WIP Wednesday
Every Wednesday, I share a recent paragraph I touched while writing or editing. No exceptions! Redactions for spoilers.
This week, we pull another excerpt from the draft of SVF Book 3: The Man from Atayuma. Augustus and Natan—two of the main protagonists—are entering a secret construction silo deep under a research facility at which they are sheltering for a few days. Augustus is familiar with the area and the ship being constructed. Natan is not.
They reached a junction. Augustus led them down the side corridor and across the gap between the silo wall and the Chancer’s frame. From the side, Natan could see most of the traversable parts of the ship where the pressure walls had been installed. It was about a third of the total volume. Behind them, attached to the silo walls, were cranes and tethered crates. All slack straps and small equipment seemed to stick to the walls. It took Natan’s mind a minute to think through his geo-spatial situation: the silo was at the center of the planetoid, and the gravity of the rock mass all around them pulled evenly. The silo walls were far enough away that there was a slight disequilibrium at their surface.
It’s a fine place to build a ship in secret, hidden by kilometers of rock in all directions, but still essentially weightless. This introduces a raft of fun logistical questions:
How do you get a 300-meter-long ship out of the center of a planetoid?
How do you transport tens of kilotonnes of parts and equipment into the planetoid?
Where do the workers live? Too close to the center and the low gravity would wear at their bodies quickly. Too far away and the commute takes too long.
How do you test energetic components like reactors and thrusters? Can the heat be sunk into the surrounding rock without compromising the planet’s structure?
How is the ship extracted? If a tunnel is dug, does it have enough thrust to traverse the planetoid’s internal gravitational field? Or will some sort of tug or elevator system be needed to bring the ship to the surface?
All that and more later in the book. We’ll see you Friday!