At the edge of the Titan-Bone Star Sector, thirty-foot-tall giants wearing bright yellow hard-hats were busy moving a moon.
“Heave! One, two, three—lift!”
Boulders of space-rock tumbled off the moon’s surface as twelve burly Titan workers hooked their thick fingers under its south pole. Their muscles bulged like iron hills. With a loud, cheerful shout, they hoisted the five-mile-wide rock onto their broad shoulders and marched away from the glowing yellow line of the Light-Year Sword-Rail Express.
Beside the tracks, General Tie Zhan stood on top of an iron supply crate, holding a megaphone in one hand and a steaming pork bun in the other.
“Pick up your feet, you big lugs!” Tie Zhan barked, chewing happily. “Put that moon down neatly in Mining Yard #4! Anybody who drops rock dust on Ye Guhan’s fresh train tracks loses two bowls of bone-marrow soup at lunch!”
“Yes, General Tie!” the twelve Titans boomed in unison. None of them looked angry about being bossed around by a man who barely reached their shins. Above their giant yellow hard-hats, green system bars floated in the vacuum of space:
Inside the command car of the Central Star-Train, Pei Xuan leaned back in his padded chair and took a sip of hot sweet-spring tea. Through the wide crystal window, he watched fifty billion newly recruited Titan workers laying space-highways across the stars at ten times the old speed.
