“Yes I will,” the governor said. “Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We’re happy to accept any help you can provide.”
“Thank you, Dr. Feinberg,” Marc said. “Your presentation has been very enlightening.”
“You’re welcome,” Dr. Feinberg said as he got up and accompanied Masina out of the room.
“Now, I’d like to discuss where we are with our colony missions,” Marc said. “Governor, do you have anything to add or questions before we begin the discussion?”
“I am shocked to hear Dr. Feinberg’s finding. I believe you’re suggesting the necessary changes, but until our scientists have time to review the data and analyze its impact on our plans, I will withhold any comments.”
“Very well. You’re scheduled to start out in three weeks; will you be ready?” Marc asked the governor.
“I believe so. We’ll have to see if anything significant changes, but I think we can keep the timeline and make adjustments in the parameters of the mission to account for this new information.”
“Good. For everyone, the plan is to have the Sakira stay in the system for two weeks, and then head back to Earth. The Roebuck will stay for four weeks, and then it will go directly to Artemis. The Sakira will carry four extra Lynxes so that the Paraxeans will have them plus the thirty Foxes to provide security once the Sakira and the scout ship leave.”
“Do you think it’s wise to leave them without a starship?” Dr. Metra asked.
“We’ll have drones at the edge of the system watching for any approaching starships. Given our jumpdrive, we think we can respond in plenty of time relative to the arrival of one. The Galileo should be ready for deployment in December, so it should be a short gap,” Marc explained.
“That does assume that we get the jumpdrives to work on such a large ship,” Dr. Metra pointed out.
“It does. Both of these missions are not without risk. Do you have an alternate proposal?”
“Why not leave the Roebuck at Mangkatar until the Galileo is able to replace it?”
“That would dramatically reduce the amount of cargo we can carry to Artemis.”
“How? You were never going to ship cargo for Artemis in the Roebuck?”
“Because now the Sakira will need to carry the extra six Lynxes,” Marc explained.
“But if things go reasonably well, you’ll have Catie’s new freighter to carry more cargo out by the first of the year. That’s not too long a period of time.”
“I concede your point. Governor, do you agree?”
“It would make me feel more comfortable.”
“Catie, the status of your freighter?” Marc asked.
“I did a walkthrough three weeks ago. It looks good. And since it is mostly empty space or cargo pods, there’s not much to build out,” Catie said. “Ajda says January at the latest. They’re already building the hull.”
“What about the jumpdrive?” Admiral Michaels asked. “Won’t we have the same issue with it as with the space carriers and the asteroid?”
“No, it’s designed with the drives in mind,” Catie said. “Its cross-section is only a little bigger than the Sakira; its length is where we get the cargo space, and that conforms to the parameters that Dr. McDowell has already verified.”
“Okay, then the Roebuck will stay at Mangkatar until the Galileo arrives to replace her,” Marc said. “Governor, is there anything else you need to get ready?”
“We’re well into modifying our plans,” the governor said. “Our people are undergoing training, we’ll need to modify that some based on Dr. Feinberg’s input, but as I said, we should be able to maintain our timeline. One of our biggest issues will be access to raw material.”
“Why is that?” Blake asked.
“We need iron and petroleum to produce polysteel and polyglass, as well as the solar collectors. It will take time to find them and set up mining operations.”
“You should do what we did here on Earth,” Catie said. “Bring a couple of asteroids into orbit. You could even bring an extra iron asteroid in and set it down on the planet right next to your colony. That would get rid of a lot of complexities.”
“That would work,” Marc said. “We should do the same on Artemis. It would allow you to make polysteel quickly. I’m assuming your site will also be next to a petroleum reserve.”
“Natural gas. Having an iron asteroid delivered would simplify a lot of things,” the governor said. “That makes the biggest issue food, and we can manage around that. We already know we can eat the local plants, and you left several greenhouses running.”
“How are you going to farm?” Fred asked.
“You should have seen the orders for the electric tractors,” Marc said. “We’re buying the rest of the implements from Australian suppliers.”
“Are they taking plow horses?” Nikola asked. “You know horses usually don’t run out of parts.”
“We’re considering including those in the Galileo’s shipment, although we might want to consider having them delivered in the new cargo ship.”
“That would work. They take up too much cargo space to be able to ship them in the Sakira,” Marc said. “But we could make a special cargo pod for them.”
“How will they handle the microgravity?” Samantha asked.
“We would sedate them for the trip,” Dr. Metra said. “But if you want to do that, you should start finding them now. I don’t expect that you use very many draft animals on this planet.”
“Hey, there’s always the Amish,” Kal said. “They have some nice horses for sale. I looked into it when we were buying horses for the horse park.”
“You were going to buy a draft horse for the horse park?” Catie asked.
“No, cart ponies,” Kal said. “They have horses and ponies trained to pull a buggy. The draft horses were just listed in the same place.”
“You should consider some of those too,” Dr. Metra said. “That was one of the biggest complaints from our early colonies, the lack of reliable animals to take the place of vehicles. Vehicles are going to be expensive and scarce for the first
