Chapter 9
When he came back to his senses, he could feel that he was drenched in water, not just his own sweat. The irrigation spray had started while Lyra was carrying him out. She sat across the hall from him, also breathing hard, her face and hair dripping under the open hood of her vac suit. She didn’t have time to close her visor when she noticed him collapsed between the shrubs. He heard the water drops hitting the inside of the big metal door leading back into the crops tunnel. It was drizzling gently down the glass window. If he had lived on a planet, he might have recognized the smell of rain on the soil.
“What happened?” He asked. Besides that she had just saved him.
“Someone turned up the CO2 all the way up,” she said. “It must have been building up in there for a while.”
“Is that supposed to happen, on a timer or something?” He tried to reason.
“It’s never supposed to be so high that you’d pass out,” she replied, “and I didn’t change the settings.”
“I didn’t either.” He looked at her for a moment. “I don’t mess around with that stuff.”
The unasked question hovered between them for a while. “What are you even doing here?” She wondered. “Is this your idea of a relaxing Landing Day vacation?”
He didn’t respond right away. “I’ve been coming here occasionally. You know, to see how the crops are doing.” She looked at him doubtfully, and he added “And to think.”
“I saw a hopper coming in and out a few times lately, I just figured you knew what you were doing.” She thought about this a little more. “How many times did you come here since we started growing?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “Three, maybe four times. I use the time between mining and prospecting, when I can.” He wondered what Lyra was doing here, wasting her own holiday time off.
“I think you need to remember how many times, exactly,” she said carefully. “Because there could have been other people visiting our facility.” She had already told him about her encounter with the black-suited Council-men at the factory. It would not be very surprising if they had made an inspection of the farm, too. But to push the CO2 levels up to deadly concentrations would be the opposite of what PC bureaucrats were supposed to be doing. At least, what they said they were doing.
They eventually got up and visited the control room. They couldn’t find any evidence of visitations by outsiders, while Lyra turned the gas levels back to normal.
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“Are you sure you know how to run this thing?” He asked her, trying to be as diplomatic as possible.
Miraculously, she didn’t take offense. “I’m not sure. I never had any real training with this sort of facility. It’s not like the mechanical stuff, I don’t think I have much of a sense for it.”
They eventually locked in their helmets and made a final walk-through of the entire building. Nothing seemed out of place, but they did stop to check the growth at a few places. It didn’t look good. They dropped out the airlock and bounded to one of the hoppers. Once inside, Diggs had a final look at the bioreactor before shutting the door and removing his helmet.
There were no other hoppers on the navigation panel history records, not since the last time he rented one to go down to the farm. If someone had been tampering with their buildings, they must have landed a ways off and travelled by foot. That didn’t seem likely, but he couldn’t rule it out.
The hopper pushed up and started back towards Siderotil. They stared at each other for a few seconds, while Diggs considered how much he could trust Lyra with the rest of what’s on his mind. She looked at him worryingly, her hair still rain-drenched and stuck to her head. She didn’t say anything, which made Diggs feel even more uncomfortable. She did save his life. And now she was looking up to him with those big brown eyes full of concern. He couldn’t shut her out anymore.
“Those plants are not going to cover our rent,” he finally said, “not even if we had buyers for that food already lined up.”
Lyra was quick to open her tablet’s projector. The relief was tangible, and he could feel the tension go out of her, too. “How much are you paying for each lot?” She asked. She was already checking the price of food products on the local markets.
He told her everything, except the ultimate source of his finances. The more he told her, the better he felt. She, on the other hand, was aghast with new information, particularly when he discussed rent. “I think you are over paying for these lots. There’s no way the materials we are mining are going to cover that.”
As upset as the raw data had gotten her, underneath it all she looked happy to be included in the deliberations. She loaded a different file. “I’ve been thinking.” There were some technical diagrams flashing now. “There are a few things we can make right now, that would earn us a bit of money, using materials we can buy on the market.”
She took him through the different processes and the items they’d need to buy. It looked as though they may be able to produce and sell electric motors at a modest profit. “At least the factory will have some use,” he growled. “We should start working on this.”
Lyra cracked a small smile, then she carefully added, “I think we should also consider hiring someone to run the bioreactor.”
By the time they reached the hab, he felt like a lot of his worries had eased, to a degree. He still wanted to produce food, even if that made little financial sense. There was hope for it, if they find someone that knows more about plants than motors. People will need that food, at some point, he just knew it. He had his doubts about Lyra’s plan to buy magnets, aluminium and ferrite cores, and use them to build and sell finished electronics. On paper, it looked like there was marginal profit to be made. But, would people buy it? Are they just digging a deeper hole by investing in products that no one wants? At least in this they would be in it together. They may be risking their financial future on a wager, but at least it would not be his bet alone.
She was deep in her thoughts, looking down at the screen of her tablet, occasionally jotting down notes and swiping away menu boxes. He looked out the small hatch window towards the habitat growing larger as they approached. Two things left to worry about. He’d have to go back up the elevator to call the Prime Council again, to see if he can find some cheaper lots to rent. And he was still thinking about the farm. Was he the one who accidentally turned up the gas? Maybe Lyra had made a mistake, in a facility she didn’t know that well? Maybe there was a third hopper, he thought. With the implications of that in mind, they rode quietly over the sands.
