To The Stars

He still had work to do. The first chairs were being taken out and the trestle tables set up as he went to the rear of the main silo building. After four years of torrid summer the thick walls still radiated heat as he passed. Dust was banked high against the heavy metal door in the rear and he kicked it away with his boot. There were two sets of mechanical locks on the door, and an electronic one. He used his keys to open them, one by one, then pushed against the door. It opened easily and the cool air rushed out around him. Once inside he locked the door behind him and looked around at the familiar scene. This water Central Control was identical with the one he had shut down in the North town before leaving on the trek. These two control rooms were the only buildings that were permanently air conditioned and climate controlled. They made human life on the planet possible.

Before starting the program Jan satin the seat before the console and activated the scanners one by one at the water station, over 1500 kilometers away in the mountains above the coast. The first was mounted in thick steel and concrete on top of the station, and when it turned it gave a panoramic view. Everything was as it should be, he knew that from the printout which would have informed him, long before this if there had been any kind of trouble. But he always felt he could not be sure until he looked for himself. Irrational of course, but all good mechanics have a touch of irrationality. You have to like machines to work well with them.

Solid and powerful, a fortress of technology. A featureless blank exterior of weathered concrete, over three meters thick. Some flying lizardoids were on a ledge of the building; they flapped slowly away when the eye of the camera moved toward them. Far below was the sea where waves battered against the solid rock. As the point of view changed the bins came into view, half filled with wealth extracted from the sea, a by-product of the desalination process. There was at least a tonne of gold in one of them. Worth a fortune on Earth, but valuable on Halvmork only for its untarnishing qualities, for plating on the engines and field machines. The last thing in the slow circuit was the deep canal, stretching down the mountain to the black mouth of the first tunnel, two kilometers below.

Internal cameras revealed the starkness and strength of this giant complex of machines, built for durability and work. So well had it been designed that Jan had gone there in person just once in all his years on the planet. Inspection and maintenance were continuous and automatic. It was an echoing cathedral of science, visited rarely, functioning continually. For four years it had idled, the fusion generator muttering just enough to provide standby electricity for maintenance. Now it would come to life again. The program of startup was long and complex, self-regulating at every step, designed by the builders now centuries dead. They had built well. Jan switched on the computer terminal, received recognition, and keyed in the order to initiate startup.

There would be nothing visible for some time, since internal checks of all components were the first step in the series. When the machine was satisfied that all was in order it would slowly raise the output of the fusion generator. Then the force pumps, buried in the solid rock beneath sea level, would go into operation. Silent, with no moving parts, they would begin lifting the sea water up the large pipes to the station on the crest above. They used a variation of the same magnetic bottle that contained the fusion reaction, modified to seize the water and push it away. Higher and higher the water would be pumped until it spilled over into the flash distillation section. Here it was vaporized instantly, with most of the water vapor drawn off to the condenser. Gravity took over then.

Jan had seen enough people, talked to enough people, and he relished the privacy now. He sat and watched the screens and readouts for hours, until the first splashes of water fell from the outlets, turning into a roaring river just seconds later. Down it rushed, carrying sand and airborne debris before it, until it vanished into the tunnel. It would be days before the first dirty trickle worked through the tunnels and canals to reach the city.

A separate stream of thick brine splashed down a channel cut away in the side of the mountain to fall back into the sea below. He would wait at least a week before starting up the extractors that took all the elements and chemicals from the sea water. In the beginning all that was needed was volume flow to fill and scour clean the channels. All was as it should be and he was tired. The party, he had forgotten about it. It should be well under way by now. Good, perhaps he could avoid it. He was tired and needed sleep. He took a repeater from the shelf — it would monitor the water machinery at all time — and hooked it to his belt.