Those settlers collected from the New Trenton housing stack didn’t fail to entertain the spectators who watched the planet-grab in the comfort of their domes’ air-conditioning.
A cloud of metallic settler rigs dropped from the starliner’s belly. Few pilots of those small craft hesitated to fire their rig’s thrusters, and most rushed towards the new world without calculating safe entry trajectories. The most impatient of settlers overrode their rig’s navigational systems all together and manually guided their craft with white knuckles on the stick so that they could outpace their competitors. Diamond Arizona and Oregon Destiny highlighted those rigs that raced towards peril with animated graphics, and many a spectator clapped and cringed upon their comfortable couches as dozens of those rigs that sped so foolishly towards Wildberry erupted in bright, blossoming explosions that no settler could survive.
The broadcast’s cameras focused upon every rig that shuddered as the planet’s gravity clutched it, and Oregon Destiny directed his viewers’ attention to all the signs of trouble that threatened those settlers encased within their rigs – the vapor trails symptomatic of a broken coolant system; the arcing sparks that jettisoned out from an engine casing the moment fire consumed the rig; the condensation that cracked the windshield that resulted from compromised cabin pressure.
The population blessed to be born into the domes roared as they watched those rigs glow as the entered Wildberry’s atmosphere. Bets were placed on what craft would be the first to reach landfall, or on what rigs would implode into clouds of debris. Home spectators identified their favorite competitors by the sponsor logos painted to the side of each rig, and the message of each advertiser burned so brightly for the special paint that glowed once the metal cut through the planet’s atmosphere.
Diamond Arizona and Oregon Destiny chose their own favorites based on the skill their experience perceived displayed among the descending rigs. But even skill was no guarantee of surviving the descent to the surface, for it was not rare that contestants turned cutthroat in their pursuit of a new home. With a quick fire of a side thruster, a pilot could throw his rig into that of his rival’s, so that his enemy suddenly fell too steeply into the atmosphere. Many rigs missed their intended targets in such a maneuver, so that settlers often killed themselves through their own cruelty. And there were always the possibility that such a collision would begin a cascade of wreckage, so that handfuls of rigs burned into meteorite plumes of white fire.
All the while, through the modern miracle of inter-planetary transmission, the citizens of Earth’s luxury domes roared in delight. The broadcast’s producers smiled in their Earth studios as their cameras chased to keep up with all of the action. The artists could hardly keep pace with the demand for animations and graphics. The telephones on the desks of advertising executives shrilled with the demands of sponsors who raced to have their corporate branding painted on settler rigs in time for the next planet-grab. And for another month, an entire population of a cramped, hot and stinking housing stack was granted the hope of settling upon a fresh and clean world.