Return (Talbot Book 3) by Richard F. Weyand

Author:Richard F. Weyand [Weyand, Richard F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Weyand Associates, Inc.
Published: 2024-03-08T00:00:00+00:00

Settling In

The fourth and fifth supplies landers came in early on the third day. There were some big items in this shipment, and it took time to manhandle the bigger items off the landers. Eventually they got the landers unloaded and on their way back to Earth.

With the landers safely in and gone, Norm Adams let the herds of baby animals, impatient to get to pasture, out of the animal houses and, with the dogs, ran them out to fresh pasture west of the village.

Garret Jenkins and his men headed out with yesterday’s SNAP mounted on today’s second flatbed cart. They headed west to the edge of the woods, to the cobbled road Jenkins had discovered yesterday. He had marked it by tying a yellow flag on a tree, the yellow flag being one of several Maddie had knitted on the trip to Fortuna.

“You’re going to need survey flags, Garret, and I didn’t see them in the inventory.”

She had been right, and they had come in handy.

Another group under Miles Bronson used yesterday’s flatbed cart to haul the cast-iron oven for the Stirling engine to the stream. One fellow brought the cart back to camp while they got the cast-iron oven fitted to the hot-side cylinder of the Stirling engine.

A second group started ferrying the parts of the big water purification system to the stream with the cart. It took three trips.

The cast-iron oven had a hole in the back for the hot-side head of the engine. They fitted the oven onto the raft and over the hot-side head, then bolted it down to the raft. A short stack was fitted to the oven, and the air dampers tested.

The point of the oven was to heat the hot-side head up, as the temperature difference of the hot-side head in the oven and the cold-side head hanging down into the stream determined the horsepower available. As the colony’s electric needs grew, that horsepower would be needed.

The oven was to contain and concentrate the heat. The air dampers were to control the rate of burn of the fire.

With the oven in place, they started a small fire in the oven. They would build the fire up or let it settle down as a function of when the electricity was most needed in the village.

One new wire from the generator went to the new water purification system being set up just upstream.

On their way back to the village, Bronson and his crew deployed the bigger water supply line from the new water purification system to the village. A coil of flattened hose had come on the fifth trip of the cart to the site today.

Once Garret Jenkins had one crew working on the road, he walked back to the lander site.

“You ready to start on the towers, Garret?” Sue asked as he walked up.

“Yes, ma’am. You got a crew for me?”

Sue did in fact have a crew ready, and waved them to Jenkins, who headed off to the north to the closest edge of the woods.

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