<div align="center"><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Blue Highway Linocut;"><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 36pt;"><strong>The Cooler - HZ1128</strong></span></span></div><br/><div align="center">(http://www.classicalarchives.com/prs/astro/Antarctica/0477-One_of_many_shots_of_the_magnificent_Antarctic_landscape_3.jpg)</div><br/>The planet designated HZ1128 by the Empire orbits a star known only as Gamma-Rho-Scorpius-Three, it being the third and smallest star in a ternary system, the star being in the direction, from Earth, of the constellation of Scorpio, designated by the greek letter γ on the nineteeth or ρ (Rho) pass through the Greek alphabet. The star is only visible from Earth as part of the Milky Way.<br/><br/>γρ-Scorpius-iii orbits γρ-Scorpius-Prime at a distance of around a quarter of a light year, or around 2.35 x 10<sup>12</sup>km. in an orbit that takes almost five millennia. γρ-Scorpius-iii is a blue dwarf star (in the sense that it is small and it's emission spectrum tends towards the blue and UV rather than in terms of it's age).<br/><br/>Planet HZ1128 orbits the star at a distance of approximately 300,000,000 km. As a result, the surface temperature of the planet never rises above -10°c and can dip as low as -75°c. The Planet is, in structure, rather like Saturn's moon Titan. It has an atmosphere consisting of Nitrogen, Oxygen and Carbon Dioxide in quantities breathable by organic life forms. The entire surface is covered in a permanent water ice sheet some ten km thick. Below this is a global ocean of liquid water that averages five km deep, the deepest parts being around eight km and the shallowest around three. Only at the poles does the ocean become any shallower. Beneath this is a layer of pressure ice and beneath this is the ferro-silicate core of the planet, the rotation of which provides a magnetic field.<br/><br/>Because of the low temperatures, the CO<sub>2</sub>in the atmosphere has a habit of freezing and forming a layer of "dry ice" on surfaces during the night. This can also happen to exhaled CO<sub>2</sub>.<br/><br/>The planet does support a variety of indigenous life forms, both flora and fauna. The flora are exclusively lichens and mosses that grow precariously on the ice. Fauna are all exclusively invertebrate, most being either moluscoid or arachnoid, with a few crustacioid. The native fauna are divided more or less equally between herbivores and carnivores, although the carnivorous varieties are not thought to be a danger to sentient humanoid species.<br/><br/>Unusually large deposits of the mineral known as Gelumium have been located on the planet and an exclusively female prison colony has been established in order to mine the ore.<br/><br/>The surface if the planet is largely a featureless, barren frozen waste (for a map, see a blank sheet of paper). Only at the poles does the ice sheet crack and shift forming ice mountains and crevasses that some times reach all the way to the ocean beneath. As the poles are not stable, no settlements have been established near them. Any deposits of Gelumium near the poles would be too dangerous and costly to mine even with convict labour.<br/><br/>All other deposits of Gelumium have been carefully mapped from orbit. New seams are offered to individual convict settlements on the basis of how well they have mined previous seams.<br/><br/><strong>Convict Living Conditions:</strong><br/><br/>Convicts are housed in Duraplaz cubes that use the power grid fed by wind turbines to provide light and a limited amount of heat. Lighting is motion sensor activated, on a photosensitive cut-off - in other words, when it gets dark outside the lights will come on if there is movement within the cube. The motion sensor requires either a very deliberate movement sucjh as waving a hand, or a constant level of smaller movement such as doing push-ups to stay activated. If you want to be in the dark, you need to stay fairly still, but just rolling over in your sleep will not turn the lights on. Heating is activated by the presence of a Smartex suit within the cube, but will only raise the temperature to around 5 or 10°c<br/><br/>The floor of each living cube is covered with a layer of Impervafome. This material is a soft, spongy version of Duraplaz.<br/><br/>Individual living cubes are 2.25m x 2.25m x 2.25m. there are only a limited number of individual living cubes available in each settlement, however. Extra convicts are accommodated in the communal cubes (not strictly cubes) which are 4.5m x 4.5m x 2.25m high. Individual cubes are expected to house from one to three convicts, communal cubes are expected to house up to fifteen convicts. There is one communal cube per mine-shift.<br/><br/>Other communal facilities include the shower and toilet block, and the kitchen-dining block.<br/><br/>Note that all buildings are constructed from Duraplaz and are thus transparent, unless the Duraplaz has been specifically stained in construction to make it opaque for the purpose of hiding the contents from the inmates.<br/><br/>There is one shower block per mine shaft, which is located near the mine shaft entrance. Within the block are five toilets of standard humanoid design, of the type most commonly found aboard space craft and space stations. These toilets automatically sterilise the waste products and, on space craft or stations, would usually send the waste for reclamation and recycling. Here, the waste is sterilized and piped away to a part of the surface far enough away from the settlement that there is little risk of it coming back. The toilets are at one end of the block and the shower heads are at the other. There are no dividing partitions as they would be superfluous, being transparent.<br/><br/>Shower temperature and duration may be selected by the inmate, on the following basis:<br/><br/><table class="bbc_table"><tbody><tr><td></td><td></td><td><span class="bbc_u"><strong>Temperature</strong></span></td><td></td></tr><tr><td><span class="bbc_u"><strong>Duration</strong></span></td><td><strong>15°C</strong></td><td><strong>22°c</strong></td><td><strong>37°c</strong></td></tr><tr><td><strong>Ten Minutes</strong></td><td>Any Inmate</td><td>Inmate's shift must be on quota</td><td>Inmate's shift must be over quota</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Twenty Minutes</strong></td><td>Inmate's shift must be on quota </td><td>Inmate's shift must be over quota</td><td>Inmate's shift must be over quota, inmate takes class 2 rations</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Indefinite</strong></td><td>Inmate's shift must be over quota</td><td>Inmate's shift must be over quota, inmate takes class 2 rations</td><td>Inmate's shift must be over quota, inmate takes class 1 rations</td></tr></tbody></table><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/>The kitchen and dining hall is one large block in the centre of the settlement. One end of it is the food store. Food packets are delivered by shuttle on a weekly basis to each settlement, in sufficient quantity for all the inmates at that settlement to have two meals per day. The meals are frozen blocks of food, each of which contains sufficient nutrition to keep an average inmate alive and healthy. Special nutritional requirements of non-earth species are dealt with automatically. Supplies are loaded into a slot that is large enough to take one food block at a time. Each block is bar-coded, and is scanned and stored. When an inmate enters the kitchen dining hall their suit is identified and if they have not yet received their allotted meal it will be automatically dispensed.<br/><br/>The food storage areas are as transparent as everything else and so it is possible for inmates to see if supplies are getting low and request more if they have not automatically been sent.<br/><br/>Each meal block comes in a biodegradable plastic tray with a biodegradable plastic spoon. attached. The spoon should be broken off, and the meal placed into one of the ten microwave ovens provided. The oven will automatically heat the food to the correct temperature.<br/><br/>There are three grades of meal available. Grade one will provide just enough nutrition to get an inmate through to the next meal. Grade two will provide enough that the inmate will no longer feel hungry once she has eaten it. Grade three will actually taste pleasant! Replacement supplies are ordered by the kitchen unit depending upon what has been dispensed. Food of all three grades is held in the store in sufficient quantity.<br/><br/>Which grade of food is dispensed is dependent upon whether a shift has met or exceeded their quota. The same food grade is dispensed for the entire shift, unless a particular individual has been identified to the AI as being responsible for the shift not meeting quota.<br/><br/>The used trays and spoons are disposed of in a spare spoil wagon that, when full, will be taken to the waste disposal site and tipped.<br/><br/>Most of the facilites are self cleaning, however additional cleaning is undertaken by the inmates as required. Cleaning equopment is available in closets within the shower block and kitchen block<br/><br/>The convicts work down the mine six days out of seven, on the seventh day, the shuttle arrives and all the settlement's inmates are expected to work to unload the supply containers into the various storage areas, meet and greet new arrivals, and carry out any cleaning tasks<br/><br/><strong>Population, deaths and replacements:</strong><br/><br/>The population of The Cooler is pretty stable. It is a harsh and unforgiving environment and because the population is entirely female (and pregnant females are not deported until<em>after</em>they give birth), there is no population growth through natural means. New population arrives fully grown on a<em>ad-hoc</em>basis from around the Empire, when criminals are caught and convicted by the Empire or are handed over to the Empire by local law enforcement.<br/><br/>The death rate sometimes exceeds the arrival rate, and sometimes the arrival rate exceeds the death rate.<br/><br/>There are 35 settlements on the planet, each being serviced by one of five shuttles on a weekly rota, the shuttles take away full ore containers and return the same containers with supplies, and also bring new inmates. each settlement has from three to eight mine faces, each face being served by three shifts of convicts.<br/><br/>Each shift consists of:<br/><br/>2 x face workers - dig the Gelumium out of the face.<br/>2 x face clearers - load the Gelumium into buckets and move it back.<br/>2 x Ore wagon loaders - tip the ore buckets into the ore wagons.<br/>2 x tunnel wideners - increase the size of the ice tunnels to allow the wagons to progress further, prop and shore-up the tunnels.<br/>1 x underground supervisor - in charge of all underground work, especially the shoring up.<br/>2 - 8 x pit ponies - pull the loaded wagons up to the surface, bring supplies down to the face. Also used to help widen and shore-up at need. The longer the tunnel the more ponies on the shift.<br/>1 x Elevator operator - ensures that the elevators are not overloaded, and that loads are aboard safely before activating the elevator.<br/>1 x spoil yard supervisor - ensures that spoil wagons are routed to the correct track to tip the spoil.<br/>2 x spoil yard maintenance - move and/or extend tracks in the spoil yard<br/>1 x pithead supervisor - monitors the grading machine to ensure that all the ice is malted out of the ore and that the ore is graded correctly. Supervise the pad ponies, supervises pit ponies unloading ore and loading with supplies.<br/>3 or 6 x Pad Ponies - take the loaded, graded ore wagons to the shuttle pad and tip them into the shuttle transport containers.<br/>2 x supply loaders - assist the pit ponies in loading supplies to be taken down to the face.<br/><br/>For a maximum of 30 inmates per shift.<br/><br/>Any deaths on a shift will be automatically logged by the space station AI and the next batch of prisoners will be scheduled to replace them.