Chapter 64

  An hour later, Kathy reported that some of the others had gone to the stash and managed to get it open. They carried things in bags back up the hill to the mine entrance. Things got a bit chaotic over there, as they seemed to be fighting over the food, or at least arguing over when to eat it.

  Meanwhile, Kathy and Jenkins were focused on the most important thing: getting the food printer set up and working. At Nick's urging, they did the much simpler setup of the air purifier and water purifier first. With that practice under their belt, they examined the ingots Nick had supplied, and began feeding them into the food printer.

  They spent a while arguing with him, feeling very strongly about learning where the ingots were going, since they were too big to actually fit inside the printer. Nick spread his hands. “Petra is Petra,” he said simply. “I don't understand it myself.”

  Finally, the moment of truth arrived, and Kathy told the machine to print out a can of tuna. Nothing happened. Nick had to get from Kathy, through Petra, what error code the machine was displaying. Then, he told Petra what she had just translated, so she could tell him what the problem was. Then he had to tell Kathy, with help from Petra, what needed to be done. It turned out that Nick hadn't included any iron ingots specifically for printing cans.

  Fortunately, there were a couple of ingots Nick had left earlier as gifts when he was trying random trade items, so once one of those was fed in, the food printer started working. Several minutes later, the side opened and a can of tuna was waiting. At that rate, there were only enough iron ingots to make about a dozen cans.

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  The food printer design Nick had used was minimal in its features. It wouldn't accept iron, which the natives had plenty of, except in the exact shape of the standard hexagonal ingots. Nick put his head in his hands for a minute when he realized that.

  They experimented. Nick got Petra to absorb a can of tuna that was just opened, and missing its lid. Then Petra taught the pattern to the food printer, and it produced an identical open can of tuna, saving a fraction of the iron.

  Nick argued with Petra a while. He was pretty sure that by now, Petra understood the difference between food and container. So, he eventually convinced Petra to create a flimsy can design that used less than a quarter as much iron. It was fairly fragile, but the natives would happily accept that limitation.

  The final improvement was when they belatedly realized that you could put an empty bowl inside the output chamber, and the printer would create the food and dump it in the bowl—no can required. They all breathed a sigh of relief, or the fuakula equivalent. Now, the feedstock would last for hundreds of cans' worth of tuna and other foods.

  They could generate the carbon from the air purifier converting carbon dioxide, and hydrogen and oxygen from water. Nitrogen took much longer, but got absorbed from the air, an option Nick had somehow missed when he was struggling to make his own food at first. The other elements came from the specialized feedstock ingots in small amounts.

  One of the fuakula apparently knew some chemistry—certainly a lot more than Nick did. He explained to Petra, who explained to Nick, who explained back to Petra again, who told the food printer, how to make pure sugar. It wasn't quite the same as the stuff Nick had decided was “close enough” for himself. Apparently, it didn't need nitrogen, so they had basically an endless supply of sugar. The fuakula might eventually die of malnutrition, but it wouldn't be by directly starving for calories.

  We've bought some time, Nick mused, but this isn't a long-term fix yet.