(I still am putting in an hour or so, three days a week, swimming. That looks like a practical skill for Epsilon. It may be the way we commute to work.)

So the earliest I can be assigned is “secondary” stage. They won’t say, can’t yet say, how far away that is and exactly how many people it will entail. Hundreds. Sandra’s primary stage is one shuttle of scientists and one of people like her—“Engineer Pioneers,” young and strong and smart enough to know which end of a shovel works best for transporting dirt. Along with a shuttle of tools and weapons. The shuttles will come back two more times with more tools and supplies. Then, if things go according to Plan A, Sandra and her cohorts will build a small settlement there by the lake. When that’s done, we secondary types will come down in ten to twenty flights, and set up housekeeping and systematic exploration. Get crops started. The tertiaries, the actual colonists in the usual sense of the word, have to wait at least a year.

Before the primaries go down, starting tomorrow, they’ll have robot drones buzzing around sniffing the air, sending back pictures. Hope they don’t find anything too interesting.

FIRST CONTACT

PRIME

This is the short conversation exchanged between O’Hara and her daughter on the evening of First Day:

[10 King 429]