Delucey answered quicker than most of the others that Nyrom had already talked to, and he had fewer questions. “I’m with you, Colonel,” he said simply.
* * *
A probe reconnoitering over the southern part of western Asia discovered a band of survivors apparently moving northward out of the devastation that had been the Middle East. Guesses were that they had somehow ridden out the floods in the higher places, and were moving toward the gradually warming, less hostile central area of the continent. Another probe sent back pictures of crude shanty structures built on a high pass in the resculpted North American Rockies, but they appeared to be deserted.
Meanwhile, expansion of Serengeti continued. A transportation depot for surface vehicles was commenced, facing the pad area, which was being extended as planned, and two more storage domes appeared behind the labs and workshops to house the flow of supplies and materials arriving from orbit. Foundations were laid for a General Fabrication Plant to be built around the profab equipment that was on its way aboard the Aztec. Capable of producing just about anything commensurate with its size limits and the variety of available materials, this would add enormously to the base’s capability and potential for further expansion. Since the profab units could just as easily turn out parts for more profab units, Serengeti would be on its way to becoming literally a self-constructing factory town freed from dependence on supply from Kronia.
Finally, an area outside the base was cleared for experiments in crop cultivation and rearing livestock. Beyond that, possibilities were limited only by what further exploration of Earth might reveal.
These were still surface installations, and therefore vulnerable to strikes by meteorite showers from the debris that Athena had left in the vicinity or strewn liberally in Earth-crossing orbits. However, even at the bottom of its deep gravity well Earth was a large place, and it had been decided that the risk was acceptable until deeper excavations and shelters could be commenced using the lithofracture gear also being sent with the Aztec.
The Agni system was functioning flawlessly, which meant that until Aztec arrived, Keene’s commitments would be fairly light. He found his thoughts going beyond the immediate engineering needs of the base and plans for its further expansion, to the longer-term reasons for hastening the return to Earth that Foy had talked about and which Gallian had come here primarily to oversee: the grounding of a new civilization in the ways and values of Kronia. If humanity had been able to accomplish as much as it had by the time of Athena despite all the blotches on just about every page of the history of the past five thousand years, then how much more might it stand to achieve without them?
Sariena by her nature was concerned over the same issues too, and they spent a lot of time together and with Gallian debating the philosophy they should adopt toward survivors who were not only uncomprehending of such concepts, but schooled by their experiences in just the opposite direction. The object, after all, was to set the basis for a society that would embrace all its members, not create some master race versus slave situation. No surer way than that could have been devised for insuring that the same troubles, resentments, hatreds, and evils that had shaped the past would one day arise all over again.
* * *
Keene and Sariena stood near the workshop domes on the “industrial” side of the base, watching a jib crane swinging a preformed roof truss into position in one of the new buildings, directed by a Kronian using a remote control unit nearby. With the weight under Earth gravity, construction was a trickier and more hazardous business than in freefall or on Saturn’s moons, and the Kronians were working to master the requisite skills and judgment. All the same, there had been several accidents already. No amount of briefing and instruction, or attempts at simulation by hologram or in rotating space structures, could substitute for the actuality of being here and doing it, and feeling the real fears of knowing what might happen if something went wrong.
“That guy’s getting a hands-on crash course in high-gravity physics,” Keene commented. “Everything’s dinosaur proportions compared to what he’s been used to back home.”