Chapter 12

Xi Pegasi
Near Mining Station One
August 8, 2057

The explosive charge detonated, sending chunks of rock and ice in all directions from the cliff face. They sped outward until they encountered the tough fabric dome stretched over the mining area. A dozen robotic scoops rolled on their attitude thrusters as one; their optics and small radars picking out the nearest targets. The car-sized collectors would catch the smaller rocks, and push the larger ones, then take them to the hopper at the top of the dome. More of the asteroid’s face had cracked and broken, and a digging harvester moved in to position and began to feed.

Keith Davies watched the operation from the control cabin at the top of the dome. The asteroid mining facility he manned was one of four that had been packed aboard the colony ship. The same system had been used to mine the near-Earth asteroids for the materials to make the Wells and much of their equipment. The asteroid was over five miles in diameter, and Keith had found a rich deposit of siderophile elements during his initial survey. Nickel and copper were the most abundant minerals, but there were indications that gold and platinum were present in the deposit, as well.

The processors just beyond the dome refined the raw ores and collected the resulting minerals for transport to the mining station. There, the minerals were further processed into raw materials for the manufacturing facilities, or stored for transport to the Wells.

Keith had brought a small manufacturing unit on the initial flight to the belt, and it had spent most of its capacity on the construction of the mining station and the expansion of its own facilities. The remaining capacity had been devoted to processing incoming material for transport in-system.

Two asteroid freighters, as Arif had so grandly dubbed them, plied the two-month transit run from the mining stations to planetary orbit and back. Arif’s crew had decided to locate their Mining Station Two just down the road in astronomical terms. The asteroid belt was particularly dense there, and represented a lifetime of exploration and extraction for the miners.

An alert tone sounded on the comm panel, interrupting Keith’s train of thought. “Keith, are you coming home?”

“I’d thought about it. What’s for dinner?”

“Come and see,” Kimmi laughed.

He checked the time. The colonists still had not reset their time and date references, despite the growing inconsistencies with the planetary year. “My relief will be here in about ten minutes, so I should be there in an hour.”

“We’ve got to do the centrifuge tonight. Don’t forget.”

Keith moaned inwardly. “I won’t. See you later. I love you.”

“Love. Be careful.” Kimmi cut the circuit.

Keith sighed in frustration. He hated the centrifuge sessions. A full gee was painful after the months spent in microgravity. It worked, he had to admit, but it was still not his favorite activity. The human body simply was not designed to permanently operate outside of a gravity well. Keith’s own theory was that as people lived in places like this, their bodies would adapt. If that happened, they would truly become space dwellers, since a planet’s gravity would probably kill them.

The collision avoidance radar detected an incoming ship. Keith checked the display with a grin. That would be his relief. The ship was the first locally built craft the mining station had produced; the miners had named them “bugs”. They had an armored body and several manipulator arms. The tough plastic vision bubbles at the craft’s nose had sealed its fate; everyone agreed that it was a space-going insect. The prototype had proven itself barely a week after it was put into service. Arif had piloted one squarely between two asteroids on a collision course. It had emerged badly dented, minus a manipulator, but with an airtight hull and a much wiser Arif aboard.