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“Welcome to the foundry!” the old man clambered out of the confined lift and into the viewing gallery, his arms outspread to try and encompass the panorama from the curving windows of the observation lounge. As he busied himself at the incongruous desk in the middle of broad room, I was better able to see the view, which as my eyes grew more accustomed to more sympathetic ambient lighting, extended further and further from me, growing with detail, and activity.

            “We are by no means the largest yard in the federation, but certainly the prime in the girdle around this planet” the foundry director was still busy at his console, coloured displays lit his face, and glowed across the ceiling above him, by the pace of flashes as he flicked from one display to another, he was giving his works a thorough inspection.

I was beginning to get the impression, that the distraction I made and his coming to welcome me, was a sufficient time for things to go to rack and ruin. A minute or so later he had found evidence to pretty much justify this.

“Typical, one of the matter streamers has brought offline for some reason or another, it would not surprise that this is due to the strain we have been under lately, still I think other could be diverted to maintain the pace.”

I think the expression of puzzlement must have been radiating off my face.  Firstly trying to understand why this man was trying to keep up the frenetic pace of his machinery, if this would only then later damage them, and secondarily, what was a matter streamer? After a brief knotting of his copious eyebrows, he arrived at the conclusion that I was not quite up to the same speed as he on spacecraft manufacture, and foundry running, and began his long and weary explanation.

“There are two types of foundry generally in use inside the federation. One is an open foundry, where many independent foundry units get together and form a facility in space, these are temporary constructions and generally are used for either really big manufacture, or for in-situ overhauls. However this,” expansive arm gesture again, “is not one of those, this is a closed foundry, it is a permanent structure, which does not change much, it is enclosed by a shell, and although not exactly immobile it is a lot less mobile than the open foundry units, and these sort of sites generate the overwhelming majority of spacecraft created within the federation.”

At the end of this he gave me a big grin, which was quite worrying, but I decided this is a man proud of his trade. I was compelled to ask a question, the silence and the machine filled infinity beyond those windows sucked at the passage of time. After another few agonizing seconds I asked, “What are you currently making?” in hindsight I should have chosen a narrower question.

“At the moment, we are producing a batch from the Orca range, 6 Protectors, big fighter craft, those you can see on the lower ‘floor’.” Indeed as I looked out of the curved windows into the expanse beyond, I saw the half a dozen pointed hulls paired and pointing alternately, looking like so many fish neatly lined up, the only failure of this image, was that each would be ship was still scabbed with scaffolding, and doddered with umbilical lines, some what adding a sinister look to their otherwise black mirror hulls.

“The rest of the place is pretty much occupied with an Orca range carrier, that’s the mess that is taking up most of the upper levels, when out of its cradle, that beast will be the better part of five hundred and fifty meters long”, obligingly I turned my head upwards to follow his pointed finger, the huge confusion of scaffold elements, cables, lost looking panels of material, and machinery, refused to come together into one neat shape, though it would be impossible to say that vast amount of material hanging suspended would not come to something, there were glimpses of smooth curves, and also flat planes.

“That carrier is the better part of a four million tonnes, you wont find much bigger out there, it is pretty much the upper limit of this yard, though I fancy if we had the notice, and a little help from station keeping we could squeeze four or so in here, even if would mean we have to make some impromptu doors out of the walls.”

“Wow, this is a pretty big place then” I was beginning to warm to the topic of foundry management, though this man’s character could persuade me to acts of self-harm if he vouched that it would be for the best.

“Yes it is a big foundry, but by no means the biggest, even of the closed foundries, we measure here some kilometer and a bit long, by about half as deep and the same wide. Generally the biggest orders we get are those of the carrier class like that thing, though now and then we get asked to turn out some weird stuff, usually communications arrays and the likes, we have even had order for components for other foundries.”

He paused for a moment, I walked along the room long windows, in the open expanse, with its distant flat walls, a network of pipes, and rails, could be seen covering all the walls, lights marked these lines out.

The flat walls would often be interrupted by cobwebs of scaffold, or by big boxes, which themselves must have been hundreds of metres to a side, these had big open doors, and golden light played out from these to form glinting shafts of light into the main space. At closer inspection these glints turned out to be spacecraft delivering or returning with parts or material, there must have been hundreds, if not thousands in this great manmade cavern.

“How long does it take for you to make one of these carriers?”

“Construction time is usually quite proportional to size. The smaller craft practically come in boxes we put the bits together, plaster on a hull, and do a bit of fine wiring, calibration and stuff. Do a final round of testing test system performance, and that’s it. But this pretty much stops at the very small craft size, because these are tried and tested templates, which have been engineered to perfection, and produced by the hundred. As soon as you get a little bigger then things take a lot longer, well into days and weeks territory.” He paused again to call up an inventory on his screen, and beckoned me over to the desk to look at the displays he assembled.

“Last year we produced about four hundred small craft, each taking about three or four days to complete. The next category is for the deep space fighter craft, of which we made about 190, these are trans-c capable, still quite small but a realm above these small craft, which are mainly shuttles, or drones. These craft take about four days on average to put together but another few days in systems testing, this does not happen in here though, generally they are computer controlled to try out their drives, and perform maneuvers, only after they perfect this are they given as ready, and even then the military like to do their testing on them. After these small craft we get onto the stuff I like.”

“Like the Orcas you got in at the moment?”

“Yep this is what I call heavy fighter and corvettes, stuff that is between twenty and seventy metres long, it would be quite right to say all of that kind of level goes to the military, lets see… We produced two hundred and fifty of this class, of which the Orca range took up about half, these took about a week to make, a week in testing, again not in here though, then they disappear off to one base or another for crew assignment and further testing. We also get a lot of call for refits in that particular class, mostly for upgrade, some for repair.” He leaned forwards in his chair. “A few times a year we get some real beat up stuff, things that the tugs drag in that are somewhere between lumps of slag and wrecked ships, it worries me a little what happens to them, generally they are reconnaissance craft that have been emergency plucked out by wormhole, before they are dismantled to see how they work by whoever is chasing them. Still with today’s nano-tech self-repair systems even the worst cases stay in here for only a few days”

“Does nano-tech play a predominant role in manufacture here?”

“It plays an important but by no means the main part, nanotech generally does all the delicate work, like providing for the repair systems, laying fibre networks, sensor deployment on the hull and stuff. Fortunately a lot of work here is good old big scale metal bashing, it is mainly for this reason that foundries still exist, because nano-tech does not require engineers, or foundries for that matter.”

“Do you think that places like this could become obsolete?”

“To nano-tech and stuff? No, or at least not for a while yet, despite the delicacy of nano-tech we still produce an excellent degree of accuracy here, and a good production rate. For some projects, such as the larger craft foundry manufacture is generally the rule, as a foundry can supply all sorts of support to the ship, that nanites turning an asteroid into a ship just can not do. In saying that we are getting towards that a bit with the open foundries, they are sort acting as the middle mark between foundry and ultra-tech manufacture.”

“Sorry I have seemed to sidetracked you, I believe we got up to corvettes and the like.”

“Yes, yes, now where was I,” his hands played over the consoles again, and quickly a large familiar histogram appeared with ship size and manufacture time, looking a bit like a squashed bell curve, with a distinct chunky curve to it. “The next size up is your average starship, which is anywhere between a hundred to five hundred metres long. It is this kind of stuff that foundries really specialize in, these are big craft and often take weeks before they can even leave the yard. Now unlike the previous category, only about a quarter of this goes to the military, we get a lot of science vessels, and also civic vessels, that’s what I call cargo freighters, hospital ships, pleasure craft etcetera. Finally we get to the unusual, this is carriers and stuff, like our friend being put together in the hangar right now, these take up a big wedge of our construction time, despite it being rather unprecedented for us to receive more than six or so orders a year, which is just as well as they take months to do, we are looking at about forty five days total for the carrier in there, and they could spend a lot longer in testing, these craft tend to be quite unique, even those protectors class Orcas down there are unique in a way, not one of the six is identical.”

“Doesn’t such variability lead to a broader ability in the fleet as a whole? I also thought that most of the uniqueness is due to adaptation post manufacture.” I felt that parts of my education were being rewritten.

“I am not arguing that variety leads to increased capability, but every ship apart from the very small class generally have unique designs and specifications, and the bigger they get, the more they diverge from their siblings, all ships of the same class will share the same type of engine generally, but from then on that’s all about you can say. This is great for the designers as they can see how all the different permutations get on, and refine the template, but for the engineer it is a pain, and every ship behaves rather differently in testing. However if every ship was the same, I doubt that the engineers I have would be as clever and able as they are.” He sighed turned back to his screens, and switched them to standby. “I think that is enough about numbers and types, standing in here away from the dirt, I think I will take you in there to see how its actually done. I think that will give you a better appreciation for manufacture, than any book in the college will.”

We left the viewing gallery by the lift, I was more aware of the limited confines of the lift than before, however we were not in long, the dock for the small craft must have been only a few floors down.

“I think we shall take my little inspection craft, it is a three-seater but it’s rather crowded, are you ok will zero-g?”

“Its not a problem” I had been through a lot worse in my flight training days.

“Its just that we keep the hangar in zero-g, it makes construction work a lot easier, and reduces the stresses on the structure and scaffold, also a few of the important processes don’t like g as well. This craft is capable of A.G, but it tends to interfere and really is just a bit too much of an annoyance.”

He led the way to the docking point, and I was shown the well in which a ladder led down into the craft below, within a few minutes we were aboard and floating independent of the docking arm.

“Are you familiar with how we lay the hull on these ships?” he said as he checked readouts, and craft readiness status, to my alarm he silenced a red flashing alert, but this on closer inspection turned out to indicate that the ship was in null g mode.

“I cant say I know a great deal, but I think you continuously layer material over a shield mould, but beyond that I do not know very much.” The cockpit was very small, lights and consoles seem to take up more room than the wrap around window.

“That is pretty much the case, as part of the blueprints we have for each ship we get a three dimensional model for the hull and internal structure, this is all made out of solid massless neutronium, but instead of pouring a mythical neutron liquid into a mould made out force shields we sort of layer it continuously.” He pointed to aft and up, if I squatted in my seat, I could see he was pointing to one of those strange beam devices, that looked a bit like a pinecone to me. “Those are output streams from an infinite matter device, you know of those machines?”

“Very well. It solved the material bottleneck for the federation, it is a machine that conjures up material from the infinite myriad of failed universes, and gives us a source for all our neutronium and antimatter”

“You sound as if you were reciting, well you dead right, these devices are hooked up to a mixture of massless neutrons, and conventional neutrons, that together form the hull material.” The craft executed a sharp bank, a pseudo gravity of sorts pulled me back into my chair, we were heading up into the realm of the carrier, scaffold struts flashed past the window, some far too close for comfort, then as well leveled and the feeling of weightlessness returned, which I must admit was making me feel a little more ill than usual, a tremendous cobweb of light filled the view.

“That is the shield mould, it is an ephemeral shell over the blueprints.”

“Now you sound as if you are lost in you own poetry.”

“Only because I have had the advantage of seeing the process. I am going to dim the view for the moment, in a few seconds a stream of ultra hot, ultra energetic neutrons is going to be layered onto that existing hull edge.” A second or so later a brilliant blue beam connected the hull not more than a few metres away with one of those ‘pinecone’ guns on a track in the ceiling above. “What is happening is one of those guns is sending a stream from a few hundreds metres away, when I kill the welder’s glass you will be able to see a piece of apparatus which refines the beam, it does not need to be micron accurate, though I can vouch that is, the force field framework gives the smooth finish.”

As I watched the saw the line of blue move slowly across the view, before the advance I could see the false aurora of stray neutrons hitting the shield, and also the shield repulse in the optical spectrum, behind this was absolute black, as everywhere else appeared to be.

“Ok, all done, dropping optical shielding”, where the view ahead of shields and scaffold had been, was now a section of solid hull material, glowing gently yellow. Despite its glare I could see that it was perfectly smooth.

“Whoops perhaps a little too much, lets just take us round the edge so we can see the refinement annulus”

I was quite lost, I had just seen this length of ship extended by a few metres in a few seconds, with perfect smoothness and accuracy, made of a material that I was familiar with and knew to be almost immutable, or at least so in the human scale of power, made of a stream of neutrons.

“Ah here we are,” I returned to reality to see him pointing at a torus made of a selection of sleek black metal blocks, and fine copper coloured wire. “This takes the beam from the gun, and tweaks it a little, sharpening the edges, changing the velocity or the energy, it can even change the neutron distribution in the hull material if one desired. It also coordinates the cooling machinery after the layer has been placed.”

“And that is the whole of the hull layering process? I mean its awfully fast, I imagine you could make the shell of the carrier in a few hours with all your guns.”

“Yep that’s pretty much the whole process, nano-tech lays sensors and stuff in the hull, along with the smaller conduits, and we could do the entire neutronium shell of the carrier in two hours and thirty four minutes at maximal lay rate with all our guns. But although that sounds great you would have a perfect hull with no internal bits, no engine, no generators, coils, sensors, just vaccum. So generally what happens is that we layer it meter at a time and put all the bits we need to put in at that metre, do another metre of hull and so on. Provided we had all the bits and full crew to over see the machines which install the parts we could theoretically put together the whole carrier in a few days, but in practice it takes a lot longer, as some of the bits need to be very carefully inserted, or we need to go slow on the layout because we have a large surface area to cover. But this method of manufacture allows for very quick construction times, and for the unique, as far as we know, flawless federation neutronium hull. Which even in my honest opinion more than justifies the use of faster construction methods, which would create less perfect hulls, that and the fact I quite like this technology, I still cant quite see why these neutron guns are not installed on warcraft.”

“Doesn’t stopping the guns at intervals create flaws?”

“Not as much as you might think, it would definitely be the case with conventional materials, but with neutronium, it’s a completely different matter it has its own laws, this process creates essentially flawless hulls, the only problem is when stray atoms get incorporated into the matrix, but even then these imperfection do not propagate into cracks or the like.” A few metres away a machine was guiding a black block into a socket, the block sitting neatly between its newly constructed walls, even the heat-glow had disappeared. “I think that all I need to show you on that process, and enough for today I also think, no doubt you will have to write up your reports on what you have seen, education is such a drag, and the worse part is it seems to get harder as you grow older.” With his hands flashing across the consoles, the craft did a precision turn, and took a ‘scenic’ view back to the dock.

At one point we weaved our way through a convoy of vehicles tugging the fat cylinders of accumulators, the lead human piloted craft did a roll in friendly response, and we executed likewise, the identically covered crane and track filled ceilings and walls spun by, all those black forges churning out components for the new ships sailing by.

At another point we pulled up to a long black prism seemingly suspended perfectly still next to the carrier, then a dozen or so hatches opened along its length, and from them, dozens of small autonomous craft assembled scaffold struts extruded from the hatches which in length seemed to many multiples the width of the prism, I was told that they were being forged and extruded as a continuous process.

On the final straight to the docking point I was shown the construction wing for the fighters which would serve aboard the carrier, it was a conveyer belt process, and flying slowly along its length, with the machines fussing over each stage, I saw the first blocks of the craft laid down, and added to block by block, gaining more body and finished look, until at the very end, each became a needle sharp wedge of fresh neutronium, painted with umbilical and hatch markings, with shining diamond laminate cockpits.

Before I left, I had to ask about the coming war.

“I don’t think we have much here to worry about, though I have to admit that we get a lot of orders, but we get all the assistance we need. The federation has always been great to live in, and even though this coming war will be the greatest challenge we have encountered I have no doubt that we will pull through. Especially with my ships.” He gave me a big grin.

“Do you think you will see any of the action here?”

“We are rather far into the federation here, so I doubt it, anyway way we are viewed here as a valuable asset, this entire foundry is fitted with good cloaking technology, as ridiculous as it may seem, this whole system is rigged for silent operation, which suits me, cos even if our cloak shielded, chilled hulls, and grav silencing protection is seen through, I have a small fleet of warships inside here, and there are twenty four other foundries in this orbit around this planet. I don’t think we have much to worry about. Are you off to be a pilot?”

“I very much doubt so, the war will have to be on for a rather long time before I am even allowed in one of those things” I said as I point to the passing line of Orcas. “I think I would like to go into tech research, I have my eye on a place in one of the mars universities.”

“Mars eh? With a good education from a place like that I would gladly welcome you here, who knows, ten years down the line, I could see you in one of our design forges. Anyway we’ve pulled up to the docking point, you think you can get yourself off my yard by yourself?”

“Shouldn’t be a problem, thank-you for the tour.” As I pulled myself up the ladder, calling down into the cockpit below.

“Not a problem, a pleasure in fact. Now I have to see whether we are operational on that matter stream, if not that person will not see my Mr Nice side.”

The hatch snapped shut, I watched the small craft pull away, through the docks windows I saw it execute a quick roll. I made my way to the lift.