by Chris Hechtl
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Little Green Men and Mars University refocused their terraforming efforts on Mars, but there was only so much that they could do. The company opened its people to explore other markets. They at first looked into biosphere management in Bernal spheres and O’Neill colonies before they opened discussions with first Pavilion and then Lagroose Industries to subcontract terraforming work in the outer galaxy.
Eight thousand light years around the center of the galaxy there were no known habitable planets. The area was considered a dead zone because of the high risk of an extinction level event, be it from a super nova or impact by cosmic debris.
That was why the companies had focused their exploration divisions on the arms of the galaxy. The arms of the galaxy were considered the cradle of potential habitable worlds. Hundreds of possible Earth-like worlds had been found, but after universal debate and consideration they had been deemed off limits. It was judged that many if not all of them had life, and of that, at least a good percentage had advanced life, possibly even star fairing life. The solar systems and surrounding areas were marked as off limits for exploration for the time being. Since neither Pavilion nor Lagroose wanted to go kicking over any ant hills and starting an interstellar war, they abided by the agreement.
LGM was a bit put out when Lagroose Industries admitted their own terraforming division was already at work and terraforming efforts had been launched in the Rho sector. But through careful negotiations they came to an agreement. In exchange for a starship outfitted as a survey and terraformer, LGM would terraform four worlds for Lagroose Industries. The boiler plate had yet to be nailed down but Jack was proud of the tentative agreement.
The board wasn't, at least not at first. Starships were expensive things and just handing them out for the promise of terraforming a world was simply not done. However, Jack pointed out that LGM would have to train their people to crew the ship, and they would have to get parts from Lagroose. Furthermore, tune-ups and maintenance would have to be done by the company. With possession of four planets capable of supporting life, they could sell them to colonists or keep them for themselves.
The idea seemed to have bit a few of the board members. They at least quit resistance to such a trade. They did kick up another fuss when Jack went on to make a similar agreement with Mars U, until he pointed out what they were to get. Mars U wanted to have the first science and exploration ship of mankind. They were a bit late for that, though Jack wasn't going to tell them that. In exchange for favorable tax rates, cuts on student fees, a copy of all their research relevant to the company as well as patent rights to be further negotiated later, as well as a copy of all their star charts and information they found in each system, the university would receive a small starship.
They finished the agreement just as Pathfinder launched in a star-studded ceremony. Some mocked the ship's name, after all she was late. Pavilion's CEO as well as Jack put in appearances to congratulate Amin Nutel over his company's achievement. He was gracious in accepting their congratulations. At the end of the launch ceremony, Star Reach announced it had negotiated a deal to transport twenty thousand colonists from North America to an as yet unnamed star system.
Chapter 35
When Icarus arrived in the Pyrax system 51 weeks after leaving B-92c, the crew felt a profound sense of relief. They rejoiced for some time. The scientists were eager to get to work. The engineers groaned as they swung into the task of overhauling the ship while also wrestling with other duties.
Once a series of probes were launched, the captain called a brief halt to the overhaul and science work in order to throw a breakout party. Doctor McReese and her team were a bit put out about losing a couple of days, but everyone needed the time to unwind. It took a couple hours for her to come around, but eventually she grudgingly did so when the dancing started.
The cube satellites would drift to their targets, coasting or even using small magsails to maneuver in the solar wind. Once they got to their targets, they would release clouds of chip satellites, micro satellites each the size of a deck of cards. Each chip sat cost pennies and would act as a distributed platform to study the planet and asteroids before they engaged in the next step.
The rocky asteroids were the ones they were after, at least initially. They wouldn't need to be bagged. They would be able to hold up under acceleration and would give them the most bang for the buck, Isley thought.
Cosmos tapped the ship's still to supply rotgut to the party. That led to a series of rather spectacular hangovers and a rash of call-offs for shifts the following day. It also led to a rather comical video of one of the ship's coonie's Marlo drunkenly trying to wander about the ship with a cup on his head. Apparently someone had set the half full cup down where the little guy could get at it. Doctor McDaniel wasn't too amused; she had initially thought the alcohol had killed the coonie. She later reported he was sleeping off a rather nasty hangover after berating the sheepish tech who'd left the unattended cup where the coonie could get at it. The other coonies took their turns scolding and chattering at their unfortunate fellow.
Once everyone settled down and the crew managed to get back into the swing of things, they started going over the sensory information the telescopes and ship's sensors had been compiling in their absence. While they launched tugs and crossed the system, Doctor McReese and Captain Peck held a series of planning sessions to make sure they were all still on the same page. Parts of the crew split into four on board and two planned external teams.
The scientists took shuttle 1 down to explore the planet and get as much information as they could about it. There was some rancor and muttering about possibly killing any life on the planet, or destroying the fossil record. “We're getting paid to do a job. We do the job. If there is intelligent life or even advanced life, we'll hold off. There are a lot of other star systems after all. But if not, we're going to give this planet a swift kick in the ass and get life going,” the captain informed them. There was still some muttering, but he ignored it.
Once the eggheads were off the ship, the engineers went to work on the deferred maintenance of the ship while the third team went to work led by the sensor officer. They used the astronomy equipment and computers to map the sky around them, locating potential targets for the next step. A fourth team took some of what the survey team came up with and sent automated tugs out to gather up ice rich comets to refuel the ship.
Once the survey team was certain of their prey, they acted. Robots were sent out to each target asteroid. Once they arrived each landed and then drilled into the asteroid to anchor itself, then unfolded solar panels. Once their capacitors were charged, a drill scooped rock, ground it up, and then fed the powder to the ion engine. The ion engine first stabilized the spin of the asteroid in puffs over several days and weeks, then directed the asteroid with a collision course with the planet.
Some of the asteroids would impact in weeks, others would take months or even years to arrive. Each of their courses and impact points were fused over by the sensor and navigator. Soon they had a train of rocks set to impact the small Mars class planet at steep angles. The steeper the angle the lower the rock could get before it exploded in the atmosphere … or even impacted. That meant they would have more punch to maximize their impact. Each would be a drum beat to move her orbit slightly while warming up her ecosystem and melting the polar ice.
One large asteroid, nearly a dwarf planet in its own right, was directed not to impact, but to fall into orbit around the planet within ten years. Eventually it would serve as a moon, helping to regulate the tides and get the planet's biosphere going.
Once the rocks were underway, robotic packages were programmed to spread plant life for terraforming. Some of it would be spread before, some after the impacts. That too took some planning; they had to plan the orbits of the packages and survey satellites that would remain in orbit carefully. They didn't want an incoming asteroid or ejecta from the planet to destroy the expensive packages befo
re their missions were complete.
Unlike Mars the planet was ripe for terraforming. At a healthy 0.82 gravity, she would be much more comfortable to mankind. She wasn't a husky super Earth and was judged ripe for colonization within twenty to thirty years. That would fit well with the amount of time it would take for them to return to Sol. If the bridge could be found, then they might be able to send ships to the quadrant rapidly, cutting down on transit time by incredible factors.
The captain named the planet Eden after his mother. Not only did it have an active volcanic system and icy polar caps, but it also had a strong magnetic field, all predicted by the astronomers. She was in the dead center of the Goldilocks zone for her G2 star, 1.1 AU out in a nice stable orbit. The surface temperatures were near room temperature in the temperate zones of the worlds, with free standing water in an ocean near the equator. For some reason life just hadn't sparked on the world. At least not until humanity had arrived to give it a jump start.
The vats on the starship went to work growing the initial building blocks. As soon as they were full, they were emptied except for a starter culture, then started up once again. Their contents were loaded into reusable robotic aerospace vehicles.
The aerodrones sprayed the nitrogen and carbon dioxide rich atmosphere with algae and nanobacteria that drifted in the air currents. Additional robots sprayed small packages to land in every ocean and major water body.
A third robotic craft sprayed seeds for trees and other plants across the globe while doing a ball and twine orbit at 2.5 kilometers off the ground. The seeds had an exterior husk with a wing like that of a maple seed. They drifted in spins in the wake of the craft then downward to land in the soil. Each seed was gene engineered for rabid growth and encapsulated in a fertilizer starter package. Bacteria on the outer wing quickly broke it down to expose the husk within. Once a little water hit them, they sprouted almost immediately.
Small animals were embedded in some of the packages that were seeded across the planet. Genetically altered Spirulinaha, Arthrospira bacteria, plankton, water bears, and other microscopic creatures were engineered to hatch and spread once the biosphere started to shape up. The Spirulinaha bacteria would spread like wildfire, scrubbing the carbon dioxide rich atmosphere into oxygen. They would serve as additional rich source of protein for the rest of the microscopic food chain.
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Wally, Jeff Anderson, Taz Jorell, Nike, and their junior personnel created a work group to figure out the hyperbridge as the ship's mainframe computers processed the data during idle periods. Sifting through the mountains of data they picked up some tentative nuggets of information.
Taz turned out to be the real genius of the group. Fresh out of college with a double masters in engineering and hyper-physics, he practically squeaked. He was Jeff's junior drive tech, lovingly called a “drive wiper.” For the trip out, he'd done a lot of skut work for Jeff as he learned his job.
But the twenty-year-old had a sharp mind, one that had been stretched on the altar of hyperspace physics classes before he had graduated. He'd gotten a ninety-seven in the class, which was one of the reasons he had joined the ship company. He had also kept up with the latest journals on hyperspace and had all the recent math and theories the human race had on hyperbridges on a chip he shared with the others.
During their meetings the group made some tentative conclusions.
-A hyperbridge could only be “seen” and “entered” when a ship was going in the lowest octave of Alpha band. A simulation showed that the reason the ship hadn't seen it until the current had hit was because they had been in a higher band.
-A hyperbridge did indeed connect two or more masses. From their course projection they hypothesized that Sirius A had been the anchoring pole while Altair had been a staging star. They were a bit fuzzy on how one star could pass them on to another to create the long bridge though.
-A hyperbridge had turbulent walls. The ship's sensors saw the hyperbridge wall as a series of turbulent bubbles since the riptide interacted with normal hyperspace there on its borders. A ship that attempted to cross them at an exact perpendicular to the course of travel would be torn apart. It was rather fortunate that Icarus had come in at an angle to the bridge wall. They worked out an approximate angle of entry and exit based on their previous courses in and out of the bridge. Taz theorized that they may have even “dropped into” the bridge when the ship had cycled down from the highest octave to the lowest.
-Based on what their experience in the bridge, they created a series of algorithms that shaded the interior of the bridge to show its speed variations as well as turbulence.
Unfortunately they couldn't decide if every star or just large stars had a hyperbridge or if they had more than one or how the bridges worked. Normally a mass in real space attracted other objects regardless of mass, Einstein’s law of relativity. But their recent experience with the bridge told them differently. For whatever reason the anchor mass didn't attract the ship or balance out the attraction of the other poles.
“We're not going to get more. Maybe a bit more, but not a whole hell of a lot,” Taz said, shaking his head. “We need more observational data.”
“And the only way to get it is back in the bridge,” Brock said.
“Or outside it. I wonder,” Wally murmured thoughtfully, tapping his chin as he gathered his thoughts. The fan came on, a low thrum as it spun up to adjust the compartment's temperature and air quality.
“Wonder what?” Brock finally asked, half exasperated when Wally seemed to go off into mental la la land.
“Uh, um, sorry,” Wally replied frowning. “I was wondering if we can see the bridge. Would it look like a wall?”
“We'll have to find out,” Taz said, shaking his head. Since he and Jeff had finished the tear down and rebuild of the drive, they had little to do but monitor it and help out in main engineering where they could. He'd covered for Chief Roak a shift that had been an exhilarating experience. He did realize he had a lot to learn about the other ship systems however.
“So, when we find the bridge, do you think if we're on the heading to Sol we can drop into it?” Brock asked, looking at Taz. “I mean, find it like Wally here says then maybe go up an octave along a parallel course then drop down into it and back down an octave? Sort of slip ourselves in and then ride the current home?”
“I'm not sure if it works that way or not,” Taz said slowly. Now it was his turn to be deep in thought. What bothered him was the current analogy. If they were right, it was one way. He closed his eyes. “I don't know.”
“Like the man said, we'll have to wait and find out when we get there,” Wally said with a shrug. “I'm for bed. We've got some downtime ahead of us but then we're going to be busy, busy, busy,” he said.
“The drive is certified. We're good to go there, though the boss man wants to do another level two diagnostic to be sure,” Taz grumbled. “That means a microscopic check of some of the parts and tests of the power lines and software tomorrow.”
“Joy,” Brock said, shaking his head in sympathy. “I'm stuck fine tuning the sensors.”
“And I get to sit on my ass and twiddle my thumbs,” Wally said with a grin. The others glowered at him. He shrugged. “If the bridge isn't too busy, I might pull up the course home and dust it off. Or see if I can get Nike to run a sim.”
“Better to be seen busy then not?” Brock teased.
“Definitely,” Wally snorted. They all knew the maxim of a captain or XO, idle hands were not to be tolerated. If you didn't have something to do, they'd find something. Usually something nasty to teach you to keep busy.
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Icarus lingered in the Pyrax star system to watch the terraforming take root for a month. The crew joked about catching their breath, but really they were restocking their supplies for their next adventure. The delay allowed the sensor team to scan the local stars and plot a path back to their starting point in the sector. They even found a series of worlds t
o visit that may be worth the terraforming investment. Certainly a careful look they argued. Doctor McReese agreed.
It was determined that it would take fifteen years for the plants to spread worldwide and really take root, and another ten years after that before the atmosphere was converted to one breathable to humans. So, in possibly thirty years man would have a new shirt sleeve environment to explore and colonize. As long as nothing went wrong in the process, like the freight train of rocks that were still on their way in. The lead scientist Doctor Tanya McReese was quite concerned that the impacts of the successive rocks would either crack the planet or cover it in a ball of dust and induce an unwanted ice age. They would have to return to find out if such things did happen however.
She did point out that the steam released would take millions of years to get the planet's atmosphere to Earth standard on its own. Which was why they'd taken a multiple attack approach to the problem to accelerate that timetable as much as possible.
She spent some time grumbling about the loss of data or possible native life as well. Many xenobiologists had been furious with the Irons brothers and their NASA counterparts for directing the first asteroids into Mars. There had been a prevalent hypothesis that microbacteria had existed in a thin layer of water between the buried ice and the permafrost, dust, and dirt above. During the summer the ambient temperature at the equator rose to around 70 Fahrenheit and a great deal of methane expulsion had been detected by various probes and spacecraft. They had theorized that potential life was living there in that layer. When the asteroids had impacted, they had exposed the ice which had flash boiled into a gas destroying any possible life left there.
She hadn't found such things on Eden, though she insisted she hadn't looked in every place. She'd done her best to hold the terraforming off until just before the first rocks were due to fall right on her head, even attempting to get them rescheduled until she'd been ordered to return her team to the safety of the ship. She'd sulked for days and ranted about the lost opportunity for nearly a week.