Lord Auditor Vorthys, Lord Vorkosigan, may I present the department heads of the Serifosa branch of the Komarr Terraforming Project. Vorsoisson went round the table, naming each attendee and their department, which under the three basic branches of Accounting, Operations, and Research included such evocative titles as Carbon Draw-down, Hydrology, Greenhouse Gases, Tests Plots, Waste Heat Management, and Microbial Reclassification. Native-born Komarrans, every one; Vorsoisson was the only Barrayaran expatriate among them. Vorsoisson remained standing and turned to one of the newcomers. My lords, may I also present Ser Venier, my administrative assistant. Vennie has organized a general presentation for you, after which my staff will be happy to answer any further questions.
Vorsoisson sat down. Venier nodded to each Auditor and murmured something inaudible. He was a slight man, shorter than Vorsoisson, with intent brown eyes and an unfortunate weak chin which, together with his nervous air, lent him the look of a slightly manic rabbit. He took the holovid control podium, and rubbed his hands together, and stacked and restacked his pile of data disks before selecting one, then putting it back down. He cleared his throat and found his voice. My lords. It was suggested I start with a historical overview. He nodded to each of them again, his glance lingering for a moment on Miles. He inserted a disk in his machine, and started an attractive, i.e., artistically enhanced, view of Komarr spinning over the vid plate. The early explorers of the wormhole nexus found Komarr a likely candidate for possible terraforming. Our almost point-nine-standard gravity and abundant native supply of gaseous nitrogen, the inert buffer gas of choice, and of sufficient water-ice, made it an immensely easier problem to tackle than such classic cold dry planets as, say, Mars.
They had indeed been early explorers, Miles reflected, to arrive and settle before more salubrious worlds were found to render such ambitious projects economically uninteresting, at least if you didnt already live there. But then there were the wormholes.
On the debit side, Venier continued, the concentration of atmospheric CO was high enough to be toxic to humans, yet insolation was so inadequate that no greenhouse effect, runaway or otherwise, captured the heat needed to maintain liquid water. Komarr was therefore a lifeless world, cold and dark. The earliest calculations suggested more water would be needed, and a few so-called low-impact cometary crashes were arranged, hence we can thank our ancestors for our southern crater lakes. A colorful, though out-of-scale, sprinkle of lights dusted the lower hemisphere of the planet-image, resolving into a string of blue blobs. But the growing demand topside for cometary water and volatiles for the orbital and wormhole stations soon put a stop to that. And the early downside settlers fears of poorly controlled trajectories, of course.
Demonstrated fears, as Miles recalled his Komarran history.
He stole a glance at Vorthys. The Professor appeared perfectly content with Veniers class lecture.
In fact, Venier went on, later explorations showed the water-ice tied up in the polar caps to be thicker than at first suspected, if not so abundant as on Earth. And so the drive for heat and light began.
Miles sympathized with the early Komarrans. He loathed arctic cold and dark with a concentrated passion.
Our ancestors built the first insolation mirror, succeeded a generation later by another design. A holovid model, again out of scale, appeared to the side, and melted into a second one. A century later, this was in turn succeeded by the design we see today. The seven-disk hexagon appeared, and danced attendance on the Komarr globe. Insolation at the equator was boosted enough to allow liquid water and the beginnings of a biota to draw down the carbon and release much-needed O. Over the following decades, a full-spectrum mixture of artificial greenhouse gases was manufactured and released into the upper atmosphere to help trap the new energy. Venier moved his hand; four of the seven disks winked out. Then came the accident. All the Komarrans around the table stared glumly at the crippled array.
There was mention of a cooling projection? With figures? Vorthys prodded gently.
Yes, my Lord Auditor. Venier slid a disk across the polished surface toward the Professor. Administrator Vorsoisson said you were an engineer, so I left in all the calculations.
The Waste Heat Management fellow, Soudha, also an engineer, winced and bit his thumb at this innocent ignorance of Vorthyss stature in his field. Vorthys merely said, Thank you. I appreciate that.
So wheres my copy? Miles did not ask aloud. And can you please summarize your conclusions for us nonengineers, Ser Venier?
Certainly, Lord Auditor Vorkosigan. Serious damage to our biota in the northernmost and southernmost latitudes, not just in Serifosa Sector but planetwide, will begin after one season. For every year after that, we lose more ground; by the end of five years, the destructive cooling curve rises rapidly towards catastrophe. It took twenty years to build the original soletta array. I pray that it will not take that many to repair it. On the vid model, white polar caps crept like pale tumors over the globe.
Vorthys glanced at Soudha. And so other sources of heat suddenly take on new importance, at least for a stopgap.
Soudha, a big, square-handed man in his late forties, sat back and smiled a bit grimly. He, too, cleared his throat before beginning. It was hoped, early on in the terraforming, that the waste heat from our growing arcologies would contribute significantly to planetary warming. Over time, this proved optimistic. A planet with an activating hydrology is a huge thermal buffering system, what with the heat of liquefaction load locked up in all that ice. At present-before the accident-it was felt the best use of waste heat was in the creation of microclimates around the domes, to be reservoirs for the next wave of higher biota.
It sounds like insanity to an engineer to say, We need to waste more energy in heat loss, agreed Vorthys, but I suppose here its true. Whats the feasibility of dedicating some number of fusion reactors to pure heat production?
Boiling the seas cup by cup? Soudha grimaced. Possible, sure, and Id love to see some more done with that technique for small-area development in Serifosa Sector. Economical-no. Per degree of planetary warming, its even more costly than repairing-or enlarging-the soletta array, something for which weve been petitioning the Imperium for years. Without success. And if youve built a reactor, you might as well use it to run a dome while youre at it. The heat will arrive outside eventually just the same. He slid data disks across to both Vorthys and Miles this time. Heres our current departmental status report. He glanced across at one of his colleagues. Were all anxious to move on to higher plant forms in our lifetimes, but at present the greatest, if not success, at least activity remains on the microbial level. Philip?
The man who had been introduced as the head of Microbial Reclassification smiled, not entirely gratefully, at Soudha, and turned to the Auditors. Well, yes. Bacteria are booming. Both our deliberate inoculations, and wild genera. Over the years, every Earth type has been imported, or at any rate, has arrived and escaped. Unfortunately, microbial life has a tendency to adapt to its environment more swiftly than the environment has adapted to us. My department has its hands full, keeping up with the mutations. More light and heat are needed, as always. And, bluntly, my lords, more funding. Although our microflora grow fast, they also die fast, rereleasing their carbon compounds. We need to advance to higher organisms, to sequester the excess carbon for the millennial time-frames required. Perhaps you could address this, Liz? He nodded toward a pleasantly plump middle-aged lady who had been named head of Carbon Drawdown.