When the group landed on Ganymede's surface, the Tech-priests from Mars were still awestruck by the gravity-well megastructure hanging above the sky.
The "umbilical cord" linking Jupiter and transporting matter was not particularly conspicuous, but whenever the solar wind swept past, those high-energy charged particles rubbed and collided with the material streams, flashing with dazzling cosmic auroras.
Arkan Land gazed obsessively at the transport belt scattered with auroras. In Mars's Great Library, he had once uncovered creations lost to the ages, and now he saw the shadows of those lost technological teachings.
No, perhaps they could not even be called shadows, because these things truly existed.
Although it was only his first visit to Ganymede, it did not possess Mars's ancient and magnificent forge-star rings, nor did it have so many old spaceports. The orbital starports built around Mars had histories older than everyone here.
Mars had once been a cradle of novel technologies as well, but after the Dark Age, digging up technological relics from the wastelands was already the limit for people like them. They had no spare capacity whatsoever for innovation.
Yet the novelty displayed here deeply fascinated these followers of the Omnissiah.
Look at this new promised land. There were no ugly, stupid, mindless Servitors, no emaciated mortal labor-slaves, and no inefficient machines belching thick black smoke. All work was completed efficiently and swiftly by intelligent machines.
"Efficiency is productivity, and productivity is everything." Sage Land silently savored those words and suddenly realized that there was a difference in vision between them and the other side.
As they passed forge factories producing all kinds of equipment and vehicles, even the waste they discharged went through multiple cycles, squeezing out every last bit of value.
No material was useless. So long as it existed, it could be