Anyone could quit Government service and go into business for
themselves or find a job on the private sector. Corporations were springing up
right and left. Several Martian corporations jumped in to doing business on
Earth. Among those was Super Stores that opened a chain of retail outlets Big
Boy Burger that opened a chain of burger outlets and Hour Glass, Inc. that
staked out land in Napa, Sonoma, and Mendocino areas of the former
California and started growing grapes. They reopened the long deserted
winery's and started producing wine that they marketed all over the United
States, Mars and Arton. The Artonian natives wanted nothing to do with the
stuff but he humans on Arton seemed to like it. Hour Glass, Inc. also
reactivated a number of breweries in the Western United States. They went in
to the manufacture of twelve ounce beer containers and glass bottles for wine.
The beer products were sold throughout the United States as well as being
exported to Mars and Arton. Even with only six million potential customers,
Hour Glass soon became the largest corporation in the three planet system.
Big 7 convenience stores from Mars began to open outlets all over the
United States and bought products from other manufactures which they sold on
Earth and exported to Mars and Arton. They had over two thousand outlets on
the three planets. Martian Wood Products, Inc. began harvesting trees in the
Northwest, cutting them into lumber and making plywood that they also
marketed on all three planets. In conjunction with their lumber yards they
opened hardware stores. Since there were not many companies manufacturing
hardware items Mars Wood Products, Inc. started up long abandoned factories
and started manufacturing their own hardware and paint products. Soon they
were also manufacturing tools. They also had outlets on all three planets.
A few fledgling Earth companies began doing business on Mars and on
Arton and a few Arton companies began doing business on Earth and Mars.
The Government accounting office expanded the credit's system to make it
available on Mars and Arton. It took almost one hundred years before the three
planets were consolidated under the one government. The capital City of the
three planet system was officially located in San Diego, The State Capital of
Earth was in Sacramento. The state capital of Mars was in New Phoenix. The
State Capital of Arton was located in Island City, Arton.
The Arton ships and the Dedov ships were beginning to show their age
and would soon need to be replaced. The plant where the Arton ships were
originally built had been restored to operation. The plans used to construct the
original ships were still available. Care was taken with the original now brittle
documents and manuals which were all carefully reproduced. Parts were being
fabricated, and manufactured. Additional hardware was being ordered. The
nuclear drive engines were very difficult but the job had to be done. After much
trial and error and testing at the main plant in Bakersfield the shuttles began
hauling the pieces into space. Men working in space suits out of the Earth
orbiter began to assemble the parts in space.
It took almost twenty years before the A5 had been fully tested and found
seaworthy. It took an additional twenty years before the A6, A7 and A8 were on
line and the earlier Arton fleet was retired. The A9, A10, A11 and A12 were built
to a smaller scale from the original plans used for Mars Runner but carried the
more powerful engines of the Arton fleet. These ships replaced the old Dedov
fleet that had been making the Mars to Earth run for the last fifty years. Man
had equaled his greatest achievement with far fewer resources. It had been
feared that the project would bankrupt the economy but in the forty years that it
took to build the eight new ships the three planets had all prospered. The ships
had been built with a combination of Government and private sector effort. The
next major task was to replace all the shuttles and to build and equip domestic
aircraft for Arton and Earth. By the time that task was completed they would be
well into the twenty fourth century.
When mankind returned to Earth he found an almost limitless supply of
electric Automobiles that required only new batteries but in the intervening time
most of the cars and trucks on the road had just worn out. The population of
the three planets had grown in leaps and bounds everyone wanted a new car.
Some of the factories had been destroyed during the war but cars were not built
by just one company even before the war. Most parts that went in to cars had
been built in Asia, Latin America and Europe. Auto America, Inc was formed.
Crews were dispatched around the world to find the machines that had built
parts for automobiles. The machines necessary to build a small station wagon
were located, dismantled and moved to California. A new factory was built in
what had been Orange County. Within three years, while the space ships were
still on the drawing board the first new cars in almost 100 years began to roll off
the assembly line. Dealerships were set up in all the major cities of Earth and
even one dealership in Island City, Arton to market and service the cars. To
simplify production and turn out as many as possible as quickly as possible, no
changes were made in the hundred year old plans, there were no options
offered and they were all painted off white. Within a year the plant was
producing almost one thousand cars a day and they were all paid for in full
before they were even built. In subsequent years Auto America offered more
models, more color choices and more options. Three years after Auto America
rolled their first car off the assembly line Detroit Auto Company began making
and selling pick up trucks. A new company in Arizona began building and
marketing big rigs, the eighteen wheelers which there was also a critical need
for. All of these vehicles required tires, in fact the tires on the vehicles that the
first Earth colonists found had just disintegrated after a little use. The
Government had started manufacturing tires at a plant in the former Tijuana
within two years of the landing of the first colonists. The Government sold the
plant to one of the first corporations formed. Since that time the plant had
tripled in size and a second plant had been opened in Eugene in the former
state of Oregon.
All in all, not only Earth but also on Mars and Arton there was a critical
labor shortage. Many people were holding down two jobs some were working
twelve hour days. Colleges and Trade schools were graduating people in half
the time that it took to train people before the catastrophe. Everything seemed
to be running twenty four -seven. They only took time off to get married, have
babies and bury the dead.
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