Spaceport

by Peter Ong

If the expanse of man's machinery could build a vast network of webbed steel
that acts as a stage for the welcoming of peoples from afar, what stories could it tell?
What messages would it receive? What signals would it send?

A platform on the upend; a place for the spaceships to rest upon to dock and to depart, to load and to unload, to secure and to repair; this is the spaceport - a story of a massive complex that holds ships
far and near.

Lines and beams and structures rise to create something massively complex.
The eyes could take in what hands and gears and energy and sweat made.
A structure to advance mankind's journey towards the stars and to welcome them home again.

It acts with a purpose, a place open time around, a mixture of form and function.
A place to repair, a place for return, a place that people line up to see and use.
Its mixture a myriad of brains and brawn, robots and machines, small and large, pipes and hoses, cables and chips, electronics and power, energy of the atoms, generators and alternators, packs and boosters, gases and liquids, light fixtures. . . food, entertainment, music, shops, facilities, security, processing, storage, transportation. . .
Split between men and women - accommodations for sleep, for pamper, for shopping, for care.
From brilliant whites to neon gold, from mosaics to colored tiles, from exquisite stonework imported from lands afar and precious metals from secretive places. . .
Plastics, composites and finish hide well the raw power of this place, but this is only a disguise.
This place does possess some grace and yet only in certain spots because the spaceport serves both humans and machines, vehicles that travel to and fro, the glistening bottles amid the stormy airless seas, carrying dreams of travelers to their places.
This home, one of many, but a special unique one, with a name, with a location, with a size, with specifications. . .
Capability
Capacity
Transportation
What naked structures could do without facades made whole in a network of tasks and processes orders and instructions get told -
Where to go, where to hold, what systems to open or close or fold, could take hours, days, weeks, even months to execute through.
When it's finally ready, all processes and systems checked through, the immense ship of the stars nestled in its bay takes cue, with bursts of coned blue light along its sides, nose, and tail, it lifts itself anew, reinvigorated, restored, populated, loaded. . . ready.
A majestic grace. . . a constructed white beauty. . . multi-decked windowed liner of white hovering above spaceport Serrafergo.
Sloped front and rounded sides, this flyer of the Heavens lets go of its secure handles, casts off its umbilical lines, leaves the nest of comfort and security. . . for the stars above.
But like a veteran swimmer, this vessel has weathered the travels, has endured the reentries, has flown many times and billions of miles before and so with adieu - I bid thee farewell!
One ship of many departs the spaceport for the journey of a lifetime for some, routine for others, and for hundreds more will never see this ship again, at least not for a very long time.
Soon the white vessel will become nothing more than a statistic in the logs, nothing more than data in the sensors, nothing more than a symbol on the starmap; its presence left in memories, videos,
and pictures.

Life goes on for the spaceport as the berth needs to get ready for its next heavy newcomer.
Staff attends to the vast emptiness of the hold, sparks fly and hoses and pipes get reeled in.
The countdown clock starts. . . seconds and minutes tick away before the arrival of the next vessel.
Up high, in the tower, the spaceport controllers monitor all traffic while inside the various structures of the spaceport, the civilians go about their business.

Serrafergo lives on as ships and humans and aliens breathe in new life, new power, new energy, new air, new water, new beginnings, new trade, new commerce, new materials, new ideas, new visions, new wisdom, new secrets, new repairs, and new information.
The spaceport, far and lost in the Heavens, yet here in this distinct specific spot on the starmap
continues to live, service, house, and maintain all its inhabitants, be they metal, biological, alien, or A.I., in public, in private, in secret. . .
. . . in this specific place amongst the vastness of the stars.