He punches in Xenophon’s number into the keypad .Immediately the silver topped ,chiseled, aquiline nosed face pops into view . “Well”
Yep ,we can go ahead with the zircon ports .The material transmitted to us from that nozzle tallies with the actual sample stored into cargo bay”
“When can we replace the ports in the SSTO’s(Single Stage to Orbit)
“Recon we could have the first in within –say a month”
“A month ?,all I want to do is to replace a part ,not build a whole new saucer.”
“Well machining zircon is time consuming, 'stuff wears out our tools like crazy”
Cant you do it any faster?”
“Well once we get the first one made making the rest wouldn’t take too long as we would them have something with which to make a mould.”
“How long?”
“We have four ports to a machine so say a day to pour one ,two to harden them and an additional day for the final machining.”

The manufacturing complex guarded by the SSP (Special Space Police)is strangely quite .As he walks along the dim corridors green light occasionally flashes as a security station records his physical characteristics ,body temperature and the type of electrical circuitry carried. There is the faint sound of an engine running briefly at near maximum thrust to idle into silence .At the door to the hanger he stands expectantly awaiting admittances .The door slides upwards with a clank to reveal a machine resting upon four gantries .With a practiced gait he bounds up the silver ladder ,pulling himself into the red lighted interior .

The instruments glow greenly .He activates the on board laser which then hits the bottom of the skirt to deflect off mirrors then reflecting into the combustion chamber via the zircon ports .A gas is pumped into the port which, when coming into contact with the laser beam, ignites to a temperature measurable in the Kelvin range.

The titanium metal glows red as it transfers the heat to the heat exchangers situated on top of the saucer like structure to be sucked into space .

A hanger door opens and the saucer is whipped into space by the force of the laser supported combustion (LSC) engines ,the roar quickly silenced as the machine enters the vacuum of space. Quickly ,with hardly a miss in tempo, the engines switch to the ground based laser mode using laser reflected upon an orbiting reflector stationed in geosynchronous orbit high above the planet, the originating laser emitted from the GBL (Ground Based Laser) station on the planets rocky inhospitable surface

On a lonely outpost orbiting one of the New Asia spinning wheels a man stares through a telescope at the new planet .A poem ,long pondered upon while on the never ending guard duties, issues forth from lips that move in a whisper:
Beside my bed the quite moonbeams bound
Almost as if there was frost on the ground
Raising up ,I gaze at the mountains moon,
Lying back ,I think of my old home town. (Li po 'Quite night thoughts')

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About the author: Read Mike Haran's essays on history at http://www.geocities.com/manzikertca/

Email: manzikertca@yahoo.com

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