Wednesday, February 12, 2014

What happened to my Asteroid? Section 12:


Gwen spun herself around and looked directly at Kim “This was never a mining operation, but we need what those miners can do in order to get the job done.  We’ll let them get positioned and make their initial scans.  At some point, after they figure out they are on something alien we will declare it a salvage operation.”

“They will not be happy about that.” The commander sounded concerned.

“Of course they won’t, but the salvage fees they get will be worth more than the last two operations and the work will be much easier.”

“How so?” Tim asked.

“They will only be removing ice, breaking it up in to large chunks and brought back to the station to be reclaimed as water.  That means a larger water supply for the station, and all of the goodness that brings.”

“So they just block it up and haul it back.  We get more water, life on the station gets better and it is easy work.”  Kim pondered “How clean is the ice?”

“There is a 1 to 2 centimeter layer of random dust on the outer layer but as far as we can tell it is darned near pure underneath that, 3 to 4 meters deep.  It shouldn’t need much decontamination at all, and there is more than this station can hold.”

“Ok, then what?” Tim looked concerned.

“That depends on you.”  Gwen turned to Tim “You to have to figure out what this thing is, and in a hurry.”

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