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the first colonists. In this case, mostly scientists who would increase the efficiency of the process at the cost of regular and, Duncan assumed, expensive resupply missions to provide food, water and whatever else the scientists-cum-colonists required.
    Duncan opened the technology tree for the terraforming process. It was, in effect, just like any other RTS, or real time strategy, game. He had a cascading series of technical improvements he could build or buy, each with its own resource requirements. It was, though, huge. Much larger than any other RTS he’d played.
    Everything he’d just read about was described in a large branching array as large as most games, and that was only the first step. He’d still have to see about seeding the soil with the nutrients required for life to propagate, then introduce enough liquid water into the system to feed it.
    Those tech trees were near as deep as the first. And then, he saw, after all of that, he could look into adding flora and then fauna into the planet.
    He’d be working on this with help from Phani and, he thought likely, his friend Jamie, a RTS connoisseur, for the next year. Once all of that was done, he could begin ‘playing’ the colonization RTS; which looked, if anything, even more complex, deep and, he thought, fun than the first game.
     
    Duncan stood and began walking from the bridge. The return had come back - the north pole had, by a fair margin, the larger amount of dry ice. He walked through the exit.
    “Destination?”
    “Hangar.”
    He had already transferred the terraforming kit from the hold on the Shepherd Moon to its shuttle, which he now entered. Sitting at the pilot’s station, he began the process of starting the shuttle’s engines.
    He didn’t bother with charging the life support systems - since he was going to EVA on the planet anyway, he was already wearing his heavy armor and helmet. The suit had enough juice to keep him alive for days in the hostile atmosphere. Or ‘non-atmosphere’, he thought grimly. He would also be saved, this way, of the hassle of depressurising and repressurising the shuttle for his excursions on the planet.
    The engines having been prodded to life, Duncan lifted the shuttle from the hangar bay floor.
    “Open the pod bay doors, Hal,” he laughed. The Shepherd Moon’s hangar bay doors began to open. He nudged the throttle, sending the shuttle through the doors with a few feet to spare on either side. The doors began to close once he was clear.
    “Time,” Duncan said to himself, “to begin seeding this genesis project!”

Chapter 8
     
    Duncan focused on keeping the shuttle through the virtual representation of his course as he entered the minimal atmosphere. Four transparent planes, stretching into the distance toward the vanishing point of the landing site, passed from the top, bottom, and sides of his viewscreen as he guided the ship toward the planet.
    As the ship descended, the buffeting, never that heavy, eased as he approached his chosen landing spot, on the southern edge of the north polar dry-ice cap. He could have let the autopilot control the ship; he even could have directed this entire operation to completion remotely from the bridge of the Shepherd Moon.
    “No way,” said Duncan to himself, “this is too damn much fun.”
    He flared the shuttle, at the last second, as it reached the surface. The heat from his engine sublimated a patch of frozen CO 2 underneath the shuttle, enveloping him in a thick ephemeral cloud. He shut down the engines, then exited the cockpit for the shuttle’s cargo hold.
    He moved past the low, tracked terraforming kit. It looked, Duncan thought, a bit like a Mars rover from his youth. It would wheel itself, once Duncan opened the cargo bay door, out onto the surface of the planet to the point that he’d designated as the source for his planned planetary transformation.
    Duncan reached the shuttle door controls, made sure he was cleared to the side, and pressed