That night after dinner, each couple rolled up their extra coveralls, sheets, and pillows into the deflated mattresses. The men took those on their shoulders and the women took the supply boxes, and they headed for their compound. They were aided by the bus service, which had started running, for now by request. Later, the buses would run a standard route from the residential areas into the downtown.
They got on the bus in front of the hospital and the bus driver dropped them off right at the entrance to their compound. With the big issues under control, the colony administration had backed off the long workday of the first two days. So it was still light when they got to the compound, though it was edging toward sunset.
Jasic looked out to the north and saw that there were cherry-picker trucks stationed at intervals on the edge of the residential area with snipers up in the buckets. He nudged Matt and nodded in that direction.
“I think we still ought to latch doors closed tonight, Dad,” Matt said.
“Oh, I don’t disagree with you there. It’s just nice to see they’re on the ball.”
Everybody went on into the compound. The couples had already selected houses on the map, so it was a case of counting down the rows to get the right house. The twins and their husbands, as expected, took adjacent houses in a corner, where they had no wing in the front as a privacy wall between them.
Their supplies stowed, each couple carried a bedspring and two headboards back to their house and set it up, then inflated the mattress and made the bed. There were broad round plates on the feet of the headboards, dished up at the edges, so they didn’t cut the plastic floor.
As it was starting to get dark, Maureen Griffith and Bob Jasic stood in the center of the compound. Maureen stuck two fingers in her mouth and made a piercing whistle that brought everybody out of their houses.
“All right, everybody,” Jasic said. “We know there’s a tiger out there. There are snipers up with IR goggles, but we can’t rely on a night stalker not getting past them. So latch your doors tonight, both top and bottom. Those should be sturdy enough to dissuade his casual inspection. We’ll see you all in the morning.
“Oh. And welcome home.”
Once inside their fifteen-by-fifteen-foot one-room house, Matt and Peggy both stripped down for bed. It was the first time they had slept without being in coveralls in over a week. Matt watched the beautiful eighteen-year-old pad naked across the room from folding her coverall and wondered yet again at his good fortune.
For her part, Peggy wondered at her good fortune as well. Matt was an emotionally strong and caring man, a protector and a partner. There were emotionally weak and self-absorbed men as well, and the daughter of Harold Munson knew the difference. She had been afraid she would repeat the mistakes of her poor mother.
When she got into bed, he pulled her to him.
“I am already pregnant, Matthew Jasic,” she said sternly.
“Is that so?”
“Yes.”
“Huh. Well, I think we should stay in practice. There is the next one, you know.”
Peggy giggled and turned to him.
Cubic
The colonists had landed on Arcadia on a Monday, the fifteenth of September, 2245. Today, their fourth full day on planet, was Friday the nineteenth.
As the sun came up, Mark Kendall, the chairman of the council and chief executive of the colony, stood on the roof of the administration building and looked out over the progress so far. Four of the passenger containers in which the colonists themselves had arrived were still latched to the roof behind him.
All four of the permanent buildings had electricity now. Everyone would be having a hot breakfast this morning. Security lights lit the areas around the buildings, and welcome light spilled from the windows.
Looking past them into the residential area, houses had sprung up all over the area. Three hundred crews were building houses, and building an average of twenty houses a day per crew now that they had come up to speed. With six thousand houses going up every day, there were almost eighteen thousand of the fifty thousand houses already in place on Friday morning. Everyone would be into their own house by the end of next week.
Portable toilet stalls and potable water tanks dotted the residential area. They had covered the first houses first, then started filling in the rest of the area on a one-in-four basis – every other intersection in both directions. They would soon start setting the remainder, so there were portable toilets on every street corner and potable water in the middle of every block.
Beyond the residential areas, a ring of cherry-picker trucks with snipers up in the buckets was just standing down from the night, the buckets descending toward the trucks. Kendall worried about that tiger that had been spotted, but he preferred not to kill it if they could avoid it. At this stage of the colony, every animal was an endangered species, and he was concerned about disturbing the planned ecosystem.
The farms also had their armed watch. Kendall could see the cattle in the livestock pens from here. The enclosure of the pastures should be done today, and they could be let out to graze. The chicken yards too would be done today, and they would let the chickens out.
The colony was making good progress. He was following the plan that had been put together by colony headquarters back on Earth, and they were a bit ahead of plan. Of course, there were complaints that came in to the colony administration, but that was to be expected. Some people would complain if you hung them with a new rope. But his staff was also getting more
