Daniel sat upon a boulder as he surveyed the building crews assemble his base camp on Ember. The cracking buzz of welding torches rang out through the encampment as the workers assembled the aluminum skeletons of barns and warehouses. Elsewhere, a team of laborers hoisted up a tall metal pylon that Daniel knew to be his FM communications antenna. Once the antenna had been hoisted some fifty feet up into the air, the men set about hammering its guywires firmly down into the rocky soil. He watched the strobe light on the crown of the antenna blink on for the first time, demonstrating that the apparatus was powered and ready to receive and transmit communications to other settlements on Ember.

Bootfalls crunching against gravely soil alerted Daniel to the approach of Spencer Arahanga, the overseer of the construction efforts. Despite being out in the field for the past four or five hours, Spencer's gray corporate polo and khaki trousers looked as clean and crisply-pressed as they did when he put them on in his bunk aboard the [i]Crucis[/i]. The construction representative brushed off a bit of dirt on his shoulder that probably existed only in his imagination. Spencer did not at all strike Daniel as the sort of person who welcomed spending at least six weeks building pole barns on an uninhabited planet. How Comtois roped Mr. Arahanga into coming to Ember was beyond Daniel's reckoning.

"Mister Weyrich," greeted Spencer, "I am pleased to report that the essential facilities are complete. We have field tents pitched to house our construction teams while they build up the hangars and other buildings, the communications antenna is up and running, and the solar recharge station is operational."

"What about the fence?" Daniel asked.

"Ah, yes, the electric perimeter fence. The fence has been placed around the camp as you specified, but we are waiting for the recharge station to charge fully before powering the fence."

"Let's get that fence running [i]now[/i]." Daniel stressed as he pushed off from the rock he was sitting on before setting out toward the perimeter fence that marked the boundary of his camp. Spencer followed on Daniel's heel as he cut across the nascent camp. They passed the metal frames of the hangars and warehouses that had already been assembled and raised up to the alien sky. Construction technicians swiped through their smart tablets to read the schematics for the kit-built metal buildings they were constructing. Further down, there were laborers towing a half-dozen pieces of heavy mining equipment into one of the camp's field tents for temporary cover with ATVs. Crates of supplies sat on giant pallets near the landing zone beside a small bicopter with its twin rotors still stowed from the dropship ride. Daniel paid the fortune's-worth of gear and equipment little mind, but Spencer could not help but give a double take at all of the supplies Daniel had ordered.

"Mister Weyrich, I can't help but ask, but what exactly do you intend to do with all of this equipment?" Spencer asked, gesturing to the crates and tents. "You have purchased enough mining equipment for a dozen start-ups and yet you seem to have no plan to prospect or mine for baltuskite. That isn't to say I'm doubting you; far be it from me to question a client's business model. However, I'd certainly appreciate knowing your intent so we at Comtois can better serve your needs."

"You're observant, Spencer. I ain't mining anything on this planet," Daniel affirmed. "But I know that Ember is a goddamn gold mine, and when people on Earth see the kind of money there is to be made on this planet, the starships are going to be chock full of people looking for their piece of the fortune here."

"My people are from South Africa back on Earth, Spencer. I dunno how much you know about the country's history. About four hundred years ago, there was a gold rush in South Africa in a place called the Witwatersrand. The mines only produced much gold for about sixty years, but in the process a town was founded there to give the miners and goldseekers a place to stay and trade. That town was Johannesburg, Spencer. And though the gold's been gone for hundreds of years, Johannesburg is still one of the biggest cities on Earth to this day."

"This," Daniel said as he gestured to the camp around him, "this is going to be Ember's Johannesburg. And if things go the way I plan, then these pole barns and metal shacks are just the tip of the iceberg for your company."

"We at Comtois would be delighted to see that happen," Spencer declared, his eyes widened by the tantalizing prospect of the fortunes to be had in building a proper city for Ember settlers.

"Then you and your crews will need to do exactly as I say, Spencer." Daniel said as he made his way to the very edge of the camp. "Starting with getting this fence up and running."