The safety lever felt colder in the strong winds than any year before. Shutting down the northern hemisphere spaceport is always a dreary job and Catrina felt the grief again.
This fuel station served as an energy source for spaceships. It sourced the fuel from the grass crop that covered the entire planet. The planet was engineered to best support the growth of this hyper-metabolising grass variation that harbored the highest levels of oxygen of all grasses grown extra-terrestrially. Catarina’s job was customer service and handling the crop-care robots via a inbody interweb connection.
Catarina enjoyed her job, loved meeting people from all corners of the space, liked to look after her little empire of the station building and enjoyed the challenge in managing the growth of the grass. She hated this time of the year though. She disliked shifting hemispheres, being reminded of the limits of her life, having to deal with the jet-lag, observing the waste of the abandoned structures. As the only inhabitant of the fuel-planet once she leaves the hemisphere there would remain no one else but the robs to look after the grass crop. She looked around through the scratched plastic of her mask and shed a tear over the dreary landscape. The interminable grass-fields were already dry and brown. The grass would whither away seemingly completely over the cold and dark months. Only around the equator would it remain growing at a minimal rate. As a strange contradiction to this feeling of vast emptiness, lifelessness and quiet, she was looking at a couple of busy weeks ahead in the south. As well as harvesting spring crops as usual, she will need to be on her toes to check the inevitable failures of the newly opening southern spaceport. She took a deep breath before the storm and pulled the lever with a strong, determined, angry movement.
Nothing happened.
“For the love of all energy bearing particles of the outer space.” – she swore and checked in to the interweb to see what went wrong again. Obviously – what else – a ship decided to sign in for refueling the very half a day when the station planet would be closed due to maintenance. It wasn’t pension-week, neither school holidays, it was supposed to be a quiet day. “Right.” – Catrina thought – “I’ll just go and get the coffee-machine refilled and open the air-flushing valves because sure as not these guys will want something to drink and breathe. “She decided not to worry about not wearing a bra. She didn’t normally dress casually and went around with poking nipples in an out-of-place fuel station as this one. For a girl it’s best to look strong, unattractive and abrupt for a good general personal protection. She just felt oddly off-balance by having her plans upset so and if life is so unfair she wanted the right to be without her bra for goodness’s sake. A scarf should be enough.
She put on her glasses in preparation of expecting the crew. The shades provided quick reaction time in protecting her eyes from the bright white sunlight of the sun. Planets ideal for fuel stations weren’t all that human-friendly, not that they needed to be. A few hundreds of square meters served as service stations including waste-management, air-flushing, recreation and refueling. A corner of the station served as a pawn-shop. Poor, stuck ships that could only pay for services but objects supplied the stock and sooner or later stuff was picked up as parts or curiosities by more wealthy customers. The planet, however, received way more radiation that was comfortable for a human and the atmosphere was set to such a concentrated and carbon-dioxide level that instantly made one feel as if she was suffocating. Only among the leaves of the hyper-metabolising grass there was enough oxygen for a human to breathe. This environment made the crop more abundant so it was all the best, only Catrina needed her unseemly shades when a ship was due in.
She knew there was something wrong with the ship before she saw it. The abrupt vibration-changes and the sounds of irregular landing pattern warned her to check in the interweb. Catrina followed the ship’s course via the outer cameras. The ship seemed barely under control, and in the air it was already on fire. Even though it managed to get fairly close to the spaceport it landed off the sealed grounds. It was an acceptable spot for a human. One solitary figure shot out of the shattered spaceship and started running towards the station building. He had to stop to throw up on the battered seal of the spaceport after a hundred metres but by that time the robs were around him. She had no concern of his personal safety once Catrina saw him run.
The spot where the ship landed however was the worst thing that could have happened to the planet. The brown, dry grass field rich in oxygen was set in flames immediately and the rapid winds spread the flames alarmingly quickly. Ships didn’t land in the winter on fuel planets. When they did, they weren’t on fire. When they were, they landed on the seal. Only this one did and the robs had no programming for a fire of this scale. It was probably going to take out a good portion of the northern grass fields, this meant insurance work and the police. She had to shut the planet completely from business now. It would have meant a few months of being utterly alone, but for the guy from the burning ship.
The retching man was dragged in by the robs and laid down on the floor. He stayed on the ground, grasping for air. His torn clothes were black from the fire and his face was wrinkled in helpless alarm. Catarina knew though that his ship will soon stop burning in this atmosphere, and he will soon feel perfectly healthy in the building’s earth-normal air. But she also noticed the sandy hair and the excellently built body of the coughing man. She wasn’t sorry about the fire and she wasn’t sorry about not wearing a bra.
http://futurism.com/a-truly-green-source-of-renewable-energy-grass-harbors-hydrogen/