The image of the starship Thirst was no more than a streak of elongated color until it reduced speed. The forward sections were the first to stop, with the rest of the ship catching up a moment later and removing the visual distortion caused by its velocity.  A massive block, the only deviation in the shape of the hull was in thestern where the six cylinders of the main engines were mounted.

"Destination reached, Oort Cloud section J93," the raven-haired officer at the forward helm station reported. She looked ready to be sick.

"First time through a Delkor Projector?" I asked as I swiveled my engineering station chair in her direction.

"Yeah," she answered, placing a hand on her stomach as if trying to will her breakfast to stay down.

"After a dozen or more jumps, you'll get used to it," I promised.

"Terrific," she muttered unenthusiastically.

The Delkor Projectors had been invented more than six hundred years ago, but even today, in the year 3020, the massive stations were still in use. Before members of the science caste had invented the Projectors, space flight and colonization had always required massive engines and considerable amounts of fuel in order to move vessels across the vast distances of space.

The scientists had discovered atomic bonds could be stretched to considerable distances without breaking them. Individual ships and entire fleets could be transmitted anywhere in the galaxy one atomic layer at a time. Since each transmitted section was only one atom thick, it could be projected faster and further than the actual mass of the ship would allow.

"Full scan," the Captain ordered. The broad shouldered man seemed even more imposing sitting in the throne-like chair in the center of the bridge.

"Sensors are detecting cometary debris, high concentrations of stellar dust, and twenty seven fragments of sufficient size for harvesting," the science officer reported. His eyes and ears were concealed behind a sensor visor wrapped around his head, three lines of glowing blue light cutting horizontally across the front of black device. The visor created a virtual space around the wearer, allowing the science officer to see everything as if he were the ship itself. Items of interest were highlighted for his inspection, and manipulation of the science station controls could adjust various features and functions as needed.

"Engineer Walden," the Captain said to me. "Deploy your teams and begin harvesting at once."

"Aye Captain," I answered. Leaving my station on the bridge, I headed toward the flight deck where my people would be waiting.

The flight deck was wide, open, and bustling with activity when I arrived. Like me, the engineering and mining teams were all attired in the blaze orange jumpsuits of the labor caste rather than the slate gray worn by those on the bridge who belonged to the warrior caste.

Racks with supplies, tools, equipment, and replacement parts were organized between the harvester pods. Deploying the harvesters was standard after nearly every projection into deep space, and since everyone was already prepping the harvesters for launch, I didn't interrupt them and continued toward harvester pod one.

A lumpy sphere made from a series of triangular panels, reflective silver in color, the harvester pod was ten feet in height with eight extendable arms curled up underneath it like the tentacles of an octopus. Flexible pipes were connected to the housing where mechanical arms attached, and the tubes curved around the harvester to the square block of the extractor system on the back of the craft.

Opening one of the triangular panels, I was confronted by the strangest noise I had ever heard. My copilot resided in the left half of the harvester, his chair facing away with its back up against the back of my seat.

"Jon, what in the worlds are you listening to?" I asked.

"It's a style of music from Earth called country," Jon explained with a delighted grin. His casual and carefree attitude seemed to affect his personal style ashis sandy hair was a jumble and pointing in all directions with no real pattern.  "This particular song was first released August twenty-third, twenty eleven by a singer named Willie Nelson."

"Why are you listening to music over a thousand years old?" I questioned.

"At our stop last week at Kalaria station five, I found a merchant selling restored recordings on data chip," Jon answered. "I thought it might be interesting to know what our ancestors listened to."

"Alright," I relented. "But, turn it down some."

"Sure," he agreed, tapping the appropriate switch to reduce speaker power by fifty percent.

I climbed into my seat and began the preflight checklist. Looking over my shoulder, I gave in to my curiosity.

"What's the song about?" I queried.

"It's called, 'Roll me up and smoke me when I die," Jon told me.

"Prior to the creation of nutrient packs, didn't ancient humans cook their food with large amounts of wood smoke?" I asked as I remembered the primitive practice.

"Yes," Jon confirmed. "It was supposed to add flavor."

"So, the title of this song would indicate a desire for cannibalism?" I questioned.

"No!" Jon laughed. "The use of narcotics was highly prevalent in those days, some of it legal, some of it not. Many of the substances were burned and the smoke inhaled to create what was known as a high, a chemical reaction in the brain that makes the user feel different ways depending on what substance was used."

"Oh, I remember that," I said as I recalled my history lessons in school. "Chemical stimulants were made obsolete when the nano-molecular filters were invented."

"The filters made lots of things obsolete," Jon added. "Not only did they screen out the smoke to prevent long term damage to the lungs, but the filters also eliminated the short term effects in the brain. No smoke damage. No high. Same thing happened to fermented beverages and the industries relating to them when their deleterious effects were eliminated by the filters."

"If I recollect correctly, didn't that cause some trouble?" I asked.

"Only a small uprising of people who refused to use the filters, saying it was taking away their rights to experience life to the fullest," Jon reminded me.

"What a mess the world was in back then," I muttered.

"True," Jon agreed. "It's surprising humanity ever got through it."

"We've always had troubles," I told him. "Thankfully, there were more people trying to fix the problems than cause them."

"Thank goodness," Jon concurred.

Seeing everything was in readiness, I flipped the toggle switch on my control panel to activate the communication array. The old style controls in the harvester were severely outdated by today's standard of technology, but it didn't really matter. Harvesters were built to work, and they didn't need anything more advanced in order to fulfill their function. Additionally, the Thirst was a great distance from a Projector capable of transporting the ship and crew back to Earth, so any repairs needing to be done had to be completed out here. The more advanced technology would create greater difficulties in maintenance and replacement without dedicated repair facilities, and it wasn't practical to put such expensive equipment and capabilities on an icebreaker.

"Prepare for harvesting operations," I ordered. "Pods two through seven will deploy after me; pods eight through fourteen will launch from the other side of the ship and cover the opposing flank. There are lots of colonies back home without access to fresh water, and they're depending on us. Let's not let them down. Move out."

I flipped the toggle switch back to its starting position to close the channel before powering up the engines. With carefully applied thrust, I slowly pushed my harvester out into space, passing through the invisible magnetic field in the open bay doors which kept the atmosphere inside the ship.

Once in the blackness of space, I altered course, being sure not to crash into any of the other harvesters. When I reached the cargo level of the Thirst, the bridge operators opened the covering panels to grant me access to the siphon hoses. Backing up against one of the hoses, it magnetically attached to the rear of the harvester's extractor before I activated the clamps responsible for holding it in place.  Once the siphon was secured, I headed for the first cometary fragment, dragging behind my harvester a long hose from the ship like a tether.

I approached an ice fragment equal in size to the harvester. Switching on my cutting system, I fired two bursts with my precision laser, cleanly slicing the fragment vertically and horizontally into four smaller pieces. The vaporized ice refroze almost immediately, preventing it from pushing the smaller portions apart. Now that the fragment was in more manageable dimensions, I proceeded with the harvesting.

Activating the targeting computer, I dropped the crosshairs over one of the ice fragments and engaged the mechanical arms of the harvester. Of the eight mechanical arms, I controlled only four of them because Jon had command of remainder, collecting ice fragments on his side of the harvester at the same time.

The end of each mechanical arm possessed six long rods with a multitude of computer controlled joints. Stretched between the rods was an umbrella of duraflex polymer. While having the flexibility of cloth, the polymer maintained the resilience of titanium. As the rods hinged in order to encompass the first fragment, the polymer draped around the sides of the ice similar to a cocoon.

Thermal conductors inlaid on the interior surfaces of the rods heated the chunk of ice until it melted into a weightless orb of water. The extractor began to work the moment the last of the ice had melted, using artificially created gravity waves to pull the liquid through the pipes connected to the mechanical arm and into the extractor itself before sending it through the siphon hose attached to the rear of the harvester. The water would be refrozen for easy storage when it reached the massive cargo hold of the Thirst.

As the amount of liquid was reduced, the cocoon created by the rods and duraflex polymer constricted in size, tightening down to ensure every single drop of the precious material was retrieved and didn't escape. While the first mechanical arm did its work, I made use of the three others under my control, targeting the remaining pieces of the ice fragment. Having multiple robotic arms, each linked to the extractor, allowed me to keep moving, working with the next before the first one had even finished.

In the back of my mind, I considered what lay ahead. Once the harvesters had collected enough of the water to fill the Thirst to capacity, we'd begin the long journey to the nearest of the Delkor Projectors. Although several of the stations had been deployed throughout the Oort Cloud for the return trip to Earth, there was an enormous amount of space between them. It might take anywhere from a week to a month to reach the transport station.

Afterwards, when the Thirst returned home, its water would be divided and distributed to various cargo ships headed for colonies and outposts scattered across the galaxy. Its mission done, the Thirst would return again to the Oort Cloud and begin the process all over again.

With all the radical advances in technology, I was certain we'd one day eliminate either the need for water or the necessity of having to collect it. I wasn't in fear of losing my job if it happened. As a member of the labor caste, there was always work to be done somewhere in the galaxy, and I rather liked it. The labor caste was the backbone of civilization, laying the foundation and building everything that stood upon it. As humanity advanced and continued its march of progress across space, I would be a part of it, even if it was only from the confines of my harvester.