The farmers walked down from their collection of shoddy, ramshackle huts into the valley at dawn. The sun rose bright and warm on a day featuring the first clear morning sky of the year. The work in the fields would begin in earnest, now, as the crops grew rapidly under the warm, life-giving light of the sun. The farmers numbered in the thousands, the fields in the thousands of acres, for this was not the operation of a small land-holder, but the fields of the Duke Kansas, himself, whose only liege-lord was the King on his throne in Denver City.
The first of the framers stepped under the netting. Animals -- particularly flight-animals -- were scarce, but they would still ruin a crop. The farmers wrapped cloths around the lower part of their faces and began their work, walking out onto the thin, metal dividers that separated each tank from its neighbors. After the initial inspections, the farmers began to differentiate their acivities, according to the needs of their tanks. Some began moving chemical bags from storage racks along the edge of the valley which held this farm. Some retrieved long static rods to skim debris off the surface. Others began to inspect the overhead nets that were near their tanks, looking for tears or holes that would need repair.
A few -- a very few -- sat and stared, dumbfounded, at the swirling black mass that had grown in their tanks overnight, signaling the ruin of that crop. Some would run to the chemical racks, hoping to find a combination that would salvage what little might be saved. Others simply initiated a flush and cleanse cycle that would start a new crop for them, though one that would lag behind their neighbors' by weeks.
As the day unfolded, the tasks continued, each farmer moving along the thin rails carefully, without slip or misstep. As the day warmed, the rails dried, and the footing became less treacherous, allowing the farmers quicker movement. After a time, each farmer moved to a different tank adjacent to the first they had attended. Through the progression of the day, each would touch anywhere from a half dozen to a full dozen tanks, according to their allotments. Those with the strength and dexterity to handle the larger numbers moving quikly in order to complete everything that needed to be done in the day.
Late in the afterneen, as many started to flag and breaks from effort began to become as common as the execution of the effort, one such young, agile, and strong farmer missed his step when navigating a junction of rails. He slipped and caught himself with his hands on the rails, but the foot that had slipped dipped into the tank. His scream could be heard throughout the valley as he quickly righted himself on the rail, stripping at the cloths which bound his foot. As he unwound the cloth, the flesh of his foot and ankle were exposed to air, and the view of those nearby. His entire foot had been burned and blistered by the brief contact with the chemicals of the growth tank. He began dragging himself along the rails toward the nearest water source, but it would be a long, slow drag, as his assigned tanks were nearly in the center of the valley. Two others nearby reacted to his plight, and aided him in reaching the water source. He screamed again as the water struck his foot, and a strange, multi-colored steam arose from his damaged flesh.
In the tank which had been violated by the farmer's foot, the black mass was already distinguishable amid the placid blue of the chemical mixture. By the next day, much of the crop in the tank would be ruined. The tank might be flushed, or it might be left for the harvester to extrude what it could, the compensation going to the now-injured farmer. If lucky, he would one day return to the field and renew his farming. He had no family, so would likely die from starvation if he could not. A brief meeting among some of the older farmers divided the injured man's tanks, most of them going to the younger farmers who were anxious to take on additional tanks. More tanks meant a larger crop, which might mean enough money to not only provide a family with enough food, but also to purchase a luxury or two, like shoes, children's clothing, or a hat.
As the evening approached, and work slowed down even a bit more, a few of the older farmers began to depart for their homes, climbing back up the slopes of the shallow valley toward the ramshackle houses at the top of the rise. The more vigorous farmers stayed in order to make the best they could out of each and every tank's growth and potential harvest. A harvester would come through in another fortnight, making the next several days critical to the size of the harvest.
The placid evening was disrupted by the low rumble of some airborne machine. This was something seldom heard, so every farmer, even the most diligent, paused in his or her efforts and looked skyward for the source of the sound. The volume and the note of the engine increased as it approached, but none of the farmer's gazes had yet located the aircraft. When it did finally appear, it came booming over one of the walls of the valley at an altitude of only a few hundred feet, and falling fast. Smoke trailed from the vehicle and it waggled side-to-side in the air as it descended. A moment later the aircraft slammed into the ground at the high end of the valley, the shock felt throughout the valley. In a testament to their experience and agility, not one farmer fell as the ground and rails shook beneath them.
The aircraft stopped, somewhere out of the farmers' sight over the hilltop, but its location revealed by the billows of smoke rising from its resting place. A small group of farmers, more intrepid than most, walked up the hill to see what could be found. Two men and two women were in the group, all young, all just beginning to show the signs of having worked the tanks day in and day out for years. They strode with confidence that none of them felt. The machines of their betters were not to be trifled with. Their curiosity, however, was also not a trifling thing, and it had a firm grip on this small group of four.
Upon reaching the peak of the valley, they could see that the aircraft was almost certainly completely destroyed, though none of them, truly, had any experience in anything remotely similar to the high technology required to maintain such a vehicle. They found room to comment on just exactly this as they began their descent to the crash site. To their surprise, a figure was moving near where the largest piece of the aircraft lay. Moving by waving its damaged arms feebly over its head, to be sure, but moving nonetheless. They approached with slightly more trepidation, for this was a pilot lying there on the ground, but still with as much curiosity as ever.