Canticle Blue

58. Ark

Music - Inishbofin by Robert Leon

"If we can't go outdoors, perhaps we can go indoors."
—Tor Stym (Ark Notes)

For the Hedra and Arna crews, reunions would have to wait for several more weeks. Heavily weathered and limping home, they still managed to boost their new satellites into high orbits around Nantis. Well outside the circuits of the habitat ships, they were still occasionally visible to V-sky watchers as they transited at great speeds.

By that time, the first shell of the Sky Island "Ark" was a hub of activity, already receiving freighter cargoes of ice and earth. While the Terreska community had known of plans for the island, and were familiar with integral drive systems from the C-link and shuttles, they were still fascinated by the appearance of the shell, supported, as it were, by nothing, and even functioning internally with normal gravity and liquid water. They were also captivated by the constant inflow of liana traffic from the Nantis system and the Picarin.

The shell was the first of nineteen hexagonal,  jewel-like pieces that would eventually be connected to create what Shei Pendel called a 'harbor in space.' Its six vertical sides were bridged by a dome and supported by a basin. It had been assembled and sealed just outside the Picarin docking complex, where its float characteristics and biospheric properties could be be tested before launching. Its internal surfaces covered three acres.

Both the dome and basin surfaces of the shell were modeled conceptually after compound eyes found in nature. While the dome featured nothing comparable to the miraculous integration achieved in those structures, each of its thousands of clear facets was self sufficient, with its own power supply, sensors, control system, and data communication node. It was also capable of acting in harmony with the others, using dynamic Shil and Canticle Blue for variable transparency, cloaking, and internal lighting. For Sky Island workers, the internal view of the dome was especially stunning during daylight hours, with sunlight shining through a central portal and all of the smaller apertures at the same time. At Colony dusk, the portal faded to opaque, and the facets gave way to starlight.

Each basin facet used laminated R-type for fine control of the shell's orientation, while contributing to its overall lift capability. The facets were also capable of responding together to a central control system.

When Tor Stym observed the almost reverential treatment of Center Island as the Picarin was being built, he began to consider a possible answer to a persistent question which had been posed, in subtle ways, by the communities of both habitat vessels. Though it was seldom put into words, or expressed as dissatisfaction, the question, simply put, was: "When can we go outside?" It was not as though those same people had not spent weeks or even months indoors during inclement weather; but now they were faced with the prospect of having no planet to return to. Nor was it a claustrophobic feeling, but rather a vague notion of new vulnerability because something they had once taken for granted was now no longer available.

Indeed, the situation on Havel, as a possible place of return, had gotten worse rather than better. Media transmissions intercepted by the Terreska communications crews indicated that, whether because of national paranoia, or even "alien" paranoia, nations were renewing their experimentation with weapons of unique destructive power. At first, their tests had been carried out underground, and then above ground, in order to measure their annihilative potential. Explosive yields had already increased dramatically, and one nation had even stated its intentions to drop its largest test weapon from an aircraft, even though, as its scientists were ready to admit, there was a chance of starting a chain reaction that could incinerate the atmosphere itself.

One night on Terreska, after a talk by Grahmen Ravi on these matters, Syl Este summarized the frustration of the Bryn Colonists with a rhetorical question: "So, are we to understand that the nations are willing to risk the loss of all life on their planet for 'security reasons?'"

There was, of course, no answer. The consensus mind-set of those at the meeting was, that with two thousand years to learn from comparable acts of foolishness on the original home world, those in authority on Havel were posturing to surpass them.

So, it was with these things in mind, that the word "ark" took on new meaning and urgency for the Colony planners, that of an actual refuge.