The graveyard was near their living quarters in an area with no plans for surface modification. Paul took the drill with its special dust capture function and dug down thirty centimetres, popped in a canister, and backfilled with silicone. There was no ceremony; a plaque would be placed here before launch with list of everyone’s names, though Paul did quietly say a short prayer for Graham as his canister slid to its final resting place. As a miner Paul felt it important to be a religious man. His father had taught him that if you are working close to death then it was best to keep all bases covered, and with the planet Earth flying over your head, despite its beauty and its wonder, one couldn’t help but feel that death was close by. There had been two fatal accidents so far during construction, both relating to space junk, which travelling at eight kilometres per second had shot through the two surface miners like a bullet. The pay of the miners who spent all day outside was even higher than Paul’s because of this hazard, but he didn’t mind, he would rather remain in the safety of the inner cavern most of the time. As he re-entered the airlock to the entrance shaft a feeling of relief washed over him. Even though he had been outside dozens of times, the sense of security that comes from being indoors was still strong for him, and to himself he said a little prayer of thanks that he had survived one more walk. The entrance shaft was not technically the entrance; at least it wouldn’t be for the eventual passengers. Jokingly they called this the ass end of the ship, and this was the asshole, more accurately one of several which would eventually carry huge power cables venting tubes and maintenance tunnels between the engines and the interior of the ship. The secondary door hissed and he entered. Every 10 minutes he received a ping from the command pod. If he failed to ping back it was assumed he needed help. He had forgotten to do so a couple of times, mainly when he couldn’t hear over the vibrations caused by his drill, but overall it was a safety system which worked. As he walked along the walls of the shaft he admired some of his own work. The rock was hard with a high percentage of heavy metals, good for the exterior of a starship but tough to mine. Still, they were getting through it on schedule.
Just under half a kilometre into the ship, the shaft opened out into an immense space. Every time Paul floated into it his stomach lurched and his mid struggled to comprehend the scale of what was before him. Once when visiting the Vatican, while on holiday in Rome with his family, he had felt something similar in St. Peter’s basilica. That cathedral which was built for the glory of God was an achievement of humankind; this new space was itself a cathedral to the glory of what humankind could achieve. A photo of this cavern was already being reproduced in schoolbooks, in the centre of which floated three specks; Paul and his colleagues Jan and Hans. They wouldn’t normally float out there as it just felt weird, but a few months ago they were ordered by the foreman to let loose. The ceiling, or floor, or wall, whatever you wanted to call it, hung three hundred meters above, or below or away from them. Either end was nearly four hundred meters away. It was fun at first, but Hans panicked, the vertigo was too much for him and they had to end the photo-shoot pretty quickly when he threw up everywhere. Paul felt sick himself as he remembered it, there’s nothing more disgusting then vomit flying out of someone’s mouth and nose in zero g. It gets everywhere, really, everywhere. Most people would at least have the decency to put their helmet back on and vomit on themselves, but Hans got caught unawares.
If this had been a real cathedral it would be a draughty one. The air purifiers worked constantly to remove dust, fumes and excess carbon dioxide and so they created a soft breeze that blew non-stop. All the same, everyone kept their helmets with them, not just in the unlikely event of a sudden breech and a loss of pressure, but if the air purifiers broke down it could get pretty unpleasant as dust would stick at the corner of their eyes and to the back of their throats. At the mouth of the cavern Paul turned around and went down the ropes to the bottom backwards. He could go head first if the liked, it didn’t make a difference, but if you weren’t careful you could build up speed over 250 meters pretty quickly and he felt more in control of his speed going backwards. He was heading down to the subterranean areas, though the subterranean title was a bit misleading. The Zheng He would basically be the Earth inside out. While this huge cavernous space was dimly lit at the moment, eventually an artificial sun would run the length of this space providing the light needed for the fields and woodlands below. This huge cavern would provide food, purify the water, and recycle the air for all the inhabitants. It would also provide an open space to prevent the occupants of the Zheng He from going insane from being cooped up in their cabins for years on end. It was expensive to build a cavern this size but everyone agreed it necessary for the generations of colonists. Over the past seven years as they worked away the rock, they had recycled as much as possible. They had ground down some of the excavated the rock to use in the building of the concrete lining later, and to provide a drainage layer beneath the soil in the agricultural areas.
Paul was currently part of one of the teams digging out the housing units. Just beneath the floor (if you assume the centre of the Zheng He to be “up”) of the cavern ran tunnels and caves they had dug to act as houses, shops, a school, the navigation and command centres, food storage areas, a library, town council, religious worship areas, a galley, a hospital, engineering workshops, basically everything you could imagine for a small town on a ship. The areas were empty at the moment as the fixtures and fittings would not be added until much later when rotation would begin and artificial gravity established. Today Paul was blasting out more storage rooms. There were so many store rooms on board that they outnumbered the housing units several times over. On Earth if you want a light bulb you just go to the shop and buy a light bulb, on the Zheng He there was no light bulb manufacturer, so you would have to make one or you would have to bring enough with you to last the trip. On an intergenerational ship, you needed a lot of light bulbs, and computer parts, and cups and plates and knives and forks, and screws, nuts and bolts, faming equipment, engine parts, everything. And for everything you needed a lot of storage space.
“10…9…8…7…6…5…4…3…2…1…Fire in the hole!” Paul got to cover with lots of time to spare and then everything shook. They had been blasting on this level for a few days, Paul was just in time for the last blast of beta shift, he would take over the removal of debris from the sealed room they had just expanded. At first the shaking of the walls when blasting had terrified him. Images of the side of the Zheng He blowing out into space had filled his thoughts, followed by him and everyone he knew being sucked into the darkness. His first supervisor, a Czech miner called Vaclav, had eased his mind however; the designers of the Zheng He knew what they were about. The thinnest part of the ship was the rear as it was unlikely anything would hit it and easy access to the engines was required. Here the 400 metres from the surface entrance to the cavern was the weakest part of the ship, if 400 meters of solid rock could be called weak. In the inhabited areas there was almost 600 meters of rock between them and the surface, while at the front they had 700 meters of protection, behind the ice collection cone, should anything get past the detection systems, the ablation lasers and the powerful magnetic fields that would both shield and help propel the ship.
“Good morning Jack, I see you’ve left a few tonnes of dirt for me to start my day with?”
“Good evening Paul, indeed I have. What’s on the menu for dinner?”
This was a ritual most people did at the change of shifts, alpha team had just had their breakfast but beta team was heading back to the surface for their dinner. The food was pretty tasty, though handling it at zero gravity took away from the fine dining experience.
“You have chicken Kiev, goulash, or vegetable surprise for the hippies.”
“What’s the vegetable surprise?”
“Surprise! It’s lasagne again” laughed Paul.
“Glad I like goulash then. Well, here you go!” Jack handed over the detonator box. “The rest o
f your team are around the corner drilling the holes to begin room 279.”
“Thanks. See you later on for a rematch on the VR?”
“Sure, If I’m still awake. Good luck.”
As Jack and the rest of team beta left, Paul paused for a moment. As happy as he was to be going home soon, he was going to miss this place. They were a good team. Sure there was the occasional fight, but in general it was fun working with these guys.
It was a good day’s work. They got room 278 cleared and the surface of the wall finished, and they had half of room 279 blasted. By the time their shift ended Paul’s muscles were aching as they climbed back to the accommodation area that evening and he was glad about it. Aching muscles meant worked muscles which meant less recovery time when he went back to Earth. His team made a point of walking to work at the beginning of their shift to make use of their leg muscles. It was a long walk which became longer every day as they mined further and further into the tunnels. For now going home at the end of the shift they took the grapple hooks like everyone else. You just hooked yourself into a cable in the ceiling and like an alpine ski lift you were off. It wasn’t very fast, in zero gravity it was easy to get tangled up so it went at the pace of a slow jog. Its primary use wasn’t people transport, it was to remove all the rubble. It would be taken down when they were done. Once the mining was finished and gravity established the first thing would be to lay the floors and after that the main mode of transport for both construction crew and colonists, would be the bicycle. This factoid always made Paul smile. The bicycle was one of the late Graham Hutchinson’s ideas. Some planners wanted metro lines running the length of the ship, others wanted electric cars with charging points, but Graham fought for bicycles. They were light, cheap, easy to repair if they broke and fast enough to get around the ship in good time. There would be electric tractors for the agricultural engineers alright, and some heavy duty lifting machinery in some engineering and storage areas, but for general day to day transport it would be the bicycle. Paul liked the idea of the simple bike being an invaluable tool for space exploration. It wasn’t the only planned day to day tool that took people by surprise when it was mentioned. Clockwork radios and flashlights would be plentiful as well as pencils and paper. The library would have actual books in it, not just tablets. The philosophy was to minimise moving parts so things would not break down often, thereby giving the occupants of the intergenerational ship the best chance possible of making it to Gliese 451 alive and ready to colonise. John Peeters was successfully continuing this philosophy in his capacity as project manager and most people agreed it was good common sense, which was surprising since common sense is normally not that common at all.
Paul met up with Hans for dinner. He still had moments of embarrassment due to his vomiting incident, mainly because people kept teasing him about it, even though everyone had their own story along the same vein. He was reading the daily internal briefing on a tablet. As Paul sat down he asked for an update: “anything good? Are we all getting a pay-rise or something?”
“Nothing like that, no Paul. There’s a slight change to next week’s shift times but no changes to the shuttle arrival and departure schedules. There’s that new horror movie about werewolves but apart from that you can give the recreation room a miss most evenings.”
Paul peered at the faintly glowingly screen as Hans handed it over to him “What’s that article there?”
“It’s about the outfitting that will begin in two years, they’ve moved it forward by 6 months, but we knew that anyway.” Paul skimmed through the article and then something caught his attention, “that’s pretty cool.”
“What is?”
“John Peeters is coming to the Zheng He to supervise everything on site. He says that if he’s here he can direct everything more efficiently and catch problems directly as they arise. He’ll be here by next February and will stay until it’s finished.”
Hans looked up from his food; “that’s my mind made up then. They want to contract me for another two shifts to do some of the agricultural landscaping; I guess I’ll take it. What about you?”
“They offered me another contract” smiled Paul, “they think my bone density is fine and should be ok for another tour, even though we might have artificial gravity by the time I come back. I haven’t said yes yet, I want to talk it over with the missus”.
Paul knew he was going to say yes though, after all, where else do you get to feel this close to God?
Chapter 8: 2040
John shifted some papers aside to find space for his coffee mug. Laure’s desk was always a mess, she liked it that way, she knew where everything was when she needed to find a report or a telephone number. Sophie was the same, so between them the Brussels office looked like a paper recycling plant. On the walls were several photos with dignitaries and mementos of foreign trips, not to mention the obligatory huge poster of the Zheng He. Peppered between them were abstract works of art, mainly in crayon or finger paint, drawn by Laure’s kids when they were younger. There were a few newer ones too, drawn by little Abby Peeters aged 3, the daughter of John and Sophie, conceived not long after their marriage. They both struggled to get a decent amount of time with her but somehow they managed. She lived with Sophie in Brussels since they had managed to find a good crèche there and it was easy for John’s parents to baby sit Abby when they needed to. John was using every spare hour to train for his move to the Zheng He in two years, which depressed him more than it excited him now that he was missing out on time with his daughter, but the project came first. The project always came first. At least the handover of his work in Cadarache had gone smoothly so that was one less commute he had to do. The engines were proceeding well and were undergoing testing, in a way John felt it was natural that he should be travelling to the Zheng He to oversee their installation, they were his first children and he needed to be there for them.
John and Laure met once a month for a briefing on the project; the European Space Agency had pumped a lot of money into the mining operations; work which would be an engineering miracle on Earth let alone in space. John had congratulated Laure numerous times on how she had kept the money flowing, though it was John who kept the spending within budget. The Chinese cash had certainly helped too, most of their start-up money had been absorbed six months into the mining, but they put up extra, which helped put pressure on European governments to meet their targets. Laure had a huge success that month: the final instalment of money to complete the mining had been secured and council agreement was likely. She wasn’t going to run for MEP again, indeed, she was already planning and manoeuvring to run for the French assembly next time around. She wanted to be with her family and friends more often and being at home in Paris would be perfect for that.
“Sorry about the mess John, but I guess you’re used to it by now. I suppose this will be one of our last meetings.”
“Seems so, we’ve already transferred over a lot of the remaining work to Eindhoven, they should be able to finish on their own. We will be working on the preparations for the building and outfitting phases from next month.”
“You’ll be dealing with the Russians and the Chinese I guess, how will you manage that?”
“Honestly Laure I don’t know. I’ve started basic Russian and Chinese lessons but they’re two different bloody alphabets! At least they both use SI units. Still, the main engineers I will be working with all speak English so that helps, and as far as I know all their people learn English anyway so I’m sure we will manage somehow. There are three working languages on the mining project and that seems to be going ok… touch wood.”
“Well, look at this place, it has twenty something official languages but somehow we manage.”
“Oh come on, you all speak English and French and you have an army of translators in case you get stuck. Anyhow, no point in me complaining, I’ll manage somehow.”
“I’m sure you will. Right! Down to business.”
John felt his mood dark
en substantially; “How we make sure Harry Smith, Giacomo Conti, and Leon Braun back off?”
Laure had successfully managed to bypass most new companies that had been set up to try and swindle money from the project, often a minor regulatory change or an update to funding rules took care of them, but one company which had quite influential multi-millionaires from the UK, Italy, and Germany on its board, was untouchable. Like the others it was a company that didn’t exist before the project, but it seemed to be well bankrolled. Over the past twelve years it had lobbied heavily and was building up a lot of support to be the one to recruit and train the colonists.
Thanks to Sophie’s research they knew that the three men on their board knew each other well, for many years, prior to setting up the company. At one point there were four major board members, but not long after the company was created its CEO was found dead in an abandoned school building in southern Germany. He had committed suicide in the same week he had been found to be trying to sell the company behind his partner’s backs. All four of them had gone to private school together, a place for the children of catholic elite which still produced a lot of the leading lights of industry and politics.
The Project Manager Page 8