The fusion bombs' heat, reaching tens of thousands of degrees, instantly set Planet Five ablaze. Their tremendous destructive power made it look as though a gigantic plow had churned up its surface. Wave after wave of fusion bombs fell until the entire planet had been thoroughly burned over. That was not all. The fleet also fired more than a hundred powered, earth-penetrating fusion bombs. Spinning at high speed, they bored deep into Planet Five before detonating, sending vast quantities of magma from the core surging up to the surface.
The power of technology was truly terrifying. A wandering civilization at only the early stellar stage could completely transform a planet's appearance in a matter of hours. Hu Yu had three reasons for doing this. The first and most important was that Planet Five was an important mining planet, and many scientists and technicians would be living in bases on its surface. The construction work was now urgent, and they could not spend months on exploration and research. Their only choice was a comprehensive high-temperature cleansing to ensure the safety of those who would land later. No microorganism, bacterium, or virus could survive temperatures of tens of thousands of degrees.
The second reason was to bring magma from inside Planet Five to the surface. The planet had a powerful magnetic field, so the magma had a very high metal content. After simple refining, it could be used in construction, making it ideal for the fleet's initial shortage of materials.
The third reason was the fleet's lack of large machinery. The small mining machines carried aboard had limited capabilities, so using fusion bombs to plow deep and remove impurities with intense heat would also be a great help to later mining operations.
With the plowing complete, Hu Yu immediately dispatched landing craft to conduct on-site surveys and select the most suitable locations for bases and mining sites. The Polaris could not land directly on any of the planets. As time passed, more and more personnel and supplies were transported to Planet Five's surface.
Several basic smelting towers were transported from the fleet to Planet Five and given priority in construction. These towers would be the beginning of everything. Space aboard the fleet was limited, so it could not carry more or larger equipment. But with these towers, they could gradually produce steel. With steel, they could manufacture more and larger equipment and build larger smelting facilities. Those larger facilities would then produce more and better steel. Only then would they have a virtuous cycle.
There was still some work to do before operations on Planet Five were running smoothly. After dropping off all the relevant personnel and equipment, Hu Yu led the fleet to Tau Ceti's second and third planets. Both lay within Tau Ceti's habitable zone, and Hu Yu wanted to see whether they could be transformed.
Planet Two was approximately 0.7 astronomical units from Tau Ceti, while Planet Three was 1.2 astronomical units away. In terms of distance, Planet Two was better placed, because Tau Ceti's mass was only about eighty percent of the sun's.
But Planet Two had no atmosphere, while Planet Three had a very thin one. Planet Two might once have had an atmosphere as well, only for Tau Ceti's radiation winds to strip it away over the ages. As a result, temperatures on Planet Two ranged from about 200 degrees to minus 180 degrees. Protected by its thin atmosphere, Planet Three's temperatures remained between 80 and minus 50 degrees. In that respect, Planet Three was more suitable as a short-term human habitation base.
There was also a strong possibility that groundwater existed on Planet Three, and that was what the fleet needed most. Its demand for water was enormous. Although water was recycled as much as possible, its reserves continued to dwindle. By now, even a nice hot bath was difficult for the people to manage.
Thus, after arriving at Tau Ceti, finding water would be just as important as construction. After all, water was essential to human survival. Without it, survival itself would be in question, let alone development. If they could not even be assured of a bath, how could they talk about combat effectiveness? Only under comfortable conditions could people concentrate better on their work and be more efficient.
Besides those two planets, the scientific survey team also conducted detailed investigations of Number One Planet and Number Four Planet. Number One Planet had an extremely harsh environment, with constant volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, as though it had only recently formed. This puzzled the scientists greatly. After billions of years of evolution, even if there were still eruptions and earthquakes, they should not have been so frequent and violent. Number One Planet was like a planet that never aged, remaining forever young.
Planet Four, meanwhile, was a giant gas planet. In that respect, the system was quite similar to the Solar System. No wonder people had taken such a keen interest in Tau Ceti two centuries ago, at one point believing intelligent life might have evolved there. The gas planet was made up almost entirely of hydrogen and helium. With helium available, the fleet no longer needed to worry about its energy supply.
A few days later, the preliminary survey results came in. There were no signs of life anywhere in the Tau Ceti system, not even the most basic proteins. More seriously, no water resources had been found. Everyone was both somewhat disappointed and quite relieved. The lack of life was disappointing because it meant humanity would have to put in more effort to settle on Tau Ceti, while the water problem also needed an urgent solution. The relief came from knowing humans could carry out colonization safely, without being affected by alien microorganisms.
The personnel and equipment responsible for infrastructure construction had also been transported to Planet Three. Building the bases was actually very simple. They only had to dismantle the residential buildings aboard the ships, transport them to Planet Three, and assemble them again. This had been considered from the very beginning of the fleet's design. The residential buildings were all modular, and their seals and protective capabilities were entirely adequate for use on Planet Three. Although the fleet did not have a great many spare residential buildings, there were enough to build several bases without difficulty. They would send some people down first and take care of the rest gradually.
Once the first batch of steel came out of Planet Five's furnaces, smelting towers would also be built on Planet Three. Although Planet Three had a low metal content, that did not mean it had none. The total amount of metal in the several deposits already identified reached tens of trillions of tons. Even without Planet Five, Planet Three had almost enough metal to meet their needs; mining and smelting it would simply take more time and effort.
Because Planet Three had suitable temperatures, bases assembled from ordinary residential buildings could house people. Thus, most production lines would be built there in the future, while Planet Five, with its harsh environment, could only serve as a dedicated mining site. Around 100,000 factories would need to be built on Planet Three to produce all kinds of equipment and components.
A hundred thousand sounded like an enormous number, but for the fleet, these were indispensable factories-or rather, production lines-that had been retained after several rounds of selection. They varied in size: large production lines might need several square kilometers, while small ones required only a few square meters.
The number of workers needed by the 100,000 factories varied. Some required more manual labor, while others needed extremely few workers. In some cases, just a few people could run more than a dozen factories. Training to meet personnel needs had begun when the fleet set sail, and now was the time to put it to use. They just had to wait a little longer for Planet Five's steel to come out of the furnaces.
Two months later, the anxious people finally received news that the first batch of steel had come out of Planet Five's furnaces. It amounted to 300,000 tons of excellent-quality steel. A small celebration was even held on Planet Five for the occasion. Steel output would remain at around 300,000 tons per day thereafter.
With steel, they had the foundation for development. Before long, a batch of large mining machines was manufactured in a basic factory, while the circuitry came from the fleet's stores, making the process much faster. As the large construction equipment was put to use, steel output continued to rise until the small smelting towers reached capacity. But that was no problem. An enormous smelting furnace capable of producing ten million tons a day was already under construction. Before long, the steel produced could be shipped to Planet Three for further construction work.
According to the plan drawn up during the voyage, at least 500,000 new warships, each 300 meters long, were to be produced. Residential ships, with more space and a more pleasant environment, would reach 20 kilometers in length, and at least 200 of them would also have to be built. With the genetic modifications that gave humans a lifespan of at least a million years, explosive population growth was unavoidable. And now that humanity had entered the space age, how could it control and make use of enough star systems without a population of tens or hundreds of billions? Moreover, the larger the population base, the more scientists and technicians there would be, and the faster technology would develop. That, too, was a virtuous cycle.
But neither the 300-meter warships nor the 20-kilometer residential ships could be manufactured on a planet's surface. First, a planet's gravity would exert a powerful force on ships that large, affecting manufacturing precision. Second, the ships themselves would be so terrifyingly massive that they would be unable to take off normally and leave the planet's surface.
To build such large spaceships, they had to construct them under zero-gravity conditions in space or establish a base on an asteroid. Hu Yu ordered the search teams to fly throughout the Tau Ceti system, but they did not find a single suitable asteroid. With no other choice, he ordered more than 80 Polaris ships to move close together and be connected with steel. Various pieces of equipment were then installed on them, converting them into space docks. In this way, fifteen space docks of varying sizes were built in orbit around Tau Ceti's Planet Five.
The few remaining Polaris ships were used as transports, carrying large quantities of steel smelted on Planet Five to Planet Three. After reaching orbit around Planet Three, they sent it down to the surface in small shuttle craft.
Construction proceeded in an orderly fashion. Two years later, all the bases were complete. Dozens of enormous fusion-powered smelting towers, each a hundred meters tall, stood on Planet Five's surface. Billowing smoke poured from their tops and dispersed into the air. Since Planet Five had no atmosphere, the dense smoke, made up of tiny particles, spread over only a very small area before falling back to the ground. Steel output had also surged to ten million tons a day.
With a steady supply of steel, hundreds of large bases rose from the ground on Planet Three. Inside were all kinds of machinery, equipment, and production lines. Countless workers bustled about like ants, every one of them working hard with boundless enthusiasm and drive.