With deft fingers he pointed to several different designs he had sketched. He explained how Jess Tamblyn had flown him on a reconnaissance mission to the planet, mapping out the details.

“That sounds like Jess,” Cesca said with a smile. “Is… is he still here?”

Kotto looked confused, trying to deal with a question he had not thought about answering. “No… no, he left three days ago. Had to go back to Plumas. I think he’ll be returning within a few weeks, though. I offered to take a packet from him, but he said he’d bring it back.”

He absently tapped his chin and returned his attention to the designs of a self-contained hot-world settlement. “These new techniques could open many formerly uninhabitable terrestrial worlds for Roamer settlement. Heavy elements and pure ores will be very useful in our industries. With proper care and diligence, Isperos could be a gold mine for us … well, gold and other metals.”

“And the beauty of it is that no other humans would ever want those worlds,” Jhy Okiah pointed out, eyes bright. The Speaker watched the doubt play across Cesca’s olive-skinned face. “Perhaps I am not objective where my youngest son is concerned. What is your opinion on the project, Cesca?”

Cesca studied Kotto’s boyish face. “One has to admit the risks, but also recognize the rewards. Could Isperos be much more of a challenge than anyplace else we have settled?” She shrugged. “As long as the rest of Roamer society is prepared to help shoulder the burden of this new colony while engineers and a few brave settlers take their first uncertain steps, then we should make the attempt.”

Jhy Okiah looked up at the stone ceiling of the asteroid chamber, as if imagining the Rendezvous complex all around them. “By the Guiding Star, if Roamers never tried to do the impossible, we would never have accomplished anything.”

27: BERNDT OKIAH

27BERNDT OKIAH

Only a practiced eye could see the beauty of the skymine under construction at the slapdash facilities in the broken moons of Erphano.

Burly Berndt Okiah stood within the transparent bubble-dome installed on the pockmarked moon. With the industrial station’s low gravity and the enormous olive-and-tan gas giant filling the sky, Berndt experienced an odd shift in perspective: The immense planet seemed below him, and he felt as if he were falling headfirst into the clouds.

Teams of Roamer constructors had descended upon the system’s rubble, analyzed the geological composition, then brought in mobile factories to begin work. Automated smelters and ore-crunchers had devoured entire moonlets, processing rocks to leach out necessary elements, extruding plates and casting components. Later, an army of construction workers removed the designated components and assembled the giant industrial puzzle.