Chapter 4 Seeding A New Ecosystem

So he began a daily routine, the two hours ride up and two back, the hour getting to the lake and back, plus the time it took to go get more sand to fill the buckets, that used up about 6 hours of each day. That left 14 more hours a day for him, on this planet that took 20 hours to turn around once, faster than that of old Earth. Setting a goal for himself for one bucket per trip to go to make the pathway, the other bucket to make the beach, progress slowly became visible as time went on.

Checking with the planetary biological library, he picked out the tiny denizens for a three parallel food chain system, and as his retirement funds became available as time went by, he saved enough to get the seed specimens for all of them sent at one time to him; it was a simultaneous thing to create. Much larger amounts of critters further down the food chain, so there would be nourishment for all those above it, until they were all self maintaining in population.

Picking out a bordering lava fold five meters high, he arranged for the orbiting special Solar Power Satellite system to beam down the sun's rays for a few seconds whenever it was not busy doing something more important, targeting the face of the lava outcropping, so as to create a thermal shock that spalled off layer by layer of the face of the lava fold, gradually making a cave. He made sure that it would only happen when he was not around, and part of his adventure of making this mini world, involved keeping track of when the orbiting focusing reflector would happen to be at a low angle enough to frap another layer off, while he was safely out of the way. He saved up enough money to buy a titanium-faced chisel, and hammered away the rough edges of the cave during his visits there each day.

A few months into the project, he added three goldfish, to be the top of the food chain for this little world for now. All seemed to be thriving, starting with the pristine environment there. But already some organisms were vying for a place in the sun, and populations began to approach stability. His buckets of beach sand had found another construction area, and there he placed no plants; it was to be a beach place to stretch out in the sun at certain times of the day, and just enjoy. He made a point to arrange his visits so that he could spend a half hour each trip relaxing that way; it was very refreshing to his soul, he felt.

He mentioned this little recreation at one of the neighborhood get togethers held each weekend, and one of the women mentioned that it sounded like a great idea, could she come along to see the mini-world some day?