THE FIELDS
Nine fields, six of them producing. The work is flown, it runs on a clock, and there is more of it than there are people to do it.
The fields differ in what they hold and in how far apart they sit, which is why the job is never quite the same twice. A crew learns to read ground rather than to follow one route.
WHAT A SURVEY CREW LEARNS
| Reading a field | Week one | Which squares are worth a sweep, and which are a waste of a tank of fuel. This is the whole of the job and it takes a fortnight to get the feel of. |
|---|---|---|
| Grading a deposit | Early | Concentration decides everything. Rich ground can pay back thirty times what poor ground does for the same hours flown, and telling them apart on the sensors is a learnable skill. |
| Working the clock | Ongoing | Deposits decay in about six months whether or not anyone touches them. Knowing what is closing first is how a crew decides where to go next. |
| The build order | Later | What the yards and the cities actually need, so that survey work feeds the build rather than filling a hold with the wrong thing. |
SURVEY AND MINING
Both jobs are flown. Asteroid fields are prospected and worked from the deck of a Y-8 Mining Vessel or a Mining Barque — there is no ground crew on a rock, only a deck and a search pattern.
Deposits decay in about six months whether or not they are touched, and the ground regenerates afterwards and can be surveyed again. So the work is continuous rather than a race to strip anything out.
Which means the shortage has never been ore. The ground already surveyed carries far more than the current crew can reach before the clock runs down on it. The job is not to find more — it is to have enough hands to use what has already been found.
THE CEILING
Material in stock and material still in the ground together cover another seventy-six cities. That is what the hiring is for. The limit on this programme is not ore and has not been for some time — it is people, and specifically the people to move material to where it is needed and to put it in place.
Prospecting and mining seats are open on both routes. What the work pays, or start here if you are new to the game.