Living Under Ice

Living Under Ice 5

The next few days were busy ones for the three families. The ship had to go back to the other planet for more raw materials. It was the only way to synthesize more atmosphere and therefore the only way to expand the planet. In the mean-time there was no help from Samurai or the Q-T device. That meant doing things the hard way with muscle, and by directing the robots too, of course.

Jaquelinne had everyone not otherwise involved in a project working on the atrium. She was determined that the rest of the people on the ship would be happy with the space when they arrived there. It was their best chance to make everyone feel like this was a new home and not just a means of rough survival. She had them rearranging the plants with attention to the differing heights, colors and aesthetic properties. They created paths that made the entire room seem larger. All of the paths curved like in a Japanese garden. Tablitha was hard at work in the studio with the help of a builder Robot designing the central fountain.

Jake and Jacob started to build the garden swings. There really wasn't a lot of material to use and there was certainly no wood, so they repurposed the supply of silicone from the rocky island and had it formed into a printable material for the project. One of the types of building robots worked in sets of six to print the swings out in 3D according to their design.

Jaquelinne kept a couple of robots busy placing the plants, but she had another job for Talon and the twins. They were given the interesting job of reshaping the chamber. The silicone insulation prevented them from doing it themselves, but they had to carefully direct the small robots they each controlled. The robots worked outside the silicone insulation where there was a purposeful vacuum. They carved out the sharp corners first and took out all the straight lines. The A.I. would have to reshape the silicone to match it when the ship came back. The excess ice was all stacked in a closed off room that had not yet been insulated and filled with atmosphere. Samurai would have to remove it later. Jaquelinne was determined that the atrium would look nothing like the sterile, institutional room she was first transported into. It was going to be a true garden even if the plants did have to be hydroponic in nature.

Jacque was at work getting more plants started. For now he was limited to the areas that were open, but he didn't stop in the atrium. The homes needed plants too. They would be critical in the event of catastrophic power failure for cleaning and recycling the atmosphere. They would also supply food for both the body and the mind. In each kitchen and dining room, he placed a small salad and herb garden on a counter that went around the walls on a shelf. It would allow for fresh salads that could be picked right before eating and fresh herb garnishes whenever they were desired. The tables in the dining rooms had a central hydroponic living flower arrangement.

The bedrooms and offices and other rooms had shelves for hydroponics as well. Jacque allowed the ones who would use each room to select what plants would grow there from the seed and tissue culture selections that he had available. Jacob had asked for food plants in his room because he considered them practical. He even asked for the food plants that would produce the most oxygen and best clear the air of impurities. Tablitha had wanted flowers exclusively. Talon didn't really care and just told Jacque to put anything he thought would be best in his room.

One thing Jacque needed was herbage for the sheep if they were ever going to be brought out of stasis. He arranged for very low hydroponics for the clover and alfalfa and other low lying plants that would carpet the atrium everywhere except the path ways. No grass seeds were included even though they might have seemed like an obvious choice. Too many people had allergies to grasses and colonies tended to pay attention to such things since so many of them were in small, shared air spaces. The clover would be loved by the bees. The plants would be planted in succession. Rather than mowing, the specialized horticulture robots would exchange them when they reached the right height and they would be taken to the sheep for fresh grazing. Of course all of that was in the future, but the groundwork had to be laid now.