Flight of the Maita Supercollection 3: Solving Galactic Problems Collector's Edition (60 page)

Is that a
stream from the old crater? Put a small turbo in it to charge the
electrical vehicles for transportation. No fossil fuels. We'd run
out and more would have to be shipped in. We must see that no one
comes to the islands for any reason at all unless and until we beat
this thing.

Hal Korr came
in, greeted Mi, then looked over her shoulder at the maps.

"What're you
doing?"

"Right now? I'm
trying to figure how we can produce power without fossil
fuels."

"Put a couple
of wind turbines on the top of St. Makov Crater Mountain. I was on
a dig there and was able to learn a few things about the place. The
wind can be downright vicious on top of the highest peaks. There's
an area in this cleft here where there are boiling springs. It's
the only live vulcanism in the area. It could probably be used to
drive small turbines. The problem as I see it is that St. Makov
Island isn't good for anything else. It's all loose glass lava and
is just a peak sticking out of the water. We would have to string a
lot of line, but that won't be a major problem. Wire's the very
least of our worries on this project.

"About six or
seven years ago we had an experimental generator dropped into the
channel between Tekif and Long Island where the Tropic Current
flows full against the islands. They sort of form a "V" with the
channel at the point so the current is quite strong and is very
steady there.

"Long Island
would be the perfect place to build the labs and the dwellings.
There's a mesa plain about a kilometer wide and three long – over
half of the island – at six hundred ten meters. There's a breeze
that never dies east to west so the temperature isn't bad in
relation to sea level. The silkfruits and yellowpeels already grow
all along the shoreline and Tekif's covered with palmnuts and
cakefruit trees. Melons of several types are wild there and the
native – well, now they are – wallowbeasts could use thinning.

"A hell of a
lot of edibles both on Tekif and in the waters. Waterclaws, fish,
slicershells, water crawlers – plant delicacies of all kinds and
plentiful. We'll definitely eat much better than we ever did here!
If the waters in close weren't so full of sharp impassible reefs
those islands would already be solid with people and tourists. Land
speculators would've found a way to cover the islands with cheap
vacation houses.

"We can use
Tekif, Long Island and Sand Island. We can get from one to the
other without too much trouble once we get onto one of them, but we
simply can't expect to be able to move much from island to island
otherwise. It requires helicopters.

"So tell me why
you, a medical expert, have decided to handle all these things best
left to experts in the various fields?"

“
You've
been there? You know the islands?" Mi cried excitedly, ignoring the
question. "That'll save me so much time, but are you sure we can't
move around the islands more?"

"The reason
they're uninhabited is because they're virtually the most
inaccessible place on the planet," Hal replied dryly. "It will
ensure we're not disturbed, but we'll also be limited. No one can
get in and we can't get out. Perhaps we can put some sort of colony
on Driftwood Island. It's the largest and has the best soils, but
there's one – and only one – way on or off and that’s Via
helicopter. It's surrounded by hard lava glass that will cut
through a steel hull in minutes. The lava blades are centimeters
below the surface and protrude at points. They're deadly, to say
the very least. We didn't attempt to land there. We flew low over
it. It's lush, rich and isolated beyond belief."

"How many can
we provide food for?" Mi asked.

"Using both
Tekif and Driftwood?" he asked. "And the oceans, certainly. More
than we could put on the islands. The waters will feed....
Uh-oh!"

"We can't get
into the waters?" Mi asked.

"We'll simply
have to find a place to make a small, shallow, defendable harbor
from the island we choose to build the labs and dwellings," Hal
suggested. "I imagine we could make several small harbors on
several islands. The fewer the better. Each one will have to be
defended if things get as bad as you predict. I think they will, in
all probability. That's our history.

"We won't be
able to make a usable harbor at Driftwood. That would be too much
to ask of mere mortals, even with all our machines."

"We can start
construction of the dwellings, labs and sheds immediately. Our
first contingent of technicians can be in place in thirty days to
begin setting up the facilities and getting the place ready for the
initial research teams," Mi agreed. "We'll follow your suggestions
since you've been there.

"Long Island,
here we come!"

* * * *

Hal Korr
studied the text for awhile, then called Enn Far to explain what
seemed to work in the past to discourage people from an area –
rightly or wrongly. Enn said he would call Sop and Mi to call a
meeting to discuss the matter. He would find a good
communicator/speech writer, but the thrust of the project and
overall direction would necessarily come from the four of them.

Hal decided to
finish his present research and go to the labs to try to encourage
Mi. She was overworking much more than any of the rest of them. It
was her nature to try to do far more than was her real
responsibility. She had simply taken full personal charge of ALL
arrangements to move this project FAST to the islands and was
trying to advance her own research at the same time. She was living
on stimulants, which is never good. If her health failed it could
be the health of the entire Kroon race that would suffer for the
neverending future. She must be forced to slow down somehow whether
she liked the idea or not.

On a trip six
years earlier he'd spent almost twenty days on that little mass of
lava trying to discover how old the islands were and whether or not
they ever held a population of anything other than birds, reptiles,
insects and wallowbeasts. He found his notes and photographs and
studied them carefully for almost an hour, though he had perfect
recall and could close his eyes to relive the time there. While he
wasn't as careful as was Mi Yinn he was still a very exacting
person. His memories could well serve to save a great deal of
valuable time – and he feared time was the commodity in least
supply.

There were four
larger islands, one an extinct volcanic cone rising above the waves
and seven smaller ones. The largest one, called Long Island, was
four kilometers long and a bit over one and a half wide. It was at
an acute angle to the Tropic Current, which kept the temperature
even year around on all the islands and had a long flat mesa at a
good elevation. It was quite lush and was probably the best place
to put the laboratories as the mesa was hard enough rock at a meter
or so under the surface to offer very solid stability. There were
steady east-to-west winds at about twelve kilometers per hour over
the islands caused by the heat from the Tropic Current. There was
no differentiation of seasons here to make any kind of difficulty.
The range their equipment left there said the annual average day
temperature varied less than ten degrees and night less than
twelve. They were lucky in a number of ways that such a place
existed. It could easily be much worse. An easier location for the
scientists could mean a surge of sick and contagious people would
descend on them seeking hope in a last desperate effort to maintain
life. That would be the final disaster when the disease was spread
among the workers. It was a hard thing to do, but this was a time
for hard decisions.

The Mekos
Islands were a paradise except for the fact it was as close to
impossible to get on or off of them as it was in any place on the
world. They were surrounded by wide reefs of hard volcanic glass
that were huge blades made up of smaller blades made up of ever
smaller blades. They could pierce thick armor steel, given the wave
action there. Approach by boat or surface skimmer was almost
impossible. Even hovercraft couldn't cross above the blades because
they extended far enough to puncture them. The only way in or out
was helicopter.

The next island
was north of Long Island and was called Tekif Atol or, in loose
translation, Yellowpeel Atol. It was lush and was about a kilometer
long and the same wide at the base by perhaps four hundred meters
wide at the narrow end – a mere sixty meters from Long Island. The
side facing into the Tropic Current was straight, making the island
roughly triangular and forming a "V" with Long Island. The chasm
between the two was deep and the currents flowing between them were
violent and constant. A slip there would mean sudden and horrible
certain death by battering and drowning.

Long Island was
mostly a mesa while Tekif was a peak rising to more than three
quarters of a kilometer straight from the sea on the flat side, but
with terraces down the far side. Hal had thought it was artificial
when he first saw it, but it turned out to be lava flows that had
hardened in the various flat "benches". It was the oldest of the
islands and had the richest soil. It was, therefore, the most lush.
If enough of the native vegetation could be cleared it would truly
be a food basket.

East of these
two islands was Sand Island, which was a shoal that had become
established as the current flowing north and south of Long Island
deposited its silt and sand in the swirl current leeward. Plants
rooted in the sand and held the central part solidly in place,
though the entire beaches were constantly shifting with the
currents. The island rose in a flat sandbar to about three meters
above the level of the sea. There were a few points where one could
walk between Long Island and Sand Island at times of very low
tides. It was always shallow between the two islands where the
sandbar didn't directly connect them so maybe some kind of trail
could be fashioned.

Next was
Driftwood Island, behind Tekif. It was approximately size of Tekif
and much like it in other ways except that it also had a washup
beach around it.

Those four were
the main islands of the group and shared a huge reef around them a
meter under the sea surface at high tide and often protruding from
it in sharp glassine blades of darkest ebony. The current carved
its channels out under the reef in a series of caves, leaving the
surface impassible. A harbor channel would have to be blasted out.
Once inside the outer reef fringe boats could reach all four major
islands. The problem would be in getting the boats inside the reef
in the first place.

Immediately
north of Tekif was Makov then Crater Mountain Island, which was a
steep volcanic cone rising above the waves. It was the newest of
the islands and still had some little fumaroles and hot springs
along one side and in the cone. The heat rising from the cone made
the winds along the top of the crater constant and violent –
therefore possibly useful for power generation. Of them all it was
the least useful of the islands.

There were
seven smaller islands of less than half a square kilometer in area
each. They were all lush and could be useful if it weren't for the
fact they were sitting directly on the huge northern reef and it
simply wasn't practical to try reaching any of them.

Hal studied the
flora and fauna of the islands a moment and the various things they
found in the rich waters surrounding them. There was more food than
could ever be used on the islands so no one would starve. They
would, in fact, have the healthiest diet on the planet. Perhaps a
narrow harbor being cut through that reef would enhance harvesting
of some of those gourmet riches. Food was certainly no problem on
the islands, which were in the tropical rain belt, interrupting
moisture flow and causing their own light daily afternoon rains.
That would ensure a steady and dependable water supply for all the
people. Rain was not polluted there by industry or population
concentrations nearby.

So food and
water were assured.

The team he
traveled with had carried a small submersible generator to drop
into the narrow "V" channel between Long and Tekif Islands where
the steady currents gave them all the power they could use. That
could be important. The research would require fairly large amounts
of energy despite the efficient things they were planning to
use.

Food, water and
power were assured – perhaps.

"If I can only
contrive to save that poor woman a little work before she drops
dead on us," he mumbled as he put the papers away and headed for
the door. "She's going to work herself into collapse, then where
would we be? She's taking far too much on herself. Martyrs we
certainly don't need and would serve us ill under the best of
conditions. I wonder if she's considered that there will have to be
more than a few impractical scientists and researchers on the
islands? We could end up with the finest brains on the planet there
and would starve to death because no one would have sense enough to
pick the food that's all over the place and they most certainly
couldn't maintain anything other than personal specialized
equipment. Laborers, farmers, maintenance workers, fishermen,
transportation and a few communications people – we MUST have them
all! Mi impressed me as being brilliant, but I wonder if she has
common sense, too? That's the combination that's unusual. Beauty,
brilliance and common sense, all in one. THAT would be rare!"

He arrived to
enter the labs where he found Mi Yinn pouring over charts and
lists. He looked over her shoulder to see maps and charts of the
islands so gave her the benefit of his small knowledge of them. It
was most fortunate he had spent the time in the islands. That could
result in a great savings of their most precious resource:
time.