The Treasure of Lei Fong Wu

Chapter Fourteen

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When a new world is terraformed, after the major considerations are successfully taken care of – increasing gravity, beefing up the Van Allen belt, adding or adjusting atmosphere and aquasphere into something more-or-less like Earth-That-Was – standard procedure wais to seed the planet with a variety of flora and fauna to create that world’s new biosphere. Because as much fun as breathing and drinking and not dying from radiation poisoning are, human beings need to be able to eat to thrive – and that takes some sort of complete biosphere.

The Chief of Biospheric Mechanics (or some similarly titled Company official) was in charge of rigorously studying the emerging world’s specifics and then going back through the extensive genetic database that was among the most important legacies of Earth-That-Was. Comparing ground conditions on the world to the wide range of original Terran biospheres, he or she would carefully calculate what flora would thrive, in consideration of sunlight, atmo pressure and composition, climate, and soil chemistry.

Once that was determined, he or she would start introducing those plants into the world, a few at a time, in several miniature biospheric laboratories. Eventually a substantial number of “winners” would be found. Those winners would be propagated in the Company labs and spread by indentured hand or robot, all around the globe. Usually a biosphere would start, as Earth-That-Was once did, with the simplest of organisms: lichens on land surfaces, and algae in marine systems, with a healthy dose of friendly and helpful bacteria pretty much everywhere.

After a few years of the most primitive of life forms ruling the world, a number of selected plant species, artificially engineered for rapid growth and laden with fertilizers, would be seeded around the globe, followed closely by insect species deemed helpful to the quickly-evolving biosphere. Despite their “winner” status in laboratories, not all the