Chapter 3 The Vast Lake Supplying Water

Riding the elevator down the pylon at the exit terminal beside the vast lake, he walked steps hewn into the basalt down to the water's edge, and splashed his hand in the water a bit. The terrain here was quite different from that in his new home, in that there was no plain of black sand. Here, as most of this planet's terrain, was just the ragged lava flow, surrounding the depression that was the lake. But there were no beaches, no waves coming in to lap at the sides and erode them, no moon to provide tidal action either.

There were several small boats tied up to the dock hewn into the rock, and he carefully stepped into one of them; it sank but little into the water under his weight. The oars were made of cast obsidian glass, as was the shell of the boat, all cast in one piece and flash fused together by a brief torch from the focused beam from a special solar reflecting power satellite as it had passed by one day, doing its assignments around the world as it went. After the fused obsidian had cooled enough to extract from the mold, it was brought here; and now he was riding in it, gently paddling out from shore, into the nearly glassy smooth surface, now rippled by his motions.

It was cooler here, too, further toward the Northern part of the planet than was his new home town. As winter arrived in this area in a few months, there would be localized rain and snow, refreshing the water in this lake. Although most of the water was percolating up from subterranean storage sources, leftovers from the formation of the planet through bombardment by cometary material, after the surface lava had solidified and cooled enough to retain water in the atmosphere. Ah, this was refreshment, he decided, retirement need not be all a struggle. Yet after a time, the silent scene of water and the rocky perimeter too became monotonous; and he headed back to the dock.

It had been many decades since he had visited a lake on old Earth. He recalled much of the splendor was of the teeming effects of life on the lake'a surrounds, and the fish that could sometimes be seen beneath. He idly wondered, could a small section of the perimeter here be modified to bring a small semblance of Earth's living ecosystem? He resolved to inquire into what permission he would need to do the experiment, and what could he do with his limited resources of retirement.

Back up the pylon and into a traveling handoff pod, dipping up and down as it swung from pylon to pylon, idly watching the rugged landscape below, he continued to create the little waterside ecosystem in his imagination. There was a smaller lake not far from the terminal pylon, that might be able to have a path created to it, and then buckets of black sand be brought from the town area to fill in some shallower area near its edge, a bit of beach and rooting for some plants to be brought in, self-seeding agricultural plants were all he could get now; but there were several other species maintained as experimental stock elsewhere on the planet and eventually maybe he could get samples of them too. It would be almost a closed ecosystem, having to be able to sustain all its life functions among the species involved; some animal life too. The whole chain of life would need to be input, including bacteria and algae, and he knew areas where he could go to get lichens from areas already seeded with basic life forms on this planet, brought from old Earth

He found that the small lake site was his for the asking, all territory on this planet was free to those who would develop it, unless already being developed by somebody else, such as was the town in which he now lived. So he was free to build his own little world at the lake, using his own resources. The town's territory ended where the huge construction machines were located at the end of each pathway; walking a bit beyond that, he was free to fill a couple pails with black sand, to carry with him on his next trip to the little lake. And with a few half-grown oat plants in their microbe-populated soil, bought from a puzzled farmer, he was soon again on the way north, with the plants and two buckets full of black sand.

The ride was getting a bit routine, up to the vast lake to the north, two hours of the rhythmic up and down, as the travel pod was handed off trapeze fashion from one pylon's tether arm to the next, until being deposited at the lakes's terminal pylon. Carrying his buckets and plants down to the bottom of the pylon along the elevator, he looked at the landscape for a way to climb to the little lake he had seen; the terrain looked different down here among the ragged lava flow crumpled now rigid shapes everywhere, the last volcanic echoes of a planet now frozen, at least as far as rock was concerned. The eons of water life that would make limestone had never happened here; it was all the primitive basics. Even the windstorms generated by the contrasting temperatures, that had created the sand particles and moved them around to the low spots to form the black sand plains, had ceased long ago. Gathering some water out of the lake into one of the buckets of sand, to help keep the roots of the little oat plants alive, he left them there and set out to clamber toward the small lake, that now looked further away from this lower vantage point. He had mentally picked out a potential path to the lake, while high up on the pylons; but it looked different from down here. The twisted shapes of the frozen lava rock swirled around in frozen majesty, distracting from the intent to reach a specific place; looking back to the pylons with their swinging arms, he was able to re-orient a bit, and finally he came upon the little lake. Climbing around its edge, he found a place for a beach, a shallower sloping area that with enough buckets of sand, would make a fine beach and hopefully area teeming with life, starting with the oat plants.

Getting his bearing on the now distant pylons, he set out on a more direct path to the terminal, and by the time he had returned with the buckets of sand and the oat plants, he had gotten fairly familiar with the pathway. And was realizing how many more buckets of sand would be needed to make the pathway to the lake more easily manageable.