Janet Edwards - Earth Flight

Playdon tapped his lookup, and a weird image appeared on the wall vid. ‘Records from 2250 show that several old cities had been replaced by a single new city, San Angeles. Humanity had defied nature by building this new city directly across the earthquake fault line, on the vast artificial platform we call the California Land Raft.’

He turned and gestured at the wall vid. ‘This platform consisted of four hundred independent islands, connected together by flexible bridges. You’re seeing the view from the ground of one of the eight huge, automatically adjusting legs of one of these islands. The city of San Angeles was abandoned by 2380, but even now, over four centuries later, most of these legs are still fully functional and compensating for the ground movements resulting from earthquake activity in this area.’

Playdon tapped his lookup again, and the image changed to show something with eight long spiky legs, and a flat shell-like back. ‘This is a side view of one of the islands.’

Krath summed up the reaction of the whole class, including me. ‘It looks like a weird, creepy, mechanical spider.’

Playdon changed the image again to show a whole army of spiders. ‘Here we can see a view of the full Land Raft. Virtually all of the flexible bridges between the islands have collapsed, and the few remaining ones are far too hazardous to use. Twenty-three islands nearest the fault line have exceeded the adjustment capability of their supporting legs and also collapsed. A further thirty islands are highly unstable and too hazardous for further exploration.’

His next image was a patchwork of coloured squares. ‘These are the hazard colour coded islands of the Land Raft. Black islands have fallen or been abandoned. Red islands have an estimated survival time of less than fifty years, and amber between fifty and one hundred. Green islands have experienced relatively little movement and may still be standing for many centuries. Current archaeological efforts are concentrated on salvaging what we can from the red islands. Since these sections are nearing their safety limits, any earthquake activity is very dangerous and …’

Playdon broke off his sentence, stood for a moment in silence, and then strode straight past us and out of the hall.

‘What the chaos?’ Krath twisted round in his seat to watch the hall door close. ‘Did Playdon get a message on his lookup?’

‘I didn’t hear it chime.’ Dalmora stood up for a moment, gave the door a worried look, then sat down again. ‘I expect he’ll be back in a minute.’

A few people got drinks, while others started checking their mail on their lookups. After five minutes, Dalmora turned to me. ‘You should go and see if Lecturer Playdon is all right, Jarra.’

I replied without thinking. ‘Me? Why not you?’

Dalmora looked embarrassed. ‘He might not like it.’

I could have slapped myself. The whole class knew Dalmora had a crush on Playdon and he was carefully avoiding being alone with her. I’d been as tactless as Krath at his worst. ‘Sorry.’

Amazingly, it was Krath who saved the awkward situation by speaking in a chattily cheerful voice. ‘The highest ranked officer present has to take command, sir.’

I giggled from pure relief. ‘We aren’t under attack, nardle brain!’

I stood up and went out of the hall to look for Playdon. He wasn’t in the corridor, but I could hear the sound of voices coming from the portal room. The rest of the class were all back in the hall, so who the chaos …?

Remembering the ambush the previous day, I drew my gun before peeking cautiously into the doorway of the portal room, but relaxed as I recognized the two men with Playdon. They were his friends, Rono and Keren of Cassandra 2 research team. Playdon and Keren had their backs to me, but Rono’s eyebrows shot up as he saw my gun. I pulled a face of silent apology and put it away.

Rono patted Playdon on the shoulder, and gave Keren a nod, before coming over to me. He touched his lips with one finger, then gave a beckoning gesture and led me back into the hall. Most of the class didn’t know Rono, so they stared at him in total bewilderment as he went to stand in front of the wall vid.

‘I’m Professor Rono Kipkibor, senior team leader of University Cassandra Archaeological Research Team 2. Some of you’ve already met me, and the rest of you will remember helping rescue my team from under a collapsed skyscraper at the New York Dig Site. I’ll be giving you the rest of your introduction to the California Rift Dig Site.’

I went back to my seat and Dalmora gave me an anxious look. I shook my head at her to show I didn’t know what was going on either.

Rono glanced at the image on the wall vid. ‘I see Lecturer Playdon’s already talked about the island structure of the Land Raft. The giant supporting legs of these islands are made out of diamene, and the island platforms are formed of connected diamene strips.’

There was some furtive whispering behind me, as a couple of the class puzzled over the scar tissue that marred Rono’s dark forehead, making him look like someone in a history vid of the days before fluid patch treatments. The scar was the result of the solemn Keren losing his temper and punching Rono on newly regrown skin, and Rono was deliberately keeping it to tease him. I didn’t understand how two such contrasting personalities had ever got into a relationship with each other.

‘The strips are designed to move independently during earthquakes, so buildings are laid out in wide blocks along each strip.’ Rono tapped his lookup to show a new image on the wall vid. ‘The islands all have identical layouts. This is an aerial view of one of them, showing the central park surrounded by regimented blocks of buildings with wide gaps between them where the strips meet. Guess what we call the gaps between the buildings.’

‘The gaps?’ asked Krath.

‘Correct,’ said Rono. ‘I’m glad someone’s awake out there. As you can see, there are twenty gaps running the length of each island from north to south. They’re connected by one gap running east to west through the centre of the island. Like the bridges, that gap was used for emergency access when the portal network had to be shut down during solar storms.’

He paused. ‘The buildings on the islands have structural frames bonded to the diamene platform, so they’re held firmly in place when the platform angle tilts during an earthquake. All the walls have imbedded reinforcement mesh running through them, but they’re still riddled with cracks and liable to drop lumps of concraz on your head. Every gap has twin red safety lines painted on it. Between those two lines is safe, but you never put a foot across a red line without your impact suit hoods up and sealed. Understand?’

We all nodded.

‘Understand?’ repeated Rono. ‘I want to hear you say it.’

‘We understand.’ We chorused the words like a bunch of little kids in Nursery.

‘Due to the small size of Land Raft islands, there are no emergency evac portals on the dig site,’ said Rono, ‘but there are twin accommodation domes on each island. Teams are assigned in pairs, and co-ordinate their excavation work so they can help each other in case of accidents.’

He grinned. ‘Less experienced teams are always paired with research teams. Cassandra 2 were supposed to be nursemaiding Cassandra 11 pre-history degree course, but we were fool enough to agree to them trading dig site allocations with you lot. I’m sure we’ll regret it.’

There was a nervous ripple of laughter from the class. After months of Playdon’s formal teaching style, we found Rono a bit of a shock.

He waited for everyone to quieten down before turning serious again. ‘The main danger here is earthquakes. If the quake warning sirens shriek, then you evacuate as fast as possible. We’re working on red risk islands, and even a minor quake may push one of the supporting legs past its limit or break the strip connections, so you get the chaos out of here. Understand?’