CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Out in the blazing sun, with Joe and the agriculturalist that afternoon, Joe showed him the building flow of granite Sry and his men were sending to the surface.

“See,” Joe said, “the crushed granite gets up here. We let it flow into these forms, premade and preplanned, mix the stuff from down below with a little of this and a little of that, and you’ve got sort of ready-made dams and dikes. You know your Hoover Dam on Earth?”

“Yeah.”

“Took five years to build.”

“Okay.”

“We can do as much concrete, placed more efficiently, probably just as high, in less than five weeks. Some molds and some chemicals, and poof we’re done.”

“Well, and technology thousands of years ahead of Earth.”

Joe smiled. “That too.”

Mike gazed at the forms currently being filled. They looked like those on Earth he’d seen where someone put up wooden two-by-fours or other supports and then poured concrete between them like for a sidewalk slab. He pointed at the one being filled. “Don’t those supports take long to make?”

“Nah. We program this here.” Joe pointed at a computer. “And this lovely machine.” Joe patted what to Mike looked like a squat, rectangular, extra-long outdoor air-conditioning unit. “It spurts out forms that weigh what balsa wood does but has the strength of concrete. Takes a few minutes to place them. Then we pour in the cement and move on to the next.”

“It sets that quickly?”

“It’s not like cement on Earth. We’ve had thousands and thousands of years to make refinements. We’ve got plenty of the right chemicals. The computer adds them in the right amounts and presto, instant Hoover Dam.”

“Really?”

“Well, sort of. One of the problems the early colonies here didn’t solve was the huge floods during the rainy season. I’d like to try a series of dams, dikes, diversions further north from the colony.”

“Will you have time? Before the first rains?”

“I don’t know. We’ll certainly have time in terms of we’re going to be here for a while.”

“Kinda forever if the Religionists’ plans work out.”

“And I want an irrigation system that’s also flood control. It’ll take some doing. I’ve got my guys working on expanding the plans we were given before we got here.”

The initial agricultural section covered approximately five square miles, and was divided into twenty separate areas. Each section had a different crop or a similar crop but using different experimental fertilizers. A complex irrigation system provided the plants with water. The final result with water from the rainy season and the pumps in the dry season was a rice paddy effect. Mike had seen pictures of the proposed plants. They were sort of like seaweed and other plants that grow on the bottom of the ocean. Mike had tasted some once. He’d realized where his daily gruel must be made from.

Joe said, “We’ve been given seeds from plants from other planets that are like or similar to what was indigenous here. The problem with all the water in the rainy season, one of many, is the silting up. The irrigation system has to be designed so the water fills up the holding basins but doesn’t clog them up.”

“Why aren’t there rivers with the melt from the mountains?”

“By the time it reaches this level, until just before it actually rains here, it evaporates or sinks into the ground. What I’d like to do is also build retention ponds not just for the crops, but deep reservoirs to trap the rain and use it to turn turbines for electricity. Same with wind turbines. The storms are supposed to be awful. But in the mountains, we’d have strong electricity for all those months of rain.”

“We got turbines in the supplies?”

“Well, no, but perhaps in the not distant future, we can try and make do with makeshift ones.”

“I hope it works.”

“We’ll try. We’re going to introduce new plants as well. The galaxy would like us to cost them no money. Short of conveniently dying for them, they want us to be able to feed ourselves.”

“Is that realistic?”

“This planet has been abandoned a number of times. If someone thought it could work, or if it was able to be made to work, they would have.”

“I know how stuck we are, I just sometimes try to convince myself that people can’t be this heartlessly cruel. Then I remember the history of Earth, and reality sets back in.” Mike sighed.

Joe said, “The difference is they wanted to exploit the place to make cash. We want to use it to survive.”

Mike gazed through the heat at the oceans of sand surrounding them. He said, “Could we bundle some of this up and use it for cushions and pillows?”

“Huh?”

“For chairs and beds. Could we find material that would hold sand inside? It would be better than hard slabs we’ve got now.”

“We could try it, I suppose. Would it work?”

“I have no idea. I’ll suggest it to some of the others, see if anyone has any ideas.”

The colony’s alarm bells went off again.