Jord looked up, broken out of his day-dream by a truck coming up the
road. The vertical axis wind turbines can be hypnotic to watch,
constantly spiraling upwards as they lazily spin. That's how out in the
sticks this is. The place doesn't even have a nuke plant.

The truck is close enough to see that it is a hopper truck. One more
sent to buy a load of beans and cart them off who-knows-where. Most
likely a city up north. Or maybe just up to the equator to launch for
an orbit.

The truck connects itself to one of the silos and starts loading. The
charge bot comes out to offer it some juice. It wobbles a little as it
drags the cable out. Probably got a rock stuck in the track
again. Those always take a crowbar to fish out of there.

It's good business letting these trucks charge. The power from the
wind is free, and it makes the truck's owners happy to not make an
additional stop for power. Time is money. Or if you run a farm, time
multiplied by area is money. In this case, a pretty large amount of
area - several square km - by a few years meant a pretty good amount
of money. The mortgage on the equipment was nearly paid off. That
would take maybe another year or two. Then, buy a few more machines
and start planting a few more square km of beans. The galaxy is always
growing, as they say, and it will always want to buy food.

You can build a good little empire for yourself by farming. It's
lonely, technical work, and requires a head for numbers, but it's good
business. There aren't many people around here. Mostly farmers,
machine salesmen, and truck owners. Often, one person is some mix of
all three. There are others, too. A few wanna-be market traders come
here and put up a cheap pre-fab house on the nearly free land. All
they need is electricity to run their remote terminals.

A bright light peaks over the southern horizon and keeps climbing,
creeping across the sky at a shallow angle. That's got to be lifting
off from down at the research station. To be that bright at this
distance, it would have to be one of those big IFM types. What is such
a big thing doing on this planet, taking off near a pole, no less? The
cost of launching there must be crazy. Nuclear fuel isn't cheap on
this planet.