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financial reports; his favorite saying was "Leave engineering to the
engineers."
"The things that look like railroad roundhouses are our reactors and sea-water
flash evaporators, the round ponds next to them are treatment pools where they
precipitate out solids with the KOH-
HCL process."
"What's that big complex near the runway?" Adams asked.
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She nodded. "That's the Allis-Chalmers electrolysis cells. Ammonia synthesis
next to it. And just beyond that, the pink concrete building, is the GE
experimental steam-hydrogen process fertilizer plant. It's supposed to be a
lot more efficient than Allis-Chalmers, but there're bugs."
The plane circled low over the desert as the pilots got landing instructions.
Adams pointed as they banked steeply. "I see the railroad's working." With the
electric ore train to bring the scale into focus he examined the rest of the
Station. He knew from the reports that the industrial complex stretched along
nearly four kilometers of seacoast and three inland, and beyond the industrial
buildings were three-hundred-thousand acres of land either under cultivation
or being made ready for it. The irrigation grid was plainly visible, and
bright red tractors moved between the pipelines. There were another
fifty-thousand acres of solar salt lakes and bitterns ponds. . .
. Otjiwar was bigt but for a billion dollars it ought to be big. "What's the
crop now?" he asked, pointing to the tractors.
She took a sheaf of papers from her briefcase. "The crop phasing's pretty
delicate," she told him.
"Right now they're in the high export value pattern. Harvesting dry beans and
cotton, planting winter wheat and potatoes behind the harvesters. This pattern
uses the least water, but the government wants them to switch to a
high-calorie system for exports to Rondidi."
"Yeah, I know," Adams said. His voice was harsh. "They call it foreign aid. I
call it Danegeld.
That's why we're here."
Adams climbed down from the executive jet and mopped his brow immediately.
Heat shimmers rose from the cement runway. "My God, it's hot here!" he said to
the man waiting below the ramp. "Excuse me, Father. ..."
Father George Percy grinned. "If you want to tell the Almighty something that
must be quite obvious to Him, that's your affair. " Father Percy was a short,
heavy man with no trace of fat but broad shoulders and thick arms. He wore
white trousers and shirt with clerical collar, a small gold cross on a chain
around his neck, and his accent was the heavy modified British of South
Africa. "Have a good flight?"
"Good enough." Adams mopped his brow again. The handkerchief was soaked.
"It's best we get inside," the priest told him. "Aren't your people coming?"
He led the way to a waiting Jeep and held the door for Adams.
"There's just the one, and she wants to look at the phosphorus plant," Adams
said. "I let Courtney run around these places on her own. She might find out
something. Let's go, I want to see Jeff."
"He's in his office. Lot of work for the Station Chief. I told him I'd meet
your plane." The priest studied Adams closely. He'd only met this sandy-haired
American once before. It wouldn't do to get Mr. Franklin in more trouble than
he was in, Jefferson was a good man.
"Quit worrying," Adams said, reading his thoughts. "There are standing orders
all through the
Company that station chiefs aren't to meet my plane. You're not very familiar
with Nuclear
General, are you, Father?"
"No. When the Mission Society put me here as their representative I tried to
get out. I'm only a missionary, Mr. Adams. I don't belong on something as
technical as this."
They were driving across the shimmering runway toward a group of concrete and
fiberglass buildings at its edge. The big domes of the nuclear reactors
towered over the administration buildings, and beyond them were barracks for
the four thousand natives and five hundred foreign technicians living at
Otjiwar Station. Next year there would be more than forty thousand people
here-if the
Station survived, Adams added to himself. It seemed problematical.
Even through dark glasses and white pith helmet his eyeballs and head felt
baked. Wouldn't they ever get to the air-conditioned buildings? The Station
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was big, they'd been driving for several minutes now. "How do you like it
here, Father?"
"I've been in worse places. We even have air conditioning in the church and
some of the houses.
But I fear it's a waste of power, and I really shouldn't use mine."
"Trivial waste, Father," Adams said. "Giving the farm workers air conditioning
increases production, cuts down on their water consumption. Besides, we pipe
the heat from the air conditioning units into the solar evaporators, so we
don't lose much." Except to envy, he added to
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The Jeep pulled up at the glaring white Administration building. The native
driver leaped from his seat to open the doors for Adams and the priest,
another uniformed guard examined their identification before waving them to
the elevators.
They went to the top of the four-story building, past a miniskirted European
secretary to
Jefferson Franklin's office. The Station Chief was in shirtsleeves, his collar
open. Franklin stood at a draftsman's table across the room from his desk. His
black skin glistened with sweat, and his face contorted with emotion as he
shouted at a white man. "I don't care what the Prime
Minister says! I can't switch crops. It takes almost 200 gallons of water a
day to grow food for one man with this crop pattern, and I can't afford the
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