frowned again. The sight of Lorraine's trim figure, uniform skirt and thoroughly feminine legs were delightful, but they brought his worry jitters back in full force.

He had no right to risk the two girls; no right to turn those lovely legs into the bloody mess he'd seen this morning. There was one thing he could do ...

He went back into the communications room and turned on the mini-computer terminal again. He typed:

CANIS IV. CA93421 EDT 1

REF. M001 06:20PLT

MESSAGE 002 06:31PLT

THIS STATION BEGAN PREDICTION RUN ON CANIS IV Q0001 AT 05:45PLT. DUE TO INCREASED HAZARD SUGGEST HQ RECALL OF FEMALE PERSONNEL UNTIL SITUATION STABILIZES. REPLY SOONEST, THOMAS HOLDING.

He went back to his regulation study, waiting for the reply, but his mind was not attentive; also the wait was not long.

The terminal clattered its reply:

EDT HQ 3551

MESSAX 9416 06:45PLT(CONV) CANIS IV CA93421 EDT 1

THOMAS EDTCOMND

REQUEST DENIED. ENSIGNS MCBRIDE AND DESTAMM QUALIFIED IN ALL RESPECTS SAVE EXPERIENCE, HAZARD PROGNOSIS SERVICE ACCEPTABLE,

EDT HQ OUT.

Well, so much for instant distorter communications, Sid thought, shrugging. They told me the same thing I told Lorraine, so I guess I can't kick. The girls are on my team . . .

"Forget it," he told himself aloud as he clipped the messages in the traffic log and closed down the terminal.

On the way out he turned down to the galley, stuck his head in the door: "Oh, Lorraine," he said. "Don't cook anything dangerous, will you? We might get a tremor anytime, now." He was making petty safety noises, but he had to release his worry some way.

"I know. I was planning hotplates," she said. "Nobody wants to leave the instrument room anyway." She opened the freezer door.

Sid nodded and left her to the job. He stopped in the quarters again and picked up shirts for Arthur and Dan. He debated on making a try for Julie's shoes and surrendered to cowardice. Let Lorraine do that, if she remembered ...

Dan had two of his tilt program printouts tacked up on the data display board and was transferring printed data points to a printed map of the valley. Julie came up with another display printout.

"I've got smudges all over, but there are two high points you ought to look at," she said.

Arthur choked and began rolling instrument paper frantically.

Sid smiled and spoke up to rescue his teammate: "Arthur, I squirted a tape to the distorter ship. Captain Henery may send down a lander. You had better set your discriminators to account for its ground vibrations."

"Yeah, I'll fix it. The location of the P waves would rule out anything I get from the Site Three lander area, I think."

"I'm not too sure about that," Julie said. "I've got a strong indication right under part of Site One. Site Two and Site Three are only a few degrees apart, as seen from here. We might not be able to distinguish between them without detailed analysis. Of course, we could check on lander movement by phone...

"But look here ..." She put the printout up on the board. "I've got this strong indication, right under part of Site One-about forty kilometers down. It's just a first-look intuition, so far. The longer the microseism program runs, the more we can refine the guess."

"I'll go with the guess for now, Julie," Dan said. "Look at the tilt plot. The whole rock slab is tilting that way. We ought to get everybody off-planet, now. This is going to be a big one. I've never seen anything build up so fast. I'm not so sure about riding this one out. Can't we remote it and watch from space? Look at that..." He pointed at the console screen.

"Steady down, troops," Sid said. "Don't get too excited. You all have to be pretty sure about this, you know. This is the only earthquake station on this planet. We can't get a check on any of our data."

"Sid, you need some breakfast," Dan said. "You aren't thinking. All this data we're getting is close-in stuff. If there were two hundred stations on the planet, they couldn't tell us anything more. Most of them wouldn't detect any of this- wouldn't detect anything, until we get some foreshock activity. I tell you Skipper, we're going to be right on top of this one."

"You give me some nice foreshocks and I'll know we are having an earthquake; and where," Arthur said.

"So will the whole colony site," Sid said. "Our job is to predict them, not just to record them. Oh, I know," he stopped Dan's protest, "the more temblors we record on this planet, the more accuracy you can get into your equations, but I've got to start somewhere. And this-" he waved his hand at the printout sheets "-is going to have to be it.

"I want to go into a meeting at 11:00 hours and have enough certainty to tell Bat Derrick that he has to evacuate most of his personnel until we do have a quake-the main temblor; not just the first foreshocks."

"There is enough for me now," Dan said morosely. "But I know what you mean about General Bat. That is going to be a job of selling. We had better get to work on some pretty charts, I guess."

"Do that. Or better still, put some big neat lettering on the computer printouts to explain them," Sid said.

"Here's breakfast," Lorraine announced from the door. "Come on and do some eating. This sounds like we are going to work through lunch." She passed out a trayful of hotplates.

"If our baby earthquake gives us time for lunch," Dan said. "It could break loose any time. That ten-day prediction is a way-out maximum." He pulled the seal on his hotplate and waited for it to warm.

"Aren't you cheerful," Julie said. "Well, me for breakfast. If I'm going to do any shaking around here I want to do it on a full stomach."

Arthur exploded into his coffee. "Dan," Sid ordered. "While we're eating will you run a test check on our snatcher belts and log the results. Do you have test cards for the girls' belts?"

"Yes, Skipper," Dan said, reaching for the tester. "Their cards came in with their orders." Dan checked his own belt, punching the test buttons in sequence and watching the dial for a red indicator, then he moved to Arthur and Sid, changed cards, and approached Julie with some obvious hesitation.

"Come on," Julie said, holding her arms up, elbows shoulder high. "I know I'll test out wonderfully. Plug it into me."

"He's getting a red indicator on his ears," Arthur rumbled blandly. "Do you suppose it means anything."

"They are all green, Skipper," Dan reported after checking Lorraine's belt. "And I suppose my ears are still red; whatever that means."

"It means my tummy belt is all warm and safe," Julie said.

Arthur choked again and began coughing. Everybody else concentrated on eating.

Sid let them finish breakfast, then drove them at it again.

The computer began to complete a mapping scenerio from the mi croseism telemetry and Lorraine demonstrated a flair for lettering in a standing position at the data display board, Lorraine also found some old planetary crust surveys in the library records and had them blown up as large as the printout paper would allow.

The presentation took shape quickly.

At 9:00 hours, Sid called it quits. He took Dan off duty for a one-hour break and lay down himself, to try to make one hour cover a lost night's sleep.

At 10:30 hours, Sid took the charts outside and tucked them in the skimmer. He flipped a wind cover over them and buckled them down. A soft wind was twisting the trees on the other side of the EDT clearing. It sent scurried puffs of powder paint from the skimmer landing circle. The morning breeze from the bay, reaching inland as the sun rose, cleared the sleep fog from his eyes even though the rest hadn't refreshed him much.

The sky overhead was still clear. The cold gray-white sun was misty in a thin cloud cover on the horizon. A thirty-eight-hour day made for long dawns and sunsets at this latitude.

Lorraine came out wearing a fresh uniform; her hair pertly arranged. Sid wanted her along when he met General Derrick; partly for the decorative shock effect, but mostly for her skill as a seismologist-most of the presentation was her work. Her smile completed the work the cool air had started and Sid felt almost human again. He stopped his sky gazing and took the skimmer up and headed west for General Derrick's construction headquarters and Colony Site One.

A fleet skimmer was aground in front of Derrick's headquarters. Even from high altitude, Sid could recognize Captain Henery's tall figure standing by the pilot.

Sid grounded His skimmer close to the other and called out, "Captain Henery. Glad to see you. Did you come down for the briefing?"

"Yes, I did," he answered. "And so did those other types in the lobby. I think I can see all six of the general's first mates in there. Who do you suppose is minding the store?"

"The general, undoubtedly," Sid said dryly.

"You may be right. I got my invite from General Derrick. He sent it up by hand this morning with the Ready Go Now." Captain Henery pushed his hat back on his head. "She docked with us for a cargo shift, just three hours behind your squirt-message, don't you see. I was curious as to why the general wanted me. The earthquake is your problem, surely.

"Anyway, I brought down the other lander. Carry Ann instead of riding Ready Go Now back. I thought you'd need both boats on-planet. Quicker that way.

"Will you introduce me to the lovely ensign?" he said, changing the subject.

"Of course," Sid said. "Captain Tom Henery, May I present Ensign Lorraine DeStamm. Miss DeStamm, you have permission to be informal. Those presentation charts make saluting difficult. Captain Henery is a Senior Fleet Captain and will accept your informal salute."

"Thank you," Lorraine said. "Happy to know you, Captain." Her arms were filled with the bulky charts.

"Likewise, Miss DeStamm." Captain Henery took off his cap. "I find that the on-planet personnel of this rock have become a hundred percent more interesting. I must plan to use up some of my accumulated shore leave. Because of my advanced age," he glared at Sid in mock fury, "I need a lot of shore leave."

"Let's get inside, Captain," Sid said. "The briefing starts at 11:00 hours. I want to be there ahead of Bat, if we can get through the gang inside."

"Lead on, Commander. It's your earthquake." Captain Henery followed Sid through the doors of the headquarters building. He held the slide door open for Lorraine.

"Gallantry supercedes Fleet protocol, Ensign. At least it does on Canis IV, from now on. After you," he said and bowed her inside.

Lorraine laughed cheerfully and maneuvered herself and the charts past him.

The chorus of greetings for Sid turned to an appreciative silence as Lorraine came in. A low wolf whistle broke the quiet.

"The rumor factory said you had arrived, Ensign," Wisenski, the steel man, said. "But that's all. Lousy rumor factory. I'm sorry I missed that party last night."

"Who cares about an earthquake ... now ..." That from the whistler.

"Hey, yeah?" somebody asked. "How about the earthquake, Commander. Are the rumors 'bout that as accurate as the ensign? The beautiful, unknown ensign ... I had the duty last, too."

"Ensign Lorraine DeStamm, gentlemen," Sid said, supplying the asked for introduction. "Miss DeStamm, these wolves are General Derrick's first team. Watch them every minute."

"That won't be hard to do, miss," Wisenski spoke up. "Watching us, I mean. We will be glad to help. For instance, we have a river of food fish off the coast here. They are quite a sight by night," he said, trying to make it seem an afterthought. "They glow. Would you like to see them some evening? I would be glad to show ..."

He was whistled down by five or six wolf whistles.

"Disregarding Wisenski's motives," Sid said, when the laughter died, "I can answer the first question. Yes, there is going to be an earthquake, Stevens. That much is fact, not rumor. We are predicting it now.

"You all know I've been expecting a quake. This site was picked because we didn't want the colonists to get surprised by an earthquake they didn't know about. New colonies have it rough enough without surprises.

"I ... we picked this site because we wanted a place where the probability of an earthquake was high. EDT didn't want to wait around fifty years for the first ground tremor. We wanted a fast earthquake.

"I admit that this one is a little faster than I bargained for."

Everybody laughed at that.

The lobby door slid open and General Derrick stood there holding the door open with one hand. He was wearing tailored coveralls and a dust cape.

"I will have to get you guys back on the job," he said. "With this much talent out of the field we're working at half speed.

"Hi, Thomas. You are on time, at least." His voice was heavy and overloud. "I got a break in the work, so I skimmed back to hear what you had to say."

He turned and began to stamp the mud off his boots against a plate, and brushes bolted to the floor. "Be with you in a minute," he said. A fine spray of concrete dust from his cape spiraled up into the lobby fans. Sid shook.his head. Derrick had evidently gone ahead with his job of pouring concrete, just like he had said he was going to do-danger or no danger.

The inner lobby door opened and General Derrick's operations boss, Paul Ramierez, came into the lobby. He was his usual neat and spotless self, the effects of last night at the accident site were gone.

"Conference Room A" he said, making the announcement sound like General Derrick had more than one conference room. "Everybody is here, General. Did Jorgensen come in with you?"

"No." Derrick let the door slide closed behind him. He produced a cigar and lit it. "Jorgensen is pouring. You can tell him what he needs to know." He puffed a cloud of smoke in the direction of the conference room door and walked toward it, leaking cigar smoke like a steam engine.

The group of foremen, long conditioned to following Bat around construction works, swung in behind him; almost in parade ground timing. Sid motioned to Lorraine and they tied on to the end of the train, hurrying to keep up. Captain Henery came last, with more dignity, but the effect was still a parade: a parade led by General Derrick of course, through his administrative office spaces, but a parade. The general staged effects like that with a sure instinct.

Sid had time for a quick glance at Derrick's inner office-a white-collar type at his tape-desk-then the group was across the office and through the double doors into Conference Room A.

"I want to start right away, Thomas. Go ahead!" Derrick said. He sat down and waved his cigar at the far end of the conference table.

Lorraine went over and began putting the charts up on the display rack. Sid put his note folder on the end of the table and said: "Before I get started, General-I noticed a moment ago-your clerk in there, he wasn't wearing his snatcher belt. Could you have somebody talk to him about the safety directives? He's not that safe, none of you gentlemen are, even inside this building. Under the worst conditions this earthquake may produce a great deal of ground energy. I meant my Class A alert to apply to all of your personnel, General."

"Merrick." General Derrick dismissed the clerk with a wave of his cigar. "He hasn't got one. Neither do I. I sent all of our belts back to Fleet Base this morning for replacement and recheck. I don't want defective equipment on my job. Won't stand for it!

"There are only five belts on the construction site and my jacklegs are using them to pour dock walls over at Site Four. They're working under a concrete flume and a flying Dewar. That is dangerous work, Commander, as you mentioned to me once yourself. Highly dangerous work. I'm not about to take a belt away from a man on that kind of a job and put it on Merry. And I won't give him a belt that doesn't work, so don't bring up your spare equipment problems.

"Now, you go on with your speech, and don't mind me."

Sid began his presentation, but he wasn't at all sure what he said. He was telling the men seated at the table about the quake that was predicted, but his mind was literally stunned by the implications of the general's remarks about the belts. Derrick had been almost casual in his statement that he had only five snatcher belts. Sid knew that Bat had been adding to his work crews steadily ever since the distorter ship had stabilized the link for human traffic. He had some one hundred and fifty men aground on Canis IV; a hundred and fifty men, with no major safety devices to get them off-planet in an emergency. Outside of the legal implications of liability, General Derrick's lack of safety equipment for bis men was corner-cutting so insane as to be unbelievable.

Sid kept on talking. He didn't know what else to do. Finally, somebody asked a question-Sid never did know who. The question gave him a break. He used a weak lecture technique of asking Lorraine to field the question, and sat down to let his mind catch up and try to think of a way to sell Derrick on early evacuation of his men.

Lorraine took over smoothly. She answered the question, turned over a chart and pointed out the data plot used to give that particular answer, then she went on to explain the other pieces of the puzzle used to predict the quake.

Bat Derrick continued to ignore her, as he had ignored Sid, but his indifference didn't inhibit his department heads. They looked at the data and asked sharp questions. Lorraine reacted to their interest. She showed them the way the concentration of data from the microseism records was converted to figures for the prediction equations; told them where the constants were applied; and solved a time determination for them-using numbers they had asked about. "Miss?" somebody asked. "That solution you just did comes out thirty-six hours till the quake. I thought, Sid ... The rumor was ... ten days. How come the difference?"

"Difference in these numbers, here and here," she said. "The math is easy once the computer solves the data reduction sequence and puts things on this kind of printout. I'm not making it easy just for show. The thing that makes it seem that way is that this is just one problem. The type of crust strains we are using for data, give us several hundred readings per hour, sometimes.

"That's why I use the computer program, instead of an aspirin bottle." She got her laugh and went on.

"A statistical analysis will give the most likely time, but we won't have enough data to make that analysis mean much until just before the quake hits. By that time we'll be using other, more precise indicators, to predict the exact time. Meantime, we are getting prediction times all over the place. Commander Thomas' ten-day figure is the upper limit. We passed the zero limit five hours ago. We also passed several predicted times around the start of this meeting."

"Not very precise." That was Stevens, the construction foreman.

"I hope you can build a house better, Steve," Sid cut in. "Look man, the planet is new. Nobody knows what its EQ energy level will be. The Fleet put in one EDT station and one colony town site, so that we could begin survey and measurement operations, but you've got to realize what I'm working with. I'm doing prediction work with one station. Back on Earth, New Zealand University alone runs thirty-five.

"I am sampling internal pressures with one test bore- You ran it in for me, Ramierez. I ought to have fifty.

"You all know this. We have to build this colony town site. You have to build it while I work with the one EDT station. One of everything, until this planet gets enough people on it to support more.

"Hell, we even put this town down here right between two known, visible faults. Where else could we put it so that the EDT data would be familiar, not strange-different? Finding this valley and the bays on the fish migration flow was a terrific bonus. But the earthquake pattern was what we wanted-a familiar one. Well, it is familiar. We've all of us seen this pattern before. Something's building up pressure under the slab of rock we're sitting on. We know this. When the pressure gets high enough, something's going to snap-break-and relieve the pressure. We know this. That's when we get an earthquake. We know this.

"The thing that's different about this one, is that we are sitting on top of the epicenter. The earthquake will happen here. Once the quake starts there will be no warning. I've got to make you believe in the signs and data we are getting, now. They are all the warning we're going to get."

"Then we ought to get out," Stevens said. "I didn't sign on to watch these buildings crack apart. There are two boats out there on the landing pad. Let's get the men in here and start moving them up to the distorter ship."

"Calm down, Steve," Wisenski said. "There's plenty of time for that. The Site Four crew is the only one far away. Everybody else is here at One and Two."

"Yeah, and that's where the shaking's going to happen, he says." Stevens stood up. "I want out, now!"

"Sit down, Stevens!" Ramierez's voice could crack like broken steel when he wanted it to.

"Thomas, are you saying that something's going to break right here in the site?" General Derrick asked suddenly, ignoring the outburst.

"Not exactly," Sid replied. "The break I was talking about will be down underground; maybe forty kilometers down.

"Let Miss DeStamm show us the cross section chart."

Lorraine flipped the right chart up to the display position.

"You ought to recognize this, Steve," Sid said. "It was drawn by your seismo-survey shots-when you were picking foundation sites. Remember?

"Now, there is no scale to this diagram and the red circle you see is just a guess at this time. That's where we expect the focus will occur, based on previous experience on Earth. Most quakes of this type trigger in the upper basalt, not down deep."

"Forty kilometers down, wow! How deep do you call deep, Commander?" Wisenski asked.

Lorraine laughed and answered, "Around a hundred and sixty kilometers. These colors show the crust rock section that the colony is sited on, and below that ..."

Sid let her go on explaining the chart while he considered the men listening to her; trying to assess how many would be on his side when it came to voting on evacuation. The construction foreman, Stevens, was smoking his second cigarette, rapidly, worriedly. General Derrick was again staring absently at the tip of his cigar, apparently not hearing a word. The others were listening. They were looking intently at Lorraine, or at their coffee cups, but they were listening ...

Sid's attention was suddenly riveted to the tip of Lorraine's pointer where it rested against the chart.

The tip had begun to chatter against the chart.

Lorraine noticed it too, and held the pointer in the same spot. She continued talking, but the pointer didn't move.

Sid quickly stood his pencil point on the table and held the pencil loosely between his thumb and forefinger at the balance. He turned his head to look directly at the coffee carafe on the service bar-its clear glass bowl half full of coffee ...

Silently he began counting hippopotamus to time the seconds.

One hippopotamus. Two hippopotamus.. Three ...

He got to seven ...

The liquid in the coffee carafe gave a lurch and began to rock back and forth. Sid hadn't felt anything in his pencil tuning fork, but as he looked down at the eraser, it blurred.

Very close. The first shock-waves-P waves-had vibrated the charts under Lorraine's pointer; the second, the S waves, jolted the coffee and his pencil. The difference-timed a little more than seven seconds-put the quake locus fifty kilometers down. Not at the epicenter Dan Ames had plotted, but very close. The tremor was small-2.0 or less-but Canis IV had just experienced EQ 0001FS.

No one in the conference room had felt it. Lorraine perhaps ... She had felt the pointer rattle, he was sure. But she was standing up ... her balance centers would have adjusted for the small movement; she wouldn't have felt the tremor. Not with the thick conference room, carpet cushioning it.

The tremor was a very small quake, but it was a foreshock for Arthur's Milne equation program. Arthur would be working on the seismograph tapes with both hands.

The phone rang.

Oh, ho, Sid thought. Somebody felt it.

General Derrick picked up the phone and said: "Bat." He listened. "I'll be right there," he said, then hung up.

"Accident out at Site Four," he explained. "Another accident. The flume broke." He looked directly at Sid. "No one was near it. So we don't have to worry about snatcher belts, this time." He stood Up and said:

"This meeting is over!"

"Hold on a minute, General," Sid said. "You can't leave now. You have to decide on an evacuation time. There are two landers at the port. They can take everybody off, but you've got to start now. Right now. It takes time to load a hundred and fifty people."

"And you've told me I have ten days, Commander," Derrick said quietly. "Surely I can repair an accident."

"That ten days is a guess."

"Then stop guessing." The general bit down on his cigar. "All I've heard from you is guesses, suppositions, 'I expect', and 'based on what happened on Earth' stuff.

"Well. That stuff ain't good enough, Thomas. I'm not going to order a panic evacuation as long as you have those two women on-planet. I don't figure my men are in any danger. They're as tough as Fleet Marines and they are just as safe. You wouldn't evacuate Fleet Marines would you?"

"What kind of thinking is that?" Sid said. "No, I wouldn't evacuate Marines, but their risk factor is higher."

Derrick snorted.

"Sure it is," Sid went on. "A Marine signs on to get killed; it goes with the uniform. But we aren't Fleet Marines, Mr. Bat 'General' Derrick. You and I ... we aren't allowed the luxury of killing men on this job.

"Wake up, General, You've got one casualty already because you tried to get around the safety regs. And that dumb stunt with the snatcher belts ... that's so far out I don't even think there is a regulation to cover it."

"Your safety regulations are too strict," Derrick grunted in his throat. "Relax them, so I can get some work done."

"Sure I will," Sid's voice was tight with his anger. "Easiest thing in the world. Put some numbers on your request, General. Give me a kill factor! You tell me how many men you are willing to kill and I will turn off a lot of rules. How many a month? Three a day ... ? Set up a man-hour ratio ..."

"Aargh, don't talk guff!" Derrick said.

"I'm not" Sid came back. "I'm talking evacuation. Evacuation before you kill some of your men; when the earthquake catches them on-planet. I'm talking evacuation."

"Well, I'm not," Derrick snarled. He waved his cigar like a weapon.

"I'm talking construction schedule, Thomas. My schedule! I built all those instrument locations and that fancy bunker for you; on schedule. Now, I'm building the colony town site and the fishing docks. I have a schedule for those two and Contract Articles to finish them. That's my job.

"Your job, Commander, is to fiddle with the instruments we gave you. Not mind my business! I say what I can do and can't do at these building sites, Commander. Nobody else. Now, go back and play with your dials and pretty girls and let me work.

"Paul, send me up three carpenters!" He lit the cigar with a flash of lighter fire and left the conference room.

The meeting broke up and streamed after him, leaving Ramierez, Sid and Captain Henery sitting at the table. Lorraine began stacking her charts in order.

"I'll set up another appointment for you, Commander," Ramierez said. "Probably not today, though. ..."

"You get to him, Ramierez," Sid said, grimly. "Make him see that he's got to start evacuating people now.

"I didn't finish the briefing, Paul. What I'm predicting is a Force 8 earthquake. Right here. You've got to understand ... I just don't know what our force level equations mean on this planet. But Force 8 anywhere else means the quake will be fast and violent. You've got to get the work crew off-planet."

"I'll tell him," Ramierez said. "Leave your report. I'll get him to read it. But stopping work ... I don't know. That's not something Bat likes to see."

"Neither is a death list," Sid said. "Try and push him.

"Well, let's get back, Lorraine. There's lots to do. I want to refine the prediction time as fast as I can."

Sid wasn't mentioning the small tremor. He wanted to see Arthur's tapes before he talked about it. Arthur had six short-period seismograph stations oriented in a pattern that gave him about eighteen to twenty triune locations for ranging on the focus of any earthquake. By the time Sid could get the skimmer back to the bunker, Arthur would have located the focus, epicenter and depth of the small tremor. He might even be running prediction sequences through the computer. One good solid forequake, even a small one, was like a road sign to Arthur.

"Mind if I come touristing?" Captain Henery asked, "I helped pull all your instruments through the distorter link from Earth, but I've never gotten down to see them installed, don't you see."

"Come along and welcome, Captain," Sid said. "We may get busy and ignore you a little, but I'll try and show you everything.

"Come on, Lorraine.

"Thanks, Ramierez. See you later." Sid walked out of the conference room. Lorraine and Captain Henery followed him.

Captain Henery fell in step with Lorraine as they came into the lobby. He leaned forward to talk past her shoulder.

"Commander," he said, "I've worked with General Derrick before, don't you see, and I don't speak up to his face like that; but he doesn't know everything about this contract he's got ... even if he likes to say he does."

"I've worked with him before, too, Captain, but he's never pulled anything like this," Sid said. "How could he send those belts back? How could he be so stupid? He ought to have snatcher belts for everybody and two spares in stock."

"He obviously doesn't believe in your earthquake," Captain Henery said. "But surely you aren't thinking of leaving the evacuation to the safety belts and the lifeboat distorters, are you? That's too late, surely."

"Of course it is," Sid dismissed the idea. "You will have to use your boats to be sure. But the belts are a safety device ... the quake could catch us ... no snatcher belts ... One hundred and fifty men and five snatcher belts ... That's murder."

"Well, now, I brought down ten more," Captain Henery said. "They are SOE on the Corry Ann, my lander, don't you see. Ramierez knows they are there. He will get them and pass them out to men who will stay around and help. Ramierez is plenty smart.

"But that wasn't what I was leading to. It's my landers, don't you see-the Corry Ann and the Ready Go Now. Both of my boats down here are under your command, as of now-well, as of your Class A notification, by the log. It's in the Articles of Contract and I don't think General Bat remembers it, don't you see.

"Look, you're carrying the Red Book, Commander. Try Section 45; about 39.36, or thereabouts," Captain Henery concluded.

Sid put the Fleet regulation manual down on the skimmer's rail and turned to the reference. He read rapidly.

"By ..." Sid snapped his fingers. "You're right. I didn't remember; Derrick sure won't."

"What?" Lorraine asked.

"That pretty EDT uniform you wear, miss," Captain Henery said. "It makes you part of the Space Fleet, don't you see." He put one finger on the page of the open manual. "When there is an earthquake emergency," he said, as she leaned in to read, "the Fleet backs you up with teeth, it does. Local EDT commanders get full and immediate cooperation of all Fleet units in orbit: Direct command of all units grounded on-planet. Lots of teeth, don't you see."

Lorraine nodded.

"Captain Henery," Sid said. "Maybe you better get back to your boats. You've got to start taking Derrick's people up to the orbit ship-even if it means doing it behind his back. That foreman, Stevens, is probably on board now; and some more of them will want to go, when Ramierez tells them about the earthquake prediction." Sid smacked his palm against the side of the skimmer.

"Get in quick," he said. "I'll divert by the lander Site Three and let you off."

Lorraine stowed the charts and got in behind the captain. Captain Henery took off his cap and said, "Go on to your bunker, Commander. I still want to see your place and there is time for that at least."

Sid nodded and took the skimmer into the air.

"How many people can you take in each trip?" he asked. "Using both landers."

"It's not people that's the problem," the captain said. "And you don't want to go ordering me off-planet so fast, either, Commander.

"It takes six hours, more or less, for a round trip, don't you see. My landers can blast up the gravity well, or ride down it to land; but they are all-or-nothing, automatic programs, don't you see. If I lift off with half a load, and your big quake hits, I can't come back and help until I get to orbit and stabilize over the landing field again-plus three hours.

"The best plan would be to sit on the ground and take anybody aboard who wants to come aboard, then wait it out."

"The landing field may get some earthquake activity before the main tremor," Sid said. "Would there be any danger of damaging the landers?"

"No. The landing jacks could be unlocked-like they are when we touch down-take up a lot of sway ... all of the shock, maybe. If it got too bad, the lander could just take off. They're designed to do things like that.

"That would be the best plan, Commander. The first jiggle the ground gives will bring in a lot of customers for evacuation. It would be a good thing if both landers were on the ground with their ports open, don't you see."

"You may be right, Captain," Sid said. "There doesn't seem to be any good alternative."

"How about bringing back enough snatcher belts," Lorraine asked, "through the distorter link? Can you do that?"

"That's why I'm coming along with you and the commander," Captain Henery agreed. "Your EDT communicator will give me a chance to talk to Earth-base, don't you see.

"But I don't think I can do anything like that through the link, very quickly. We are a long way from Earth. The distorter link is fast transport, only when it is set up and tuned at both ends. The little task of getting a hundred and fifty snatcher belts delivered to our open link on Earth, may take a bit of time, don't you see. Unless we can catch Bat's shipment before it's broken up and routed to repair bases.

"However, I'll start it, I will."

The skimmer was circling the EDT bunker and Sid took it down to ground contact and switched off the fans.

"Lorraine," he ordered, "take Captain Henery right through to the radio shack.

"Captain, get the orders off to the landers first, then the query about the belts. Come on into the bunker when you are finished."

Captain Henery grinned at the orders and said: "Aye, aye, sir." He tagged off after Lorraine into the barracks section of the EDT station.

Sid crossed the wide foundation slab and went into the bunker port.

Arthur was standing at a data display board with a paper tape. from one of the seismographs pinned to the board. He was the only occupant of the instrument room.

"Hi, Sid," he called. "Glad to have you back. This is the record paper from our local seismo, here on the board; or you can get a playback out of the computer. I've got it working on a prediction. Our time limit is going to pieces. It's dropped to ten hours, now."

"Where's Julie?" Sid asked. He went over to look at the paper record. It would tell him as much as the computer display.

"She and Dan went over to the deep bore tube to check temperature measurements," Arthur answered. "Julie was monitoring that panel when the tremor hit. She got some temperature rise-about fifty kilometers down, where we think the focus is going to be-then the telemetry went out.

"They took the second skimmer out to the bore shack. They were going to read the test dials in the shack and get the data back over the intercom. I jury-rigged a recorder mike, see?

"They just about had time to get there, when the second tremor hit. I've been so busy since, I haven't checked to see if they are ready."

"Second tremor?" Sid asked.

"Yes, Canis IV has officially had earthquake one and two. Both foreshocks; call them 0001FS and 0002FS, huh?"

"Great. I must have been in the air for the second one. Did they give you enough foreshock activity for a tight prediction?"

"Just great. More than plenty. I've got the Y-Z plotter mapping the locus now. The 274 is working time prediction and probable intensity programs for each of the remote seismographs. I'm holding our own local seismo, here at the bunker, as a control so we can look at it and study the shocks in real time, without bothering the computer's telemetering program. Everything is busy. If you want your bank statement added up, I'll have to take something off the line."

"Heaven forfend," Sid said. "I'll get Dan's thermal data for you- and keep out of your way." He went over to a comm-panel and punched the combination for the bore-shack.

"Dan?" he called. The sound system at the bore-shack was a speaker-microphone kluge-sort of an open intercom.

"Oh, somebody finally called." The voice was Julie's. "How do I work the phone? There's no mike that I can see."

"Just talk, Julie," Sid said. "The circuit is open now and works by voice switching. What's wrong? Is Dan there?"

"No, Commander. Dan is outside and I think he's hurt-although he may have gone for help."

"Help? Julie, what's wrong?"

"The earthquake." Her voice was breaking up with static. "... door shut. I saw him falling backwards ... Now I can't open the door. I'm inside ..."

"Radio, Julie! Use the FM intercom!" Sid ordered. "Do you hear me? The yellow panel to the right of this speaker. Your voice is going out. Radio ... intercom, Julie!"

"... hear you. Roger. Radio ..." Julie's voice dissolved in a buzz.

Sid pulled Lorraine in from the doorway and put her in front of the comm-panel.

"Julie. She's in trouble," he said. "Keep listening, here. I'll be in the radio shack. If she comes back on, get her to call me on the FM intercom. It's the yellow panel ... You heard me ..."

"The phone's dead, Sid," Lorraine said, but Sid was already gone.

In the radio shack he kicked on the transceiver of the FM intercom station and heard Julie's voice: "... the door slammed shut. Then there was a second shock. I'm sure. The whole building jarred. Pretty violent."

Captain Henery, at the terminal station, turned and asked, "Trouble?" silently with raised eyebrows.

"Now the door is jammed," Julie went on. "I can't get it open. The latch in here won't work. Can anybody hear me on this? Listening, out."

Captain Henery tucked two minicomputer messages in the logbook and pulled back out of Sid's way.

"I hear you, Julie," Sid said. "How are you receiving? Come in!"

"Oh, wonderful. Very loud." Her voice was much brighter. "I'm stuck in here, Commander. Somebody's going to have to get me out."

"I'll get right over, Julie," Sid said. "Where's Dan?"

"I don't know. He is outside the door. The door knocked him down when it closed, I think. I just saw a bit of him through the crack. He was falling."

"Probably caught him off balance," Sid minimized. "I'll get General Derrick to send up some help. Stay on the intercom, Julie."

Captain Henery nodded, and left the shack.

"Commander," Julie called. "Don't go off yet. I'm O.K., but the temperature readings ... the ones we came to check ... they don't look so good. Can I read them off to somebody? The computer data bank ought to have this ..."

"Do you still have outside power, Julie? Are the lights white, or red?"

"The fluorescents are still on ... white. The outside lines are still up."

"O.K., you've got time, and you're right, Arthur needs the temperature readings you went out there to get. Can you read the dials from that FM station? The mike cord long enough?"

"Mike cord? Oh, yes. It's long enough."

"Very well, then. I'll put you on tape here and have Arthur code you into the computer.

"Julie, listen to me. If the power cuts out, and you go on internal batteries, stop sending and save that intercom for rescue work. Understand?"

"I think so, yes."

"Very well. Now, I'm going to set you up to record. Give me about two minutes, then start reading the dials. Give me twenty minutes more and I'll be banging on the door. O.K., Julie?"

"O.K., Commander. But hurry please. The minutes are kind of long in here."

"Hang on and keep talking. We're on our way."

Sid picked up the phone to the bunker and told Arthur what was happening, concluding with: "... so you and Lorraine are going to have to run things by yourselves for a while."

"Let Julie talk. We do need the temperature readings," Arthur said. "That bore hole will give me some valuable data, if the fiber optics haven't sheared. You go ahead and get her out; we're O.K. here."

"Right. I'm patching her into your tape deck. Record everything, Art. This looks like it's building up to a really big shaker."

Sid hung up and set up the intercom to record. Julie began her dial readings. Her voice had a light quaver in it. The figures had some meaning to her, but she could see all the dials in the bore shack and Sid didn't have time to listen to her reading. He hurried out to the skimmer.

Captain Henery was waiting in the skimmer. He had a wrecking bar tucked along his leg.

"Ramierez has two men on the way from Site Two," he said, clipping the skimmer's microphone back on the dash. "They'll bring a laser cutter

"I got hold of my landers also; They will stay on the ground until they get all of Derrick's men aboard. The order went in for the snatcher belts, but they are estimating three days to get them back to the distorter head. Best I can do, sorry."

"Nothing else to do," Sid said. "You sure can't do any good yelling at them from out here.

"Let's go." He took the skimmer out fast and low.

The bore shack was northeast, in the opposite direction from the town. Site Two was southwest of the bore shack and closer to it than the bunker. Ramierez's men should get there first.

They did. Sid spotted the rotating beacon light on their skimmer before he saw the concrete cylinder of the bore shack. The second EDT skimmer was also on the ground. Dan hadn't gone for help.

The two men, the skimmer crew, were bending over something on the ground.

Sid slammed his skimmer into a landing and cut the power. The something was a man-Dan Ames.

Sid ran out through his landing dust.

"How is he?" he asked.

"Alive." The bigger workman answered. "Doesn't look like he's got anything broken. There's a big lump on the back of his skull. Just out cold."

Sid was kneeling by Dan and could see these details for himself. There didn't seem to be any need for medical aid right now.

"Probably hit his head when he fell," he said. "Look, there by his foot; a surface crack. The quake split it open."

"You mean the ground's gonna open up, right here?" the small workman said. "Fred, you went and volunteered us for another rouser. I'm gonna..."

"Hold it!" Sid soothed. "That won't happen. The crack there is only three-four-centimeters deep. Just a split in the clay soil. Dan must have been standing right on it, to get knocked down. Threw him off balance. The rock here did the rest. The crack might have been what jammed the door, though..."

"The door?"

"Yeah, that door there. It's jammed and the girl is inside-Julie McBride."

"A girl!" The big man, Fred, started toward the bore shack. "Ramierez didn't say... Come on, Pete!"

The two ran over to the door.

Sid took the first-aid blanket from Captain Henery and folded it over Dan, then followed them.

Pete produced a flat strip steel tool and began sliding it around the crack between the door and the door frame.

"It's bearing here, and on top," he announced, marking two spots with a yellow chalk. "The concrete split out here ... See. That your crack, Commander?"

"Looks like it," Sid said.

"Take out the hinges, huh, Pete?" Fred said. He had already made a trip to his flitter and was setting up the boxy sections of the cutting laser.

"Yeah, and a piece of frame ... Say, what's behind here, Commander?" Pete gestured at the hinge side of the door frame. "Blank wall?"

"Yes, as far as I know," Sid said. "I'll get the walkie-talkie and ask Julie."

"Hell, the girl. I forgot," Fred said. "Pete, pound on the door and let her know we are out here."

"Here's the walkie-talkie," Captain Henery said, handing it to Sid.

Pete began to pound Morse code R's on the door with a hammer from his belt kit.

Sid pressed the operate switch and Julie's voice came out of the small speaker. She sounded tired, but she was still reading off the dial numbers in an even monotone.

"Julie. Julie," Sid said into the transmitter. "This is Sid. I'm right outside the door."

down at the snatcher belt, then pointed to it frantically.

"The belt!" he called hoarsely. "Make her pull the panic ring! The ring. Hurry, Sid!" He collapsed back in the seat, shoving at Captain Henery weakly.

Henery stopped fussing with Dan and turned to Sid in amazement. He knew what a panic ring was-it might work.

"Oh, for... I didn't think." Sid began calling into the transmitter. "Julie. Julie. Bug out! Bug out!"

The snatcher belts were equipped with a last minute safety device. They had a hand operated mode- the panic ring. The wearer could pull it and distort himself to safety at any time before the danger criteria were reached. This panic ring had a service stigma of cowardice attached to it-to bug out was not a popular sport in the Fleet-and Sid had been thinking about other means of rescue. He'd overlooked the obvious.

"Sid? What... you say?" Julie's voice was weak now.

"Julie. The heat build-up is too slow; Your snatcher belt won't activate. You have to do it yourself. Bug out, Julie!" Sid kept his voice level and intense. He had to drive the words through to her. "Bug out! That's an order! Julie..."

"Top hinge gone," Fred reported. "Got to cut the frame now. We gonna make it, Pete?"

"Keep cutting, man."

"Julie, pull the panic ring." Sid kept calling. "Pull it. Julie, can you find it? Find the panic ring, Julie. Find it."

"Sid? What do you want? ... square ring on left side... I've got it, Sid."

"PULL IT!" Captain Henery and Dan both matched Sid's voice in the yell. Dan struggled past the captain and staggered to Sid's side. Captain Henery let him go.

"Pull it? You want me to pull it," Julie said. "All right. But get that door open soon... it's hot in here. Just get me out, please. I'll pull.

Her voice cut off.

"Julie. Julie. Julie." Sid kept calling.

"The frame's cut," Fred hollered. "Get the wrecking bar in the top, Pete. Stand clear!"

The steel door popped out of its frame with a squeal from the torn latch and clanged on the ground.

Pete dropped the wrecking bar and jumped to grab Dan.

"Hold it, mate!" Pete said. "You jump in there from outside and your snatcher belt might work, high level or no high level. Then we'll lose you, too.

"Tell us where them dials are, huh? She'll be in front of them. Fred and me, we'll get her out."

Dan nodded. "Right wall... whole wall. Stay close to the walls..." He was about out on his feet.

"Sure. Got it. Fred, in case I don't come out fast enough?"

"Safety line, Pete." Fred clipped one end of a coil of rope to his partner's belt. "Tug and we'll pull you out."

"Just yell if you find her," Sid said. "The intercom is still on. I'll hear you."

Pete waved and stepped through the door. Fred fed the safety line in after him.

Pete hadn't been gone two seconds, when the ground rocked under their feet.

The laser cutter toppled over and Pete yelled from inside the bore shack.

Sid was concentrating on listening to Pete and forgot to time anything. The second ground jerk caught him by surprise. He dropped to a crouch and put a hand on the ground to keep from falling.

The ground was rocking back and forth. The laser equipment was making breaking noises and Sid could see ground pebbles walking their way out from under the fallen steel door.

Fred was lying flat.

Pete shouted. "The girl's not here! I'm coming out. You hear me? She's not here. Her belt worked O.K." The panic in his voice was plain and undisguised. Sid didn't blame him. The bore shack was no place to ride out a temblor. The claustrophobia and fear generated inside the close, windowless, concrete shack would be tremendous-it was bad enough inside the bunker.

Pete staggered out of the heat and condensing vapor.

"The place is empty, Commander," he gasped. "Wow, what a ride. I've never been so scared. Was that the earthquake the grapevine said we are supposed to be waiting for?"

"Earthquake?" Dan was standing stiffly rigid, his arms at his side, with his elbows locked. His eyes were wide, his face drawn and tight. "Earthquake." He swayed a little as if remembering the ground motion. "Oh, yes. One of them," he answered. "Julie's gone. She pulled the panic ring O.K., huh?" He was looking blankly at the open door.

"That's right, Dan," Sid said. "Her snatcher belt worked and she's safe on the lifeboat satellite." He turned to Captain Henery. "Captain, I want you to get back to your landers as quick as you can. You can have your Sparks check on Julie in the lifeboat. Tell her you'll pick her up after the evacuation, though; don't make a trip until you have that lander full of men."

Captain Henery nodded. "That earthquake will help change everybody's mind about evacuation. However, that wasn't the big one you were talking about, I take it."

"No, just a foreshock. But you are right, everybody should be scared by now. Ramierez will be able to get most of his people aboard without panic. Load up your landers, Captain."

"Commander, what's that tube thing in there?" Pete asked suddenly.

"Huh? Oh, the borehead for a deep bore, Pete. It takes instrument leads and fiber optics down into the..."

"Not now, it doesn't. It's white hot and melting."

"What! The heat can't be that high... All we record down there is friction between rock layers. Let me see..."

"Stay out of there!" Dan ordered, gripping Sid's arm. His hand was a rigid claw. "What goes for my snatcher belt, goes for yours, too.

"How do you know about the heat, Sid?" he went on, his, voice tight and mechanical. "Theory says friction temperatures should be building up just before a big quake. That tube is less than five kilometers from the South Fault ... and it is a conducting tube. The heat could be anything ... in fact it is." He let his breath out in a long sigh and seemed to shrink within himself. He pulled the blanket around bis shoulders and began to shiver.

"Take me back, Sid," he said weakly. "Back to the bunker. I ... I want ... I need the computer. We've got to look at my prediction program. Got to look at it ... I think it is about to zero out." His shiver got heavier, so that it was hard for him to talk. "I don't ... think ... we've got ... anything like ... ten days. Not any more." He began walking toward the skimmer. His steps were jerky, irregular.

"Neither do I, Dan," Sid said to his back. "Neither do I."

Sid swept his arm in a wave to include everybody around him. "Let's go," he said abruptly. "You've got to get off-planet. Quick.

"Captain Henery, you go back with Pete and Fred. Take the EDT skimmer, there; Dan's." Sid pointed. "You've got to move. Canis IV has had four earthquakes in as many hours; each one a little stronger. I'm too scared to worry or wait for snatcher belts any longer. General Derrick hasn't got any on-planet, so the evacuation must be by Fleet boat; before the quake hits hard. I want all hands off-planet and no exceptions. I am through playing around, Captain.

"Now, I am going to give you some teeth; to keep Derrick in his place, if he gives you trouble. I am formally declaring Emergency Fleet Law on Canis IV and directing an Earthquake Evacuation ... by boat-your Fleet boats. Do you want it in writing, or will three witnesses be enough?"

"It's enough for me," Captain Henery said.

"We've worked for the Fleet before, Commander," Pete said. "Fred and I know what you're talking about. You got your witnesses. We'll tell Ramierez; he'll log it."

"So will I," Sid said. "Tell Ramierez to start full evacuation, now. Use Fleet Directives, Captain, if General Derrick gets in your way, but fill up those landers. Get everybody off-planet. I don't want anybody left on the ground. This quake is going to be a massive earthshock. Nobody has ever heard of heat like that..." He gestured at the steaming bore shack. "Get going!"

"Right." Captain Henery gathered Pete with a wave. "I'll call you as soon as I check on your girl. She's all right though, don't worry."

"This laser sure isn't all right," Fred grumbled. "We'll leave it here. It's a wreck." He unhooked the power cable and threw it in the skimmer. "Take off first, Captain. Pete and I will be right behind you. We want to get evacuated."

Sid ran to his skimmer and slid in behind the controls. Dan was aboard, strapped in, so Sid took the skimmer high.

"I want to go back along the North Fault," he shouted. "See if there has been any land slip on the surface. You feel up to it? Head O.K.?"

Dan nodded. "Fly it. I'll hold together. But don't take too long."

Sid reached his altitude and began to fly west along the fault, or rather above it at three thousand meters. There was nothing abnormal visible, but he continued along the fault line. The EDT bunker was located near this fault-this course would take him home.

The skimmer's communicator began to sputter: "Corry Ann to EDT skimmer, come in. Official traffic. Acknowledge, please."

Dan reached for the mike, got it on the second try, punched the XMIT bar on the skimmer's transceiver panel and said, "EDT skimmer to Corry Ann: We hear you. Am standing by."

"Corry Ann to skimmer: General Derrick declared a state of emergency following a construction accident induced by pre-earthquake ground stresses. Temporary planet evacuation was ordered and is proceeding. Estimate lander loading complete in one hour. Will take off when loaded. Your EDT team planned for evacuation space on Corry Ann. Please expedite arrival."

Dan shook his head weakly. "Why does a radioman talk like a telegram? Just because he's being taped back at the home office," he said. "That Sparks; I heard his message, but it didn't get through. Sid, could you tell what he said..."

"Yeah, this one was perfectly clear," Sid said. "The general is going to take credit for saving the lives of his crew and make the earthquake alibi his loss in schedule time. He does things like that by instinct.

"Actually his action almost guarantees our earthquake," Sid said, grinning. "No earthquake would ever dare double-cross General Bat Derrick. But he still doesn't believe we are going to ride out the quake. Tell them to go ahead; we aren't coming."

Dan nodded and bent over the transceiver again.

"Message acknowledged: Recommend all speed on evacuation. Captain Henery returning Corry Ann carries full Fleet and BDT authorization." He coughed and went on: "Negative on EDT evacuation space." His voice faded out on him as he realized what he had said. His shivering began again. "Repeat: Negative EDT evacuation," he continued, strengthening his voice with an effort. "We will remain throughout quake action as planned. Contact bunker radio. Skimmer out."

"See. Talking like a radioman is easy," Sid said. "You do it by reflex." He ignored Dan's hunched, quivering figure, and concentrated on his piloting. He slanted the skimmer toward the ground. "Let's get down before the quake does hit. There is the bunker."

Sid curved the skimmer into a landing alongside the bunker and shut off the power.

Dan levered himself out and opened the bunker door. Sid let him do it by himself, but was glad to see that Dan flipped the hydraulic lock-to hold the hatch open.

"I'm not going to have a port shut on me twice," Dan said, referring to the lock. Then he stopped talking; put his head up and looked around. His shaking stopped, cut off instantly, by his alert interest. "Sid," he said softly. "Sid, everything's gone still ... Feel it?"

Sid, standing by the skimmer, also noticed the tension in the air. The leaves on the trees hung straight down. There was no movement in the grass clumps on the edge of the clearing. No wind; the air was absolutely still; seemed to grow heavier as he stood in it. And quiet: Canis IV had no birds, but it did have a large population of noisy insects and a chattering psuedo-squirrel-they were silent, not a chirrup or chatter.

The ground, the air, both had a feeling of stretched thickness to them. Sid even had the illusion that the yellow-brown overcast was coming down on top of him.

Then the first shock hit. Hard.

Sid felt the ground kick up and down under his feet.

The skimmer slammed into the side of his shoulder, jarring him. He jumped up into the skimmer's seat, to ride the shock out on the flier's landing pads.

Daa screamed and took a running dive through the open door of the bunker. Sid saw his legs and feet disappear over the jamb; heard him scream again... and again.

The second shocks hit. And with them, the sound: a roaring rumble; the airborne sound of the ground waves; the vibrating growl of the earth itself.

Sid knew his reflexes and senses were working very fast, but he also knew they were telling him about things that had happened long milliseconds before the impressions registered on his mind. Earthquakes trigger deep emotional and physical responses in human beings. When the ground moves, a man's body takes over and starts operating glands, nerves, muscles, senses, and emotions that are beyond his control. These reactions happen along defensive/survival patterns, and at speeds learned far in the past-back when man was living in a cave, on a planet made up of volcanoes and earthquakes. They are fast, these reflexes; they tend to leave the brain lagging far behind; confuse it; puzzle it; sometimes cut it completely out of the loop.

Sid knew these things: as a seismologist, part of his training had been in human reaction to earthquakes-his experiences of other quakes had taught him the unreliability of his own senses-but his brain kept on telling him what he was seeing and feeling.

The ground jerked sideways.

The bunker-its foundation pad was pulled sideways from under its unsecured mass-the bunker slid half a meter one way and back again. The edge of the bunker left long scratches-twenty centimeters or more-in the concrete. The screaming scrape of concrete added to the noise.

The skimmer also jerked along the ground, throwing Sid from side to side in the seat, and adding the sound of ripping metal-the landing pads-to the noise.

Then silence-absolute, or relative, no matter-but intense quiet.

Sid found himself sitting stiffly erect, waiting for the sound to begin again. In this attitude he heard the airborne sound waves of the earthshock's ground movement. The sound was a roaring, grinding hiss. Sid hoped the bunker sound pickups would tape the sound; he would never be able to describe it

The second shock wave system hit. It was a double shock, like the first.

Sid was looking toward the colony Site Two. He expected the epicenter to be there and he automatically looked in that direction in response to the sound.

The shock hit the bunker; Sid's ears told him the ground went up and down and then his sense of balance went out. He felt his eyes lose focus and he began to see the ground waves coming at him across the rising ground west of the bunker.

The ground was rippling like a blanket ... moving like waves ... P waves? No, that's what he had just felt ... Reflected ground waves? Maybe? But mostly eye/ear illusion from a brain that was getting too many panic signals.

Sid held onto the skimmer and waited for the ground movement to stop. As soon as it was quiet he would do something about getting inside the bunker. Inside, where the visual effects wouldn't be so great. Besides, he wanted to see the instruments-watch the aftershock activity ...

The silence returned. The quaking stopped.

He climbed out of the skimmer carefully. His balance was still distorted-he didn't want to fall. He managed a slow walk across to the door, although he suspected it was more of a stagger than he wanted to think about.

The temblor activity seemed to have stopped. At least he couldn't feel anything.

The bunker foundation was still in good shape ... No serious cracks. There was some spalling where the shock waves had reflected off the surface. The other side-away from the wave action would be worse, but spalling wasn't serious.

The scratch marks showed the bunker's floating design was a good one. Those marks would have to be photographed later on ...

Sid was inside, bracing himself against the corridor walls. He'd made it. He punched the door controls: they worked and the door closed, sealing the bunker.

Arthur was the first to notice him. He looked up from tightening the seat belts across the shoulders of Dan. Dan was breathing-unconscious, but breathing-and strapped into a control chair. Arthur lifted his hand in a mock salute.

"Our smiling commander has returned," he said brightly, but his eyes were hard and he shook his head slightly to tell Sid about Dan's condition. "Get a picture of him, Lorraine," he went on. "He has been working too hard ... working to stand up, looks like."

Lorraine turned. She held a narco-spray tube in her hand and her eyes were bright, moist and not far from panic. Sid decided that any sympathy now might push her over the edge. The EDT remedy for earthquake panic was overwork-routine, and lots of it.

"Take your chairs please," he said. His voice wasn't as firm as he'd like it to be, but ... "Rack that narco-rod, Miss DeStamm and take your station. You are not safe out of the control chairs."

Sid made his way to his station and sank onto the chair. "Art, check Dan's snatcher belt, will you? He had it off once. Make sure it's secure and powered, please."

"Right." Arthur looked, nodded O.K. and strapped himself into his own chair.

Sid tightened his shoulder harness to help himself sit straight. His ears were still bothering his balance. He was glad Arthur had deployed the control chairs-even though he had expected the action-SOP.

"Did everything ride out the temblor?" he asked. "Any breakage, Lorraine?"

"Nothing," she answered. "They have all been smallish shocks, except the last. It went to 7.3."

Arthur punched a display and showed a seismograph pulse on the computer screen. "This is our local seismograph," he said. "I'm using it as a visual reference. The rest of the seismos are coupled directly into the computer telemetry net." He touched another control. "This is the real time trace, Sid. Looks as if we might be going to have a lull."

The trace on the screen was showing the bunker's seismograph as it was recording at the present moment. The trace was even and regular with none of the wide swings produced by the quake waves.

"I hope so," Sid said. "EDT put this station down here to record earthquake data, but this is getting ridiculous. What is it now, five quakes? We have enough data for ten years of work, just reducing data. And it's a near quake, too. Too bad we don't have another station about a thousand kilometers away. Then we could really make some good use of the data ..." He broke off to ask a question. "Lorraine, what about Julie's gravity recorders?"

"They seem to be working, Sid," she answered, "I don't know her specialty enough to read the tapes, but everything recorded. I checked that.

"That is, they were recording up to that last twitch, just before you came in. Then everything went off. I think the big gravity weight broke loose, or fell down."

"Very likely," Sid nodded. "Well, Julie will be able to make sense out of the data when she gets back down ..."

"Oh! Lifeboat?" Lorraine gasped. She hadn't let herself think about Julie. The way Dan had come back... "Oh, Sid. She's all right? Really?"

"Yes. I think so." Sid was programming his computer terminal. "I had her pull the panic ring... on her belt. She should be safe and happy in orbit, but missing all this fun down here. Captain Henery is going to check for me, but I don't expect to hear from him right away. He'll be busier than fleas, with the evacuation-if he got off at all."

"You want me to monitor the radio?" Lorraine asked.

"No. Let's get this data into the computer. This is an EDT team, remember ... and this lull won't last forever. Dig in, troops."

They began to work. The bunker had been designed so that the control consoles were in reach of the chairs and everybody stayed strapped in.

Two of the seismographs rang an end-of-paper alarm and Arthur left his seat to change recorder rolls, but he unstrapped cautiously and hurried back.

The lull went on.

"Sid," Lorraine called. "Look at this! The microseism pattern is suddenly bunched. Have you ever seen anything like it?"

Sid leaned over to look at her screen. "Oh, yes. I think so. Arthur, do you have a short period seismo near the landing field?"

"No, not close. The landers coming in and out would make hash out of it ... Oh! I get you. Let me look at WF12C ... it should ..."

A seismograph trace came on his screen. "What's the time hack on your burst, Lorraine?" He leaned across to read it for himself. "... yes, look there. Two nice squiggles, Sid ...

"Captain Henery took off with the work crew. Those are lander blast shocks, Skipper. No doubt, huh?"

"Not much, Arthur. I'd like to get him on the radio, but I don't know about leaving here." Sid grinned. "How many more aftershocks do you expect, Arthur? Have you run out the prediction equations for them yet?"

"Aftershocks? Those jerks we felt were all foreshocks, Sid. The big strain hasn't let go yet."

"Wha-a-t?"

"That's right, Skipper. The tilt compression is still in. The program shows the tilt meters all rocked back to zero, but they haven't unloaded-switched orientation the way they do when the strain relaxes. We're still waiting for Mister Big."

The computer lit up a red warning light: displayed a seismograph trace.

"Arthur," Lorraine yelped. "Look!"

"I see. I see," Arthur chimed in. "There's a P wave bigger than the rest: I set a limit alarm." Arthur was checking displayed location numbers. "That's a station close in to our predicted epicenter, Sid. Almost off scale ... This may be it."

The bunker rose and fell. Riding with the motion in the control seat, Sid felt the wave; like a pitching boat.

The bunker jerked, throwing Sid forward against the belts. A grinding roar of sound shook the air and turned into a deafening crash.

A block of gray-yellow granite drove up through the foundation and cut into the end of the bunker.

The block's upthrusting energy was so high, so violent, that the inertia of the bunker caused the granite to slice through the concrete and steel with freakish speed.

Sid saw the end of the bunker almost instantly replaced by the granite plinth. He saw its dappled surface in fantastic detail.

His body snapped against the restraining straps and his sight went red with the G-loading, then snapped to black, shot with gold specks.

His snatcher belt hit its safety margins and activated.

Sid's next impression was a dull pain in his shoulder, a sting across his thighs-from the belt harness- and the nausea: the wonderful, welcome sickness of weightlessness.

He was inside the EDT lifeboat.

All of the planning, the training, the design of the bunker; all had been frustrated by the unknowable violence of Canis IV's ground energy and a hidden fault. Canis IV had thrown them off; shaken them out into space like bothersome insects. Now, Canis IV was having its earthquake in solitary violence, watched only by the instruments in the bunker that were armored enough to survive.

"Everybody here?" Arthur asked. "Julie? Lorraine? Did Dan make it O.K.?"

Sid opened his eyes and saw Julie-blond, slightly smudged and beautiful-drifting over his head against the padded wall of the lifeboat receiving chamber.

"Julie!" he said. "Didn't know for sure if you made it. Hi!"

"What hit us?" Arthur asked. "We were supposed to ride out any earthquake. That bunker was built ..."

"The whole end of the bunker was gone," Lorraine's voice was quavery. "Some kind of massive faulting and upthrust-right under the bunker. I can still see the afterimage-all rock. Oh, Sid, I'm so sorry. It looks like the Thomas Site is going to become notorious after all."

Sid shook his head, not trusting his voice further. The earthquake- their earthquake-was being recorded: on full automatic. Notorious? No, hardly. This was just a big quake. The Thomas Site would probably never feel another one as big. The crust movement would be smooth and stable for fifty or sixty years.

Later, they could go back down, salvage the data, rebuild the bunker and have good, solid information for the next EDT station on the planet ... And for Derrick's rebuilding program, too.

No, the job wasn't a complete botch. The team should have ridden out the quake ... but ... Well, the whole team was safe, sidetracked, out of action, but safe ...

"Signal for Captain Henery," he managed. "It's all over."

"And I missed it," Julie said. "Somehow I never seem to get the big tremors. Someday, I'd like to feel a big one."

Arthur got the hiccups.

The End