For a rare moment, Urchin was in his element. He led Mouse and Doc through the warehouse where he spent his days, seeking out the equipment he had been told they would be using on their journey above-ground. Though he had not designed them, his inquisitive nature had led to a level of expertise about every piece he put together, and many of those he had not. 

The first piece of equipment to which he introduced them was a long tube of shiny metal as big around as Mouse's fist. It stood twice his own height and was ringed with a platform three-quarters of the way down its length. The platform had two layers: one of the same gleaming metal, and one slightly above it made of gridded black material. From where they stood, there did not seem to be any moving parts. 

Urchin explained that these were watering towers. Inside was another tube filled with a special gas, with a different gas in the space between the two tubes. Turning their attention to the underside of the lower platform he pointed to a small compressor which would change the pressure of the gases to cause the metal's surface to become very cold. The top platform would absorb light and run the compressor. 

Doc's eyes lit up at the mention of the compressed gases. "This is an application of the ideal gas law, isn't it?" he asked excitedly. He began examining the underside with new vigor. 

"It's refrigeration applied practically," Urchin boasted, as if he had designed it himself. "This will literally pull water out of thin air to keep the soil moist!"

As the two youngsters prattled on about science, Mouse examined the device more closely. In between the upper platform and the central cylinder he noticed a ring of metal punched with holes, presumably to let through the condensed water rolling down the pipe. The lower platform, too, was gridded and also fluted, presumably because it would be just below the surface of the ground and would slip about if smooth. He was impressed, but had to tear his gaze away when the chattering voices became faint. 

The next station to which Urchin had drug Doc was a crate of what looked to be fancy stakes. The bottoms were pointed but also slotted, with small spikes housed in the slots. They looked like torturous weapons to Mouse, but Doc seemed to already be familiar with their usage. The young man lost interest when his proteges started trading facts about soil acidity and nutrient contents. What had caught his eye was a series of wheels encased in a track. 

There were, in fact, four sets of four wheels, each set enveloped in a series of thick rubber pads held together by thin metal chains. The vehicle sat low while being as wide as a car was long, and perhaps twice the length of the same. It looked to Mouse almost like a toad, or a salamander of similar dimensions. The controls were housed in a small terminal, waist high on the front left corner. There was no enclosure for the driver nor any adornment to the middle of the vehicle besides a knee-high retaining wall. Noticing his silent incredulity, Urchin waved a dismissive hand toward Doc's general direction and scampered toward the vehicle and its captive admirer, leaving Doc lecturing for half a moment to an empty spot on the floor. 

"This is the crawler," Urchin whispered through a toothy grin. "Do you like her?"

Mouse nodded silently. "Her?" he asked, a little confused. 

"Yeah, her. Captain Hyssop said important machines like this deserve to be ladies and deserve to be named. So we need to name her something before she embarks on her maiden voyage."

Doc chuckled. "Now that sounds like something the captain would say!"

"What's she for?" Mouse asked, still entranced. The moniker felt right, even if it felt odd to say. The machine was solid, unadorned, but seemed wholly unnatural to him. "You said we're going to use this thing?"

"It's to move all that dirt we got, plus what we've made. I don't know quite how big it is, but if we mound the dirt it should hold everything we have, plus whatever we need as far as tools, seeds, and food. I think they're going to partition the inside to keep the dirt and equipment separate."

Doc was murmuring under his breath, estimating dimensions and making calculations. "Just about six, by about ten...half a meter tall..." His eyes squinted and he walked around one corner and back before making a declaration. "That should hold thirty cubic yards of dirt at the top of the ledge, perhaps fifty cubic yards if we mound it. I think the crates they brought in hold a cubic meter and a half each, and we have twenty-five cubic meters ourselves. So it should fit everything."

Still a little dumbfounded, Mouse nodded silently. "What powers it?" he asked, turning to Urchin. 

The young boy grinned. "Look at the sides of the retaining walls."

Mouse turned to examine them more closely. They were covered in the same black gridded material as the watering towers, but there was something else. As he slipped his hand below the edge of the retaining wall he found that the solar panels were hinged! He heaved, lifting a ten-meter length of glass and metal with one arm until it lay parallel to the floor, pointing up to the sky many dozens of meters above their stone ceiling. A series of jointed support arms clicked into place as the side panel reached full extension. 

"It won't go very fast," Urchin admitted, "but it's not intended to carry us in addition to all our stuff. So it really only needs to go at a walking pace. Plus, it takes a lot of power to haul dirt. It's awfully heavy."

Mouse felt silly saying as little as he did, but the realization of the scale of the operation they were about to undertake overwhelmed him. He wondered what wisdom Cameron would have imparted, had he been there to see and hear all that he did. 

Cameron wouldn't have said a thing, he realized. He would have been no more vocal than Mouse himself was being now. He chuckled quietly to himself as he came to this realization, then looked once more at the monstrous machine before him. 

"We would need a lot of materials to start seeding dirt and worms topside, wouldn't we?" Mouse asked aloud to no one in particular. "Without someone like Cameron to move heavy loads with his mind, we would need a small army to carry the dirt. A small army, or a machine like this."

The utility of the unadorned monstrosity was starting to grow on him. The scale of the project, described in such detail only hours ago, was only now becoming real in his mind. The scale of the impact they could make with even a single load from the machine was also becoming apparent. 

"She does need a name, doesn't she? But can you know what her name should be before you see how she acts?"

This seemed a wise thought to the youngsters, and slowly they pulled away from the crawler. Referring to it more and more as she was impressing on Doc that the tool was not just a tool, but a symbol. By treating it with terms otherwise reserved for living things, it was beginning to represent not only what the crawler itself was, but what it could do, what it would do. It began to represent its own potential impact and all the societal benefit it might one day bring. He found it difficult to understate the presence the behemoth held, all the more as he thought of her in this new light.   

Their attention was directed by Urchin to the remainder of the relevant equipment in the warehouse: collapsible shovels with sharpened tips (one smooth, the other serrated), tents made of high tensile strength textiles which weighed practically nothing, and lightweight containers that would hold reserves of water and caches of seeds without exposing them to light or dust. While they were certainly useful and undoubtedly well-made, they did not seem to hold the same interest as the former two showcased tools. Urchin made a mental note to leave the interesting stuff for last next time. 

Finally, the trio circled the warehouse and returned to the pile of long poles with the unnamed crawler in the distance. Doc looked wistfully at it, pondering the meaning of names and what made one good and fitting. Mouse considered what girls he had known back on Stral who had seemed especially pretty, while Urchin went through a similar process with the girls he had known from school. For a long while, no one spoke and no one broke their gaze at the stout, superficially unimpressive machine. 

"Pacha," Doc whispered. The name hung in the air for a moment as they drank in its sound. 

"Pacha," Urchin repeated, weighing the feel of it on his tongue. It sounded right. He did not question why. 

Mouse nodded for a moment before asking why the boy had picked such a strange sounding name. Though he expected some sort of intelligent answer, the one he received still surprised him. 

"You remember the historian, Ibrahim?" Mouse and Urchin nodded, recalling the thin, dark man who had swayed when he spoke and always seemed to stretch out an explanation for dramatic effect. 

"He was teaching me about the cultures before the War. Long ago, the people who lived here believed in a bunch of deities who did things the people needed. I remember one deity who watched over the planting and harvesting of her people. They called her Mother Pacha."

"Planting and harvesting? But we're not planting or harvesting, we're just moving dirt!" Urchin protested. He knew there was some connection that made the name feel right, but he couldn't put his finger on it. Plus, someone had to argue with Doc from time to time. He couldn't just be allowed to be right all the time. 

"No, he's got a point," Mouse interjected. "The crawler would be the first step to making planting and harvesting possible. I doubt there was some all-powerful being in that old culture for picking up and moving dirt."

"We're all pretty smart, though, right?" Urchin asked, sounding a little haughty. "All six of us are going to make the job possible! Without any of us, or without any of the equipment, the project couldn't happen! So why does the crawler get the name that would get all the credit?"

Doc shook his head. "It's just a name, Urchin. The name doesn't take credit away from the rest of us. But, the rest of us already have a name. The crawler needs one."

Urchin nodded slowly, approaching the squat vehicle with a new sense of reverence. He lay his palm on the dull metal siding beneath the raised solar panel and whispered, "Welcome to the crew, Pacha."