Chapter 9

Well, we have just celebrated our 25^th anniversary on New Earth. Yes, we had to call our home something, so that's what we picked. We all admitted that there was nothing original about the name, but it expressed our feelings on the subject.

We now have a cave full of kids. Any woman over 17 years old has had at least one child. Dammit, most of them are female. I read somewhere back before the Fall that, for some unknown reason, women produce children of the proper gender to do the most to propagate the species. Actually, we need the females since we simply need numbers of people, and females are best for that. We now have a total of five males and 27 females, not all of whom are old enough to breed. The problem is that I am so busy servicing some female who says it is her turn that I don't get to spent the time with Eve that I want to. Eve says that I should stop worrying about it, we have to respond when necessity calls. It must be a female thing, since she is not as bothered by it as I am.

We have come to the conclusion that whatever the stasis field does to us, it makes us functionally immortal. Oh, sure, we can be killed if a land shark gets hold of us, a couple of the dogs have demonstrated that, but we certainly show no sign of dying of old age. We also don't get sick. There are no measles, mumps, chicken pox, or any of the other common diseases. None of us are accomplished bacteriologists, but we should have been able to see some of those bad bugs if they were still around. We have not been able to find any of that stuff that can be seen with a microscope, so they just may well not exist in this day and age. I sure as hell hope not!

The next question is something that we cannot possibly answer with our current level of technology. We have no idea how our genes may have been changed. We hope that the genetic changes we'd had eliminated any sort of genetic disease. If that did happen, we don't have to worry about any harmful recessive trait, so we don't have to worry about problems with the high level of incest that we are forced to practice. We have no choice on that topic, so we will just live with what we have.

We have enough people now that we can start expanding our operations. The consensus is that we need a good road between us and the two mines that we are currently operating. We want to do things that require more metal than we can easily bring in by pack horse. A good road will let us run wagons to and from the mines. We have enough horses for the motive power.

It would be nice if we had power tools, but we can do the job with axes and shovels. We can remove tree stumps with our blasting powder, so we will be able to do the job with our current resources. Hell, we could pave the road with concrete if that turns out to be worth the effort.

Aerial has been making the bronze bearings and other such stuff that we will need for the carts we will start with and the wagons we will use for the actual metal hauling. We have enough lumber laboriously shaped from those tough trees that are such a problem to work with. Aerial has said that she can make us a bronze sawmill, so she is working on that. We can make the carts from our current lumber while we wait for the sawmill.

Temporarily, the sawmill will have to be driven by a water wheel. We do not have an electric motor large enough to provide all of the power we need. We have carried ourselves pretty well to the limit of our current resources. We are going to have to find iron ore pretty soon in order to do everything we want to do. In the meantime, we are "stuck" with bronze, so we will have to make the best of that. Probably, we will have to resort to Sterling Cycle engines to boost us up the next step to a fully technological society. For that, we will need machine tools, etc., etc., and so it goes. Oh, well, we will eventually get there.

Construction of our road to the mine has produced another problem. The damned herd animals, pigs and such, have started using the road as a convenient migration path. It's only for a couple of weeks in the spring and in the fall that we can't use the road because it is plugged with migrating animals and other animals which prey on the migrants. It would be funny if it wasn't so damned aggravating!

We did wind up paving the road with concrete. The heavily laden wagons were miring in the mud that came after every rain. Not only that, ruts were developing and making it hard on the draft animals. I hope that we are through with that damned road except for maintenance because it really put a drain on our resources while it was being built. The brightest note from the road construction was that we found a budding civil engineer. Hillary (isn't that an appropriate name?) has a real talent for the art. She is going to be a very valuable asset as we march toward civilization.

George and I seem to have found our niche as general supervisors, idea men, and gofers. We are the ones called upon for help when a project bogs down. I guess that is because of our relative age. I, particularly, can bring a lot of practical experience to apply to a problem, and the others appear to recognize that. George, on the other hand, doesn't have that much more experience than the rest of the children, but he has the rare ability "to see the big picture," so he can spot the solution hidden in the details.

We have now been on New Earth for 50 years, and we are getting desperate for resources. Our population has exploded. We have outgrown the cave and many of us are now living in houses constructed from the wood produced by the sawmills.

We are starting to develop political factions, but there has been no real split yet. One crucial thing holding us together has been the stasis field machines. We only have two large enough for adults to fit inside, and three if we start processing infants. In fact, that is the major political difference. One group wants to maintain the traditional plan of visiting the stasis field on a person's 16^th birthday, but the other group wants to start processing infants. Right now, it is only a philosophical disagreement, but it may grow into something more than that. Wars have been fought over more trivial matters, such as religion.

It still looks to me like we will not be able to duplicate the stasis machines for at least one thousand years, and probably much longer. The machines depend on solid state devices that are doped with some of the actinide series of metals. Who knows when we will be able to process them, or even find them? Even if we had the raw materials, we still don't have the production facilities, so such machines are a long way away into the future.

We now have efficient and reliable Sterling Cycle engines. This has prompted The New Earth Air Force. That name is really a joke, but we have been working on some airplanes resembling the "ultra light" style. So far, they are very inefficient little buggers, but they are fun. One of the bits of information shipped with us from the 21^st Century was a DVD with complete and highly detailed instructions on how to build such a device. Unfortunately, we have no access to some of the materials of construction called for in the supplied instructions, so we are having to improvise. That is what has slowed us down, but we are getting there.

On the other hand, we have been quite successful in building small Zeppelins. We are using hydrogen as the lifting gas, and our biggest problem in materials was finding something to use for the gas bags. We have no problem in generating the hydrogen, since we have plenty of tin and sulfuric acid. The gas bags were made from cloth woven from plant fiber and coated with the casein plastic. Bottles for storing hydrogen under pressure were made from the same materials, but with much thicker walls and multiple layers.

We are in the process of working on a Zeppelin 60 m long to use as an exploration vessel. Hydrogen will be used for the lifting gas and for the fuel for the engine. We will have a long gondola suspended below the gas bag, but not rigidly attached. There will be a crew of 10, and I will be going along as captain of the vessel and leader of the exploration team. Yes, we will be taking weapons: crossbows with explosive bolts, hand grenades, and RPGs. We may encounter flying animals, and we will need protection if we do find any.