“That’s where the rock is crushed, vaporized, and separated into its various elements,” he told them. “It doesn’t have to be high-grade ore. Any shovelful of desert contains traces of just about everything you can name. But low grades aren’t economic with your methods. You know how to produce nuclear heat but you don’t use it. It reduces all materials to a plasma state of charged particles which can be separated magnetically. All clean and efficient. Tuned radiation fields direct the recombination to whatever compounds, alloys, and other forms you want. Surplus energy is tapped for generating electricity and process heat as byproducts. The refined output is sent up to the rail links and Amazon system.” Forgar indicated a wide roadway disappearing to the north, on which processions of robot trucks could be seen moving both ways. “The Pacific coast will become the most important outlet when the tunnel is completed.” Forgar looked at Cade and Marie as if expecting questions, but neither of them had any for the moment. He turned toward Vrel.
“Terrans stumbled upon the beginnings of low-energy transmutation years ago, but they didn’t read it right. We run reactions at levels far below anything their scientists believed were possible.”
“Was that what they called cold fusion?” Vrel queried. This really wasn’t his field.
“Bad name. `Nuclear catalysis’ would have been better. They misinterpreted what was going on, then abandoned it because they couldn’t explain it.”
Vrel looked at Cade. “Is that beginning to sound like someone we know?” he invited.
“Mike Blair?” Cade guessed.
“Because it didn’t fit with the theory,” they both quoted together.
Forgar looked mystified. “Theories! They’d rather stay with products of their imagination? I don’t think I’ll ever understand it.”
A couple of miles east from the reduction complex was the “town” of Uyali itself—more the advanced-alien equivalent of a mining camp. Stark and utilitarian even for something conceived by Hyadeans, conceding nothing to adornment or elegance, it provided living space, services, and administration for the area. From above it resembled an irregular, colored-tile mosaic. As the SST descended, the tiles took on the form of rectangular boxes and cubes aligned and stacked like creations of children’s blocks, making bridges here, adding a level there, the whole giving the impression of being added in haphazard leaps according to need rather than resulting from any unifying design. Beyond, separated by an expanse of fenced open ground, was a sprawl of familiarly styled Terran office units and prefabricated buildings thrown together into streets, blending on the far side into a shantytown of cabins and trailers.
The SST landed and taxied from the touchdown point to a handling area where a mix of Hyadean aircraft was standing amid service buildings, maintenance gantries, and cargo conveyors. A driverless bus took the passengers to a jumble of more Hyadean domino and shoebox constructions that Cade took to be the terminal facility. Along the far side of the landing area, were huge, hangarlike enclosures giving glimpses of sleek shapes surrounded by service platforms and access stairways within, standing in front of clusters of storage tanks, various unidentifiable structures, and tall towers bristling with antenna arrays. To one side, away from the main scene of activity, stood a line of what were unmistakably Terran-built military jets. Armored cars and other camouflage-painted vehicles were parked in a fenced compound nearby. Cade could only speculate as to what they were doing here. They passed a construction area where Terran work crews, some in shirts and jeans, others wearing orange coveralls, using unfamiliar machines, were excavating a new site for something. Evidently, local labor was being employed even inside the air base.
From closer range, the terminal revealed itself as a composition of what appeared to be prefabricated modules and tubelike connecting units stacked and combined in various ways to form office units, living quarters, or work space as desired. The resulting outlandish creations had ends of boxes projecting out into space; blocks straddling gaps and leaving holes through to daylight on the other side; connecting tubes emerging from walls to make right-angled turns in midair, as if changing their minds as to where they wanted to go. It seemed odd that with their obsession for efficiency, Hyadeans should be so incapable of realizing anything that on Earth would be regarded as “pleasing.”