Living Under Ice

Under Ice 7

They quickly explained the problem to him and he went to examine the quantum power generator. It was too complicated to fix where it was so he had Samurai beam it back to the ship where it could be fixed. In the mean-time, he had Samurai send down supplemental oxygen. They were fully supplied with it at present. The main thing the ship had been mining for was atmosphere component gases, metal, silicone and carbon.

It took three days to fix the quantum generator, but there was one spare on board the ship. The ship power could run on the main engine. Soon things were back to normal and Samurai started back to work building one extra house at a time. After each one was completed, a new family would move down.

A priority was placed on increasing the heat sinks in the habitat so that the temperature would no longer need external power to work. It would be cooler at night, but most plants and people liked that anyway since that was how old earth was where they had all originated. In spite of all the science fiction stories, no other life had been found in the universe except what had originated on earth. Life really was rare, but now it was scattered all over the galaxy.

Plans were changed to include more plants in each room of every home. The hydroponics systems were tweaked to be more fully powered via light including the microprocessors and nutrient controllers. There were no insects that would harm the plants and no plant diseases present, so most of the plant care could be fully automated. Household robots were built and programmed to take care of the plants as well as the other household chores. Everything was designed so that if the power went out again, there would be no problem with oxygen even though some of the plants would be nothing more than seedlings replacing older plants that had died or been used as food.

Sharah got started working on her library. Samurai built her equipment that could turn silicone into a type of paper. The words were printed as the paper was printed out in a way that was similar to 3-D printing. The machine could also make covers for the books. She had him build her five book printers and kept them busy. Most of the written works of mankind were available on their data base. The hard part was selecting the best ones to print. She had works of literature, but also included modern texts in various fields of knowledge. Most of that wasn't formatted in book form, but in multi-media format so she had to work hard to translate or transform them to paper format. Videos had to have stills captured that still showed each step of a technical process, for example. It was a lot of work, but she was really enjoying herself. Sometimes Jacob would come and help her by transforming medical works into books. He had a hard time finding books that could be used in the event of technology break-down. So much of modern medicine relied on A.I. and high tech robotics, but he wanted something to pass down to future generations even if the machinery failed as it inevitably would over time. They had to think about the remote future.

The original group worked hard on getting their play ready. There would not be a theater built in time for it since so many other priorities came first, but they planned to set up in the recreation room. It was going to be a comedy. Everyone agreed that laughter was much needed. Too many people seemed stressed out with the new environment and trying to fit into it.

Counting the cook, his two helpers, Harry and the two babies, there were 41 people in all. Thirty one of them made up a total of 10 families with five of them being younger couples. Of the ten single adults, there were six men and four women.

Since the ship's main task was transporting packages that were mailed, there were many of them. Only a few had been opened. Some were very important. The ones going to a new colony had been opened first and already mentioned. A large store room was made and the rest were transported down to it. Everyone who had time took turns opening boxes to see what was in them. Many of them had personal items that had little use to the colony's survival but no doubt held high personal value for the owners. These items began to accumulate and get in the way until one of the passengers proposed that they make a special museum to house them all. Where possible, a short explanation of each item was written out and placed in front of each item. Usually the information came from enclosed letters. Sometimes there was no information except historical information in the data banks. There was a number of different antiques in the boxes. Together, they made up interesting stories of the human condition. The museum would be large and everything in it would be in sealed silicon cases filled with inert nitrogen gas.

One day Talon and the twins were taking their turn at opening packages when they discovered something very significant. There was a whole box addressed to a fertility specialist at an outpost. It turned out to have a wide assortment of human embryos kept safe and sound in stasis. In all there were five hundred of them and each one was genetically unrelated to the others. According to the doctors, this was the most significant find of all. If the colony was going to survive long term, they needed more genetic diversity and this would give it to them.

They had a conference about the embryos. Some people wanted to try to artificially incubate all of the embryos right away, but others objected. It would be almost impossible to raise that many children at once without serious developmental problems. Instead, the embryos would be put up for adoption by those who wanted an extra child and didn't mind the extra work. They would easily last one hundred years or more in stasis so there was no rush. Talon's mother immediately volunteered to raise one right away and Deedri also said she would. Three of the other mothers with older children did the same thing. One young mother, who already had two children of her own, volunteered to go ahead and raise one of the embryos.

Talon was a bit shocked. He had no idea when he opened that package that he would be getting another sister. He wondered what they would find next. He loved opening packages, but so did everyone else so he would have to wait until it was his turn again.