Calypso Outward Bound

by D G Hervey

  Dorman Red raspberries were introduced to Calypso after the women decided to have ML recruit Jon and Marie. Jon knew more about them than their growers. He was interested in learning about the differences in growing the commercial Red raspberry variety that thrived in a cooler climate than that of Crockett, Texas. It made Jon acutely aware of how Calypso provides perfect conditions for whatever they grow. Here they can provide the ideal temperature ranges, irrigation timing, humidity, light, nutrients, and soil parameters with almost no unwanted pests.

  Subtle farmers have sufficient pineapples to meet Calypso’s current demand. There are more developing along their slow process of growing to maturity. Ripening had taken two years for Jon in his Texas hothouse. Perhaps with controlled temperature and duration of illumination, pineapples here will mature in less time than his had required. Regardless, Calypso’s pineapples are not harvested until they ripen in the field, so they are just as wonderful as the best he had grown in his hothouse back on Earth.

  Jon figured that the best thing about the Subtle orchards is that each type of fruit tree gets its optimal number of chill hours. Subtle fruit production exceeds present demand and most of the excess is processed to make baby food for future needs. Jon liked that they are processed into glass jars instead of plastic or aluminum containers. This minimizes ingestion of estrogen mimickers from plasticizers that could alter the Calypso environment. It also minimizes the ingestion of aluminum, which might contribute to dementia of the women in their old age.

  The Subtle pecan trees are not old enough to start into production. Jon knew that the old saying was ‘if you want to get rich growing pecans, have your grandfather plant your pecan orchard.’ Full production of pecans might be a few years away, but at least good varieties of pecan trees are growing. Furthermore, the women, unlike Jon, have good success in grafting the desirable varieties’ scions onto good root stock.

  -

  In Marie’s sewing room, Zeilno was working on her quilt for her expected baby girl. Marie was working on a quilt she was making to be given to any woman who did not rise to the challenge of making her own quilt for her expected baby.

  Jon loved to help Marie select fabrics and arrange quilt blocks to balance the colors in her quilts. Marie encouraged Jon’s participation, accepting the majority of his ideas.

  Suddenly Zeilno exclaimed, “Oh my! I guess I’ll have to relinquish the rest of my time with this sewing machine. There is a situation I need to check for my work.”

  “Why?” asked Jon. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m in charge of monitoring air quality,” Zeilno answered. “I just got an alert that some of our spaces are out of tolerance for their atmospheric composition.”

  “That sounds interesting,” commented Jon. “Do you mind if I tag along?”

  “Of course not,” replied Zeilno. “As of now it is just a minor deviation, nothing life threatening. But, I need to find its cause and remedy it. So, come along if you like.”

  By now Zeilno had folded up her material and put it away into a bin on a shelf. Jon had to hustle to be sure that he could keep up with her.

  As they went through the common room to the escalator Zeilno informed Jon, “Calypso strives to replicate the components of Earth’s atmosphere. Too high a percentage of oxygen increases the risk of fires. Too high a percentage of carbon dioxide could cause health problems for animals and humans. Too low a percentage of nitrogen could reduce the effectiveness of the nitrogen fixing bacteria of the legumes. The present problem is that some of the spaces just ahead of Toroidal Ocean have an increased percentage of nitrogen. As the on-duty air quality specialist on Subtle, it is up to me to see if I can ferret out the cause.”

  While she spoke, she had reached Deck 4 and stepped onto a moving walkway. Jon felt the now familiar extra spring in his step in the lower G as he got onto the walkway.

  “You spoke of elevated levels of nitrogen,” he stated. “That seems odd. I don’t know of any natural source to raise its level.”

  “You are right,” responded Zeilno. “So it must be a leak from our pressurized nitrogen storage tanks. One of our cold-storage facilities where we keep pressurized gas tanks is adjacent to the areas of elevated nitrogen. That is where we are headed. If we find and fix the leak there, then we’ll check in on the spaces where the nitrogen level spiked.”

  -

  Eventually Zeilno went ‘down’ a couple of decks and Jon felt himself get even heavier than normal.

  When they arrived Zeilno instructed, “If you want to go in with me, you’ll have to get on some arctic gear. It’s cold in there. That door is a bulkhead of the inner hull. The cold-storage facility is outside of the inner hull, to more readily benefit from the cooling effects of deep space. There should be some gear here that you’ll fit into. You are not a big fellow.”

  “I’m here to get to see,” replied Jon. “Of course I’ll go in with you. How nice that there is gear I can fit into.”

  About then a bot showed up.

  “First, I’ve got to check the air composition in the cold-storage facility,” advised Zeilno.

  “Oh,” she remarked, “the nitrogen level in there is even higher, but we should be okay. I’ll let some air from outside mix with the cold-storage facility’s air to warm it up enough for us to go in.”

  Jon felt a blast of really cold air escaping from the cold-storage facility. Zeilno got some arctic gear for Jon, which fit him okay. She slipped into a suit that fit her quite well despite her advanced pregnancy. Their breath showed immediately when they entered the cold-storage room. Jon thought it had been decades since he had breathed in air that chilled his innards like the air in here. He was pleased that Zeilno warmed it up some.

  There were numerous large tanks in the cold-storage facility. Each tank showed multiple labels. Each had either a red sign that read ‘FLAMMABLE GAS’ or a green one that read ‘NON-FLAMMABLE GAS.’ The tanks that contained the nitrogen had black and yellow signs reading, ‘CAUTION LIQUID NITROGEN’ and ‘CAUTION EXTREMELY COLD LIQUID NITROGEN DO NOT TOUCH.’ There was also a sign that at its top had white lettering on a red oval field that read ‘DANGER,’ and below with black lettering on a white field that read ‘LIQUID NITROGEN.’

  “Well,” Jon observed, “You don’t have to search to identify the liquid nitrogen tanks. They are extremely well marked.”

  “There are several liquid nitrogen tanks in here,” commented Zeilno. “Nitrogen is a valuable asset. After all, it comprises the majority of the air we breathe and is necessary for plants to grow. To identify the tank that is leaking, we need only check the amounts of nitrogen in the containers now and compare those readings with the amounts recorded the last time inventory was taken.”

  The bot, which has access to the database recordings of the prior inventory, then accompanied them into the cold-storage facility. It read the meters and reported, “This one leaks.”

  Zeilno asked it, “Can you find the leak?”

  The bot answered, “No.”

  “Is there,” Jon asked, “ultrasonic sound detection equipment on Subtle? Pressurized pipelines on Earth have used such instrumentation to locate pin-hole leaks.”

  “Of course we do,” replied Zeilno. “Such sensors are used on the hulls of Calypso to detect impacts and leaks.”

  The bot replied, “There is such equipment aboard Subtle. One is being brought.”

  “If you have three sets available,” remarked Jon, “it might be easier for you to precisely locate the leak.”

  The bot reported, “Three sets are now in route.”

  In the meantime, Zeilno and Jon began scrutinizing the tank to see if they could figure out where the leak might be. They identified no probable source of the leak.

  Soon a bot appeared with ultrasonic detection equipment. By the time it began deploying its equipment, another bot arrived with two more sets. The first bot, which had entered with Jon and Zeilno, took one set, while the last bot that arrived set up the second and th
ird sets. There was no longer room for Jon and Zeilno in the compartment so they got out of the way.

  Quickly the bots moved their mikes over the shell of the tank. They rapidly located the leak. Jon wondered if they used triangulation or simply found where the sound was the loudest. The bots then expediently effected the repair of the leak.

  Zeilno remarked, “Well it was certainly - what did you call it - a pin-hole leak? It must have been leaking for quite a few days to raise the level of the nitrogen in several of the spaces. It increased the pressure in the cold chamber enough so that the relief valve let the excess into these growing spaces.”

  “The leak was on the side of the tank toward the single wall of the outer hull,” observed Jon. “Calypso must have been struck here by an energetic cosmic ray. I think you should have the hull checked to see if there is a hole there. Does the hull here have the self-healing layer that ML has on Spaceship 1?”

  “Yes,” Zeilno replied. “We have such a layer on both the inner and outer hulls. We are still making repairs of the damage caused by the CME and Jupiter’s radiation. But, the bots will add this hull location to those that should be checked and, if needed, repaired.”

  “So,” Jon asked, “are we through here for now?”

  Zeilno answered, “Yes, we are.”

  So a bot closed the hatch of the cold-storage space while they took off and stored the arctic gear they had worn.

  “Now let’s check in on the spaces where the nitrogen level spiked,” suggested Zeilno.

  Jon agreed, “Okay.”

  “We are,” Zeilno remarked, “of course, in the one that had the highest level of nitrogen.”

  Looking around, Jon observed, “I don’t recognize the plants.”

  Zeilno informed, “They are peanuts, a legume. Legumes fix inorganic nitrogen from the air in the soil, where other plants can use it after the legume dies. But, of course, the peanuts that you would recognize on sight, the ones that get roasted in their hull, actually grow underground. This entire bed of regolith, in which the peanuts are growing, is raised so it will drain well. Regolith, as initially collected, is alkaline, chemically basic. It has too high a pH, well above seven. Acid is added to get an almost neutral soil, one with a pH close to seven. Getting the acid is easy enough. Dissolved sulfur dioxide in water makes an acid. The result is sulfurous acid. That is a weaker acid than sulfuric acid, but a dilute acid is fine to lower the regolith’s pH. Anyway, after such an acidification treatment, plus the addition of a bit of organic buffering matter, it takes a good year before the regolith is ready to grow crops. We really don’t yet have sufficient organic material to optimize the productivity of all of the regolith-derived soils in Calypso.”

  Jon started singing, “Peas, peas, peas, peas. Eatin’ goober peas . . .”

  “You are correct,” responded Zeilno. “Another name for peanuts is goobers. They are also called ground nuts. And Niki’s right. You do have a nice voice.”

  Jon replied, “Thanks.”

  They walked to one end of the space.

  “Here, separated from the peanuts, is another crop you won’t recognize,” Zeilno postulated. “We strive to keep many strains of potential foodstuffs growing. Who knows what will be needed wherever Calypso finally settles. Anyway, do you even have a guess as to what this is?”

  “No,” he replied.

  Smiling, Zeilno told Jon, “It is the Bambara groundnut. Before peanuts, which were native to Argentina, took over the world market, the Bambara groundnut was a crop grown commercially in West Africa.”

  “I’d never even heard of it,” responded Jon.

  Zeilno led Jon through an automatic doorway and asked, “You might know this legume.”

  “Not so much from the appearance,” replied Jon, “but from the smell. When I was a boy I fed milk-cows alfalfa hay on my parent’s dairy farm. Doesn’t it smell nice?”

  “I like the smell as well,” agreed Zeilno. “But alfalfa is not used just for milk-cows. It makes good food for horses, sheep, goats, rabbits, poultry, and beef cattle. When fed to chickens, it adds color to egg yolks and to meat. Even people eat alfalfa sprouts in salads and sandwiches. This bed of regolith is deeper than the one for the peanuts, because of the depth to which the alfalfa roots grow. We’ll probably keep this bed of alfalfa going where it is for eight or more years. Then the soil will be nitrogen enriched and can produce crops such as corn or wheat that use up the nitrogen in the soil. Alfalfa keeps the seeds it produces from sprouting in the same soil, a process called auto-toxicity. So eventually the crop on this plot needs to be rotated to something else, such as corn.”

  “Can you,” Jon asked, “recirculate the nitrogen enriched air just between these spaces with nitrogen-fixing legumes? It seems a shame to just diffuse the surplus nitrogen into the rest of Subtle’s volume. You’d be making good use of the escaped nitrogen and it might conserve some power for Calypso as well. Back on Earth I’ve read that one percent of the power produced world-wide is used to create nitrogen fertilizers.”

  “That is an interesting idea,” replied Zeilno. “In any event it could do no harm. So, we’ll do that.”

  Zeilno led them up a ramp and through another automatic door. Jon was relieved to feel a lessening of the extra weightiness that he felt when on the lower deck. Here, Jon recognized the plants as beans and peas. There were many different types of each.

  “More legumes,” observed Jon. “This must be one of the spaces to which you have been referring. But the bees in here will cross pollinate these varieties giving you all sorts of unknown hybrids. So you must grow your seed stock elsewhere.”

  “Jon, you’re just full of surprises. Yes, seed stock is grown so that the varieties stay pure, being pollinated by only legumes of their own variety.”

  Jon observed, “I see European honey bees and some solitary bees. But, I have not seen any bumble bees. I wonder if they cannot fly on the lower decks.”

  “Good observation, Jon,” Zeilno replied. “It seems that bumble bees cannot initiate flight on the lower decks.”

  “Zeilno, for someone who is responsible for air quality, you’ve provided a wealth of information about the legumes and bees.”

  “Of course you know, Jon, that I have a Parrot. I know that you don’t have one. And the Parrot can inform me regarding information that will likely be of interest to you.”

  Jon commended, “The two of you do a fine job telling me some good stuff.”

  -

  That evening Marie remarked to Jon, “I think I’ll organize a group of the women who like quilting to help with the quilts for the babies of the mothers who are not inclined to make one of their own. We have a fantastic supply of fabrics and threads to choose from. I know that babies often get emotionally attached to their quilts. Jon, will you help with the selection of designs and fabrics for my project?”

  “What a great idea,” answered Jon. “I’ll be pleased to help with that.”

  -

  Jon went to bed that night feeling good. He was not sure which events of the day prompted Zeilno’s comment, ‘you’re just full of surprises.’ He did not need to inquire. It is always nice to feel useful. Appreciated plus useful feels even better.

  Chapter 4 - Sworn In

  Jon and Marie dressed for the inauguration.

  President Elect Agnieszka scheduled the swearing-in ceremony to be in Subtle’s large auditorium where ML had introduced Jon and Marie shortly after they arrived at Calypso. Vice President Elect Jelena scheduled the similar auditorium in Hidden. All women to be sworn in would appear to be present in the other’s auditorium by way of holographic projection. Jon was to administer the oath of office to President Elect Agnieszka, Vice President Elect Jelena, Captain Simona of Subtle, and Captain Naqvi of Hidden. Simona was to become the Fleet Admiral of Calypso, and Naqvi was to become Admiral, second in command.

  Jon and Marie took the moving walkway to the Subtle auditorium. As they were about to enter, President Elect Agnieszka said, “
Marie, I have a seat on stage for you. Please join us there.”

  Marie was surprised that she was to sit on the stage with Jon, Agnieszka, and Simona. She replied, “I certainly did not expect that. But, as you wish.”

  The four women being sworn into office had a variety of belief systems. Jon, aware of that, devised an approach to the oaths of office which solved the religious dilemma so far as he knew.

  At the appointed time, Jon, acting as Master of Ceremonies, walked to center stage with President Elect Agnieszka.

  “Welcome to the formal beginning of the government you approved with your voting,” Jon greeted the crowd. “To put things in context, you are about to be witnesses to what may be remembered as a truly historic event: independent governance of a space-based development that was once privately owned. What is even more remarkable is that it is occurring without any violent revolution, not even a protest.”

  This statement drew cheers and applause from the crowd.

  “I hope that we are setting a precedent for governments that generations of your offspring may be privileged to create,” remarked Jon. “May your descendants eventually settle about many stars and on many planets.”

  Jon was interrupted by more applause.

  “First of all,” stated Jon, “it seems appropriate to me that each and every one of us should swear allegiance to the community of Calypso. It seems that it will probably be the home for most of us for the rest of our lives. It is time to leave old allegiances, prejudices, and biases against other places and peoples behind. We are all in this together.”

  Surprised but approving, President Elect Agnieszka initiated applause at Jon’s announcement.

  Jon went on, “It goes like this: ‘I pledge allegiance to the Community of Calypso and to the republic that governs it. Calypso is one nation, striving to maximize liberty and justice for each citizen, insofar as such may be consistent with the safety of the community. Calypso may divide into separate communities, separate nations as her citizens may elect, but only after reaching another star.’”