Canticle Blue

41. Lianas

Music - Voices In The Liquid Air by Tim Story
(From 'In Search of Angels')

Before pressurization, vacuum tests of the Vasta seals had initially failed; but the dome was not at fault. The problem was the hatch in the floor. When it was opened, it provided the first confirmation that the Terreska had been built with a double hull. Beneath the hatch was a small maintenance room which opened into to a vast network of subfloor chambers and support structures throughout the ship.

As the Middi began to explore the inter-hull areas, they found other rooms, spaced and arranged like nodes. In one of those, Corei and Aedh found portions of two discarded  technical manuals and one complete notebook. Because they were far too fragile to open, they took them to Havilan Meid and Grahmen Ravi, who set about recovering text, one page at a time. When they took their first translation of the notebook to Annibet, she found this:

"...so the procedure is the same as what we discovered on the lander: that if you power the mirror fields for fusion in a vacuum, they will accrete this strange matter. You will have to be very patient about it, but heat will not be a problem because there will be no attraction of ions... Instructions for application of the matter are shown below... Its catalytic properties are well-known."

When Annibet looked up from reading, she had a far-away look in her eyes. She said, "Guys, I think I know what this is. It's a kind of exotic matter. We've seen hints of it but never knew how to collect it, so we always called it 'Q-type.' We don't have fusion generators, of course, but we can build magnetic mirrors like the ones described here. From what we've already seen, the accretion process might be more efficient in space itself. Maybe collectors could be deployed outside the ship... This could be a key to the future of the Terreska, if not our whole space program."

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Whatever the plans for the Terreska had been at the time of its rescue, it was now clear—especially with availability of Q-type—that it could be entirely refitted and permanently occupied. And it would indeed be a capable spacecraft again, perhaps even an interstellar vessel. In accordance with that vision, the tech teams onboard brought their ideas and talents together to create a "liana."

In terms of pure function, the first liana (a word meaning "creeper" in an original home-world language) was a thing of beauty, a small, short-range, utility spacecraft, piloted or autonomous, to be used for repairs, construction, and even the mining of raw materials. Its form—though not entirely amorphous—was sometimes described humorously as "fluidic patch," or even a "griddle cake," by those who designed it. Whatever shape it took, it always featured a generally centralized lump for its piloting canopy and two sets of jointed appendages, which were sometimes visible and sometimes not. The canopy made use of a Q-enhanced Shil configuration known as "V-sky" (or "Virtual sky"). It was, essentially, an opaque window, with light striking its outer surface transmitted to an inner one through a flexible core of N-type and Q-type alloys.

The most useful liana tool employed Q-type matter as a catalyst for a highly-focused plasma beam. With it, liana crews could use precision cutting techniques to modify and resurface parts of the ship.  Since conventional propulsion systems were no longer needed on the Terreska, they started in its aft section. The first crews practiced by removing what was left of the sheared main-engine cone and smoothing the scars left behind. Then, assisted by the Silver Run and a second liana, they cut away the remaining cones, tasks which took so long that the refitting crews were sometimes rotated. In each case, to avoid detection, the removed part was taken to the original impact crater on Innis.

With the cones removed, even larger projects could be attempted. First, a large rectangular section of the aft-most bulkhead was cut away in order to build a landing bay for spacecraft. Multiple lianas were required just to hand off the massive part to the Silver Run. All surplus tanks and pipes in that portion of the ship were then removed through the opening, and landing-bay doors were installed. Once they were closed, the section was tested for pressurization. After that, the Castel and Maire Meid were flown to the new bay and secured until needed. Later, the bay was lengthened to accommodate four additional docking ports, and a second set of doors was added to function as an airlock. The ship's engineering teams then moved construction equipment to the bay to create R-type drive blades for the Terreska.

The Silver Run took over Terreska piloting duties while modifications began on the bow section of the ship. Starting near its front canopy, liana teams began to install a new sensory skin—including a V-sky imaging network—repairing and conditioning the exterior and interior ship surfaces as they did so. Once in place, impact events, temperature changes, and other surface data, would be sent continuously to monitoring areas in the ship's interior. When bow resurfacing operations were completed, liana teams began to install collar R-drives on the ship while other workers in the Atrium pre-assembled a new piloting bridge. Once the collar drives were in place, the Silver Run towed the new bridge assembly to the first lander-ring platform where it was installed.

After Gilon had tested the new R-drives and V-sky, she gave the go-ahead for lianas to to replace the canopy airlock with a precision V-sky navigation grid, complete with superimposed celestial chart capabilities. At that point—though temporarily underpowered—the Terreska again became a functioning spacecraft.

That night, along with the glowing V-sky and canopy stars in the bow of the ship, a live image of Havel's outer moon appeared. Without exception, those who were awake to see it thought the created ambiance in the habitat section was spellbinding, if not romantic. Even Keh Sem said it was nice.