"I figured out lots spe-cific things beforehand, just didn't build them."

Vira almost starts talking about how she knew things about subspace for a while before real-izing she could make a warp drive with it but manages to catch herself. Sierra made her practice not saying things about warp drive science soooo much before coming here.

"So you did a lot of theory but didn't have the industry for it?" guesses Tahai.

"Yeah! That."

Vira gets a chunk of the Katme model removed so she can stick her arm into the mantle and poke at it to see how the rest of the planet changes. It's a very messy process. 

Katme peers over her shoulder.

There is dull clay like rock.

"It's a scaled prop-erty model, so the stiffer the mantle is on this the stiffer it is on the plan-et, cept the sca-ling is so that diff-erences are feel-able."

"That's such an interesting way to do it, is it better than computer models for some purpose?"

"I can feel it! And touch bunches at once and take it apart and feel things and stuff."

"Easier to know that hotter bits are actually hotter in real life then to keep track of lots of num-bers."

"How is the model made?"

"Replicators, sorta like for food!"

"And the heat and other properties don't dissipate at this scale?"

"Have to be crea-tive, isn't really the same sub-stance as the planet is made of and in-stead is something that stays warm longer, and never gets too hot or cold. And the mant-le is much harder then this in real life but it's still more stretchy than the crust like it is here."

"What's the likely relevance of the mantle to terraforming the surface?"

"Gotta heat up the core and also the mantle a lil I think to get a mag-net-o-sphere!"

Amentans are as supportive as possible with the terraforming effort. They get all their researchers off Katme so a meteor can helpfully crash into the north pole. They plan great big geodesic domes to put around oxygen converters for initial habs while the algae does its work. They screen workers and colonists for the first and second planned waves of immigration.

And Vira gets to heat up a core and crash a mete-ora for more raw materials and drop some clean fusion bombs on places to vap-orate the rest of the water and car-bon di-ox-ide in the ice caps! It's really really fun but 'vntually algae is put down and Amentans are there so all the new prob-lems are figured out and she can't do big exciting things there anymore.

[Continued in the adventure of the empty city]