With that, Faletti and Joseph headed off into the building in their carts, and James and Jonah backed their carts up to the container.
“This will take very long time,” MingWei said. “We should get as many on each cart as we can.”
“But that’s how big the box is, MingWei,” Matt said.
“We show you.”
Matt and Tom and David Peterson concentrated on getting the mattresses out of the container, and MingWei and the other Chinese stacked them on the carts. They used a fan of mattresses to effectively build the box higher, and piled them in. They also filled up the extra passenger seat. In all, they got over three hundred and fifty of the packages onto the cart.
“I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it myself,” Matt said.
Faletti and Joseph returned at that point, and Faletti looked over the next two carts to go in.
“Nice job,” he said. “I was worried about getting everybody on a mattress tonight, but that’s gonna work great. Cause you guys were right. They go fast.”
James and Jonah headed off into the hospital again and Faletti and Joseph backed their carts up to the container.
“We’ll actually back them into the container once we get deeper,” Faletti said. “Still plenty of working room around them.”
With that, they settled into a rhythm. It still took over five hours to get to the point where the carts came back with mattresses remaining on them.
“I think we finally got them all,” James said.
“Yeah. That’s about right,” Faletti said. “We got about ten percent of the container left. We’ll hold that here in case we missed anybody, or one of the other buildings comes up short.”
He turned to the crew.
“Nice job, you guys. Let me scan your communicators. You got wages coming. I make it six hours all told.”
“We get paid?” Matt asked.
“Oh, yeah. Colony Headquarters back on Earth figured there’d be some shirkers no matter how careful they were with rejecting colonists for cause. Well, those guys ain’t gonna do as well as guys who ain’t afraid to get their hands dirty.”
Faletti held up some sort of widget to each of them, one at a time, and they keyed their communicator. That was all it took for him to get their IDs.
“All right, you guys. Thanks. We’ll see ya around.”
Matt, MingWei, and their crew took the stairs back up to the fourth floor. They had the code to the elevator, but they didn’t really need it and didn’t want to use the limited electric or set a bad example.
When they got back to their rooms, there were mattresses on all the beds. Matt couldn’t believe it, as the mattresses were three to four inches thick once inflated.
“Maybe tomorrow we’ll get sheets and clean coveralls,” Peggy said.
“What I would really like is a shower,” Matt said. “But that won’t be before the powerplant is hooked up. Couple days, probably. At least we aren’t sleeping outside, like last night.”
“Last night? Oh, in Texas, you mean. That was just last night? Wow. It seems like a thousand years ago.”
“A thousand light-years away, anyway.”
Peggy shook her head.
“And now we’re here.”
She looked out the windows. With no axial tilt, the day here in the subtropics of Arcadia was twelve and a half hours long every day, and it was almost sunset already.
“Matt, let’s go down and outside and see if we can see the sunset.”
Matt glanced out the windows.
“OK, but not far from the building. The night stalkers will be out as soon as it gets dark. Especially the cats.”
There were people camped out on bunk beds in what would be the hospital lobby as well. There was a path to the front door behind what would ultimately be the reception counter.
Half a dozen of the couples from the original Carolina group went down, as well as Gary Rockham and Dwayne Hennessey, one of the gay couples they had merged with in the Carolina airport.
As they walked through the lobby via the path behind the reception counter, one of the people camped out in the lobby came up to them.
“You guys all in a group already?”
“Yeah. We’re good. Thanks,” Matt said.
“OK. We’re trying to get three more couples. If we do, we’ll get a whole city block of our own in the land assignments.”
“I’ll keep an eye out for you. There should be a group of three couples somewhere you can pick up.”
“Thanks. We appreciate it.”
“No problem.”
Matt thought about it.
“You know, I think I saw a personals section link off the announcements page. You ought to put an ad up.”
“Good idea. Thanks.”
Matt nodded and waved, and they passed out the main doors into the night.
The hospital building stood on no foundation other than its heavy steel underframe. It was simply set there by the interstellar transporter. There was no infrastructure. No road, sidewalk, parking lot, or other structure or landscaping.
For that matter, the hospital itself was all steel, with glass windows. Iron and silica had been plentiful in the Asteroid Belt where it was manufactured. Organic molecules, from which much of any decor would be constructed, had simply not been available.
In particular, there were no plaster walls or tiled floors or ceramic countertops. The infrastructure, in terms of electrical conduits and air ducts and plumbing pipes. all ran on the exterior of the single-thickness steel walls. The effect was not unlike that of being on a warship, except they didn’t even have any
