April 7, 2183
Charles Safreth’s title was governor, of a state within the North American Continental Directorate. But he was really a mayor, and of a city that down on the planet would likely be called no more than a large town. Star City itself, the O’Neill colony that gave the state its name, had a population of 1.84 million as of that morning’s census. Add in the seventy or so smaller platforms with permanent populations that came under Star City’s jurisdiction, and the population still fell short of two million.
His “state legislature” consisted of twenty representatives, which wouldn’t raise eyebrows as a city council on the ground. They had more representation in the continental legislature than most other Colonies did. In the formation of the Terran Federation, the North American directorate had retained the legislative structure of the former United States, and that meant Star City had one congressman and two senators. All five of the other continents had parliamentary systems, and offworld states belonging to them generally had no one, except a representative they shared with a chunk of the ground population— usually a chunk that outnumbered its offworld component. In the current political climate that meant those representatives were more likely to be adversaries of their offworld constituents than allies.
Six offworld colonies belonged to North America. Six congressmen and twelve senators. They tended to vote as an offworld bloc rather than with their ostensible parties, and that in turn made them a desirable bloc to court when some bit of legislation hung on a narrow margin. They could get favors for their Colonies in return for support. All of this had next to no impact on politics at the Federation level, but it meant that of all six continental directorates, North America was by far the most favorable toward the offworld population.
History helped, too. Houston, Cape Kennedy and JPL were all in North America, and while every continent had its space center, those places held special status in offworld history.
All of this ran through Charles Safreth’s mind as he read again the dispatch showing on his handscreen, that the North American Continental Directorate had decided to resume supply shipments to its six Colonies, in defiance of Alexander Monroe’s ban. The NAC’s lawsuit challenging the Federation’s authority to issue such a ban was still working its way through the courts, but they weren’t waiting. At least until the decision came down, supplies to Star City, Aurora, Nova, Promise, Lincoln, and New Washington would resume.
“It’s great news,” said Aaron Hayes, head of Lifesystem Engineering for Star City, as the meeting began. “We’ve been tapping into reserves since Monroe imposed the blockade and it’s already hurting— even though no one outside the department has felt it yet.” He gestured toward the much younger man sitting to his left. “This is Peter Vann, he’s been heading up our study committee on modifying our lifesystems to do without Earth resupply. I think this news is likely to change his presentation a bit.”
“A bit,” said the other man. “I was going to wind up by telling you we couldn’t do it without getting at least some help from somewhere. Not for a while anyway. How long can we expect supply runs from the NAC to last?”
Safreth shrugged. “Depends on the courts, depends on what the Terran parliament does, depends on what Monroe does.” He tossed his handscreen onto his desk and leaned back in his chair. “Also depends on how the next election goes, maybe. Go ahead and tell me what you planned to tell me. Figure out how this fits in later.”
Vann jumped to his feet an walked over to the office wall screen. He threw a presentation file onto it from his own handscreen. “Okay. First off. There’s three things we need from the Terran supply runs. First is simply mass. Carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, water, a laundry list of other things. Partly to replace losses in airlocks and incomplete recycling— we can cut the need for that as our lifesystems improve. But mostly we need the mass because our population is growing, along with the various species we’ve brought along with us. Biomass on board the Colony is increasing, and that physical matter has to come from somewhere. Cut us off, turn Star City into a closed system, and growth is instantly capped. Increase in one thing means a decrease somewhere else. Every new baby means something else has to go. It’s one thing if we stop growing because we’ve filled the Colony and are as crowded as we want to be. Enforcing population controls while Star City’s still only at ten percent of its design capacity— well, political and legal troubles are outside the scope of lifesystem engineering, but we all agree things would get unpleasant. People might prefer abandoning the Colonies to putting up with it.”
Hayes interrupted. “Besides, we need to grow to capacity. Our whole lifesystem design is based around that, it’s not long-term stable so long as our population stays low.”
“Fortunately we may be able to get needed mass from other sources than Earth,” Vann said. “We’ve been looking into asteroid mining for years— not trying to get all the way out to the Asteroid Belt, but there’s plenty of near-Earth rocks to choose from, not to mention all the dust that’s gathered in the Earth-Moon Lagrange points. The planet sits at the bottom of an expensive gravity well, even before all this happened a number of the industries were looking to get raw materials offworld so they only have to pay for finished products to go Down. Comet fragments, carbonaceous meteors— plenty of sources for everything we need. But it would take time to develop.”
“I had another group in Engineering put together some estimates,” said Hayes. “Best case is ten years before we could fully substitute offworld sources for Earth supplies.”
“Unfortunately the other thing we need from Earth is more tricky— even if we had asteroid mines up and running today.” Vann punched at his handscreen, advanced a couple of slides too far, and had to back up. “Okay. The second issue is that right now our lifesystems are not at full capacity to provide complete nutrient cycles for oxygen, carbon, and water even at our present population. By design, Star City— every O’Neill Colony— relies on biological lifesystems rather than artificial recycling. We’ve been building up the algae for photosynthesis, and the bacterial colonies for waste decomposition, on a controlled plan. We can’t just give them bigger tanks and let them grow bigger populations right away. They’d do it— microorganisms are pretty quick with the whole reproduction thing— but they’d send the whole system into chaotic fluctuations. They learned that the hard way when the first O’Neill Colony, Aurora, opened. Boom, bust, and bam: extinct cultures, and could have been an extinct human population if they hadn’t hastily moved most everyone back to the company towns until they figured out what went wrong. The problem wasn’t anticipated: these are genetically engineered organisms and they thought they knew everything about their growth and metabolism, but it turns out life likes to surprise. Seventy years since, we’ve learned a lot— and one of the lessons is to build up the biocycling slowly, and carefully.”
“Could we supplement with artificial recycling while the algae tanks build up?” asked Safreth.
“Not really. Nothing beats good old photosynthesis for balancing the other side of metabolism’s chemistry. Artificial recyclers all have dead ends of various sorts. A network of different systems can patch together an almost-complete cycle but small platforms that take that approach still have to regularly export waste products and import food, and anyway tech like that tends not to play well with biologically-based lifesystems. Chaotic fluctuations again.
“Small platforms and O’Neill Colonies alike tend to benefit from regular exchange of material with Earth in a final way: the exchange connects our systems to the planetary biosphere, which has an effectively infinite— from an engineering standpoint— capacity to absorb and recycle just about anything. I’m not talking about the kind of pollutants they created the offworld industries to save the planet from, but everything lifesystem-relevant.”
Safreth frowned. “So we’re stuck. If they do end up cutting supplies permanently, the Terran government can starve us out. Or suffocate us out.”
“There’s things we can do to buy time. Every Colony has been looking into this problem since Monroe announced he was turning off the tap, and all the committees have been talking back and forth to each other. The O’Neill Colonies were build over the span of fifty years. Very different tech from the oldest to the newest. Oddly enough, it could work to our advantage that the older Colonies never could afford to upgrade. We all have different particular problems. If we set up a system of exchange between Colonies, we can damp out the worst of the fluctuations if we force-grow the algae cultures faster. Even trade with the artificial recycling of the small platforms can be worked into a scheme like that, with good results all around. It won’t get us where we need to go before the reserves run out, but it’ll get us closer.”
Safreth rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “And today we learned that the six North American Colonies will be getting their supplies, at least for the time being. Six out of twenty-four. If all six of us included those supplies in your exchange system, how would that change the picture, for the Colonies overall?”
“It’d make it worse for the six Colonies giving up what they could have had,” Vann answered. “Beyond that, I have no idea. We’d have to go back, plug it into our simulations, and find out.”
Safreth picked up his handscreen and punched the intercom. “Arthur, could you come to my office?”
“Be right there, Governor,” Arthur Norris answered.
Safreth signed off. He looked from Vann’s displayed figures to the head of his Lifesystem Department. “Aaron. How long until our reserves run dry, without any resupply from Earth?”
Hayes said, “We have a year. After that, our lifesystems will fall slowly behind— more and more slowly as we keep building up their capacity, but unfortunately the falling curve hits ‘uninhabitable’ before the rising curve meets it. Probably two years total before we’d be forced to evacuate. Of course there’d be increasing hardship for the population before that.”
“Two years. Now, factor in a quarter of the Colonies getting full resupply from Earth and sharing it among all twenty-four— I know, you said you need to run the simulations—”
“And even though an equal share sounds obviously right,” Vann added, “it wouldn’t necessarily be the best for sustainability. Concentrating supplies where they’d have the most impact on the overall system might be the way to go.”
A new voice added, “But engineering or no engineering, that could cause political problems.” Heads turned. Arthur Norris, Safreth’s former campaign manager and current chief of staff, had entered. “I heard enough to know you’re talking about sharing the supplies the NAC is going to send us?”
Safreth asked, “Can we?”
“Not legally. We can trade all we want with the five other Colonies that are part of the NAC but trade with anyone else is technically international trade— and the continental directorate has authority to control that. We’d have to ask their permission. I don’t know if it would play. The NAC is pro-Colony but North Americans like their Colonies. Sending their supplies to ‘foreigners’ could easily play directly into the Earthers’ propaganda.
“I have to point out it could also be very unpopular up here. Star City’s going to be very relieved the Colony’s going to get its supplies. They might not be too happy to hear they’ll be going on rationing after all, because you want to support Colonies that ought to be looking to their own continents for help.”
Safreth nodded slowly. “So we’d better keep it a secret.”
Arthur stared. “Charles—”
Safreth waved him off. “It may be moot anyway. Aaron, you and, um, what’s-your-name, Peter, go back and run your simulations. Talk to all those other committees you’ve been trading ideas with. Find out if one quarter supplies can be stretched long enough to get our algae tanks to grow and our asteroid miners to start digging. If not, so be it, we have to work on the politics. If yes…” He let the thought trail off.
Hayes said, “You know, if we just take the supplies and say thank you, Star City is okay, along with five other Colonies.”
“Assuming Monroe doesn’t take the next step,” Safreth answered. “Besides, that’s thinking too small. We’re not going to save six North American states. We’re going to save the United Offworld Colonies.”
TO BE CONTINUED
