“I’m laying it out on a four-block grid,” Marc said. “Lots are half the depth of the block, so each lot has only one street frontage. Of course, corner lots get two. I’m planning on major infrastructure every eight blocks going north-south. The other north-south streets will have just the infrastructure to support the buildings and roads. The cross streets will only have infrastructure to support lighting and roads; the houses and building all have to pull utilities from the road.”
“Smalltown U.S.A.,” Blake said.
“What do you mean by major and just enough for buildings and roads?” Kal asked.
“Major infrastructure will be designed to accommodate a future subway system.”
“Whoa, isn’t that a big investment?” Blake said.
“Not really. What I’m thinking is, we put everything below the street, so the main streets are wider and cover a twelve meter by six-meter elliptical polysteel tube. That would accommodate a subway running in each direction and allow for the sewage, storm drains, electrical lines, and communication lines as well. The small streets would just have three-meter tubes.”
“That’s still a lot of work,” Blake said. “You can’t just bury the tubes; you have to compact the ground, etc.”
“Sure, but we don’t have to do that much to start. We can build the tubes like we do the station rings, so that’s not too difficult. We dig it out, and compact it, then fill with the polycrete, the same material you used for the foundations when you built the compounds. We build the tube, then backfill with more polycrete. Then you’ve got a street that will last for decades and the ability to add major infrastructure as you go.”
“You’re still moving a lot of material around,” Blake said.
“But we’re doing it on a blank slate. There’s nothing there.”
“Okay, it can work; what kind of machinery are you planning to take?”
“The machine components for an excavator,” Marc said. “When we get there, we’ll build it, but make the polysteel frame and structure on site, so we don’t have to haul it there.”
“For compacting?”
“Same thing, we take the key components of the machines, and build them on site.”
“Where are you going to get all the material?”
“We’ll have to find a source of oil and iron,” Marc said. “That has to be our top priority anyway. This just uses the same material that we need to have anyway.”
“You do remember that the site is sitting right next to a petroleum field,” Blake said.
Marc’s eyes floated up like he was looking into his brain to read the information. “Oh, right, I had forgotten that. Of course, Dr. Qamar would have taken care of that when he picked the location.”
“What are you going to do for power?” Nikola asked.
“We’ll have four fusion power plants to start,” Marc said. “Then, each building will have solar panels on it. We’re going to be bringing a large supply of them with us.”
“Why do you need them if you have four fusion plants?” Nikola asked. “I understand the idea of using solar, but is it that critical, given the space they’ll take up in your cargo?”
“Yes, but these fusion plants are not that big, they’re the same ones we’re sending the Russians for their ships and trains. That’s pretty much as big as we can make the portable ones. I don’t want to try and deal with a full-blown power plant,” Marc said.
“Wait a minute, you power an entire starship with them, why can’t you use them on the planet?” Nikola asked.
“Umm, we don’t actually power a starship with the fusion reactors. The fusion reactors are just startup generators. The real power comes from the antimatter reactors,” Marc said.
“Antimatter?!” Nickola asked, giving Marc a hard stare.
“One of those closely-held secrets,” Marc said. “The starships run on antimatter reactors. They’re very expensive to build, and we only get one good one out of every ten attempts.”
“I see. And I assume that they’re dangerous.”
“Not so much. The reactor actually creates the antimatter just before it combines it to generate energy. So, there is never very much antimatter around.”
“Isn’t it expensive to make antimatter?”
“Yes, about fifty percent of the energy produced goes into making antimatter, but that E=mc2 is really a big lever. The reactors can generate enormous amounts of energy, and right now, I’d like to avoid people knowing about them. And I don’t want to put them somewhere where they could be seized. We have great control over the starships via our DIs, but putting them on the ground is a lot of exposure.”
“I understand,” Nikola said. She still gave Marc the eye for holding out on her. “But if you’re going to rely on solar, how are you going to keep things running at night?”
“Ah, my next design,” Marc said. “My mercury tower of power.”’
“Give me a break,” Blake said. “Tower of power, what are you, like ten?”
“Wait until you see this. I’m putting mercury in a closed system. I want to bury it, so a kilometer-deep well feeds a large chamber. We pump the mercury up during the day and let it flow down and run the generator at night. A typical city of one hundred thousand uses five hundred forty billion joules of energy per day, that’s three quarters of a billion watts.”
“Why are you using mercury?” Samantha asked. “Isn’t it bad for the environment?”
“That’s why it’s a closed system,” Marc said. “And mercury is liquid and weighs thirteen times more than water.”
“So how big is the tank?” Blake asked.
“Twenty by twenty by ten meters,” Marc said.
“That sounds doable.”
“Where are you going to get the mercury?” Samantha asked.
“One of the volcanos on the surface should have deposits of cinnabar, mercury ore. We’ll mine it and extract it. And we’ll make sure to capture all the sulfur and bad stuff.”
“Sounds like you’ll need a lot of miners,” Kal said.
“Yes, but if they all get to retire to a farm after two years, it doesn’t sound like such a bad deal.”
“Miners should get extra points,” Samantha said. “It’s not
