The Universe - or Nothing Part 54

destination the Extractor and the terminal that remains on the solar rim, the Collector.

-- The Extractor selects and draws usable non-organics from the Alpha Centauri star system, and collects, converts and channels the product into its teleport shipping facility for point-to-point spunnel transfer to the Collector.

-- The Collector receives the product, converts it to its original form, and cla.s.sifies, identifies and ejects the substance for storage along the solar rim or at a point Authority determines to be more appropriate.

Construct the terminals four million kilometers beyond Pluto. During construction, secure the terminals to each other and separately, to Pluto, employing ma.s.s attractors and position stabilizers, as required.

Disengage the Extractor from Pluto at launch employing Pluto's outbound orbital momentum in a manner that the combined fleet retains its integrity in perpetuity.

Deploy the Extractor to Alpha Centauri and position it in orbit above a point commensurate with data provided by the drone scouts. Maintain constant surveillance and exercise control over operations and maintenance via spunnel a.n.a.lyses of the Extractor's functions, structures and equipment.

Position the Collector along the solar rim and orient it consistent with the Extractor's position and operations in the Alpha Centauri system.

Stages

The Extractor, in position at destination, a.n.a.lyzes, selects and draws substance from proximate asteroids, comets, satellites, planetoids, swarms, star surface and other accessible bodies and strata, reduces the substance to spunnel-teleportable const.i.tuents, loads the ma.s.s into the spunnel facility and dispatches the product.

The Collector, positioned in the Solar System oriented to the Extractor, receives and converts the Extractor's transmissions, processes substance into its original or a refined state, cla.s.sifies and ejects the ma.s.s for positioning in the storage zone.

Resources and Schedule

The Task requires six Earth centuries to design, construct, equip, test, deploy and activate. The millennia of delay in initiating the Task imposes inescapable hardships on the Solar Community.

Accordingly, when justified as essential to the Objective, solar governments divert work forces, systems, and material resources from throughout their jurisdiction to the Task. The consequences of these diversions are expected to significantly curtail construction, activities, lifestyles of Earth and s.p.a.ce colony populations, the distribution of the solar system's residual resources and, possibly, the independence of governments, organizations, and individuals throughout the solar realm.

Critical to the program's success is timing the Extractor's launch. Piggy-backed to Pluto during construction, the Extractor exploits the planet's...o...b..tal momentum for launch. The window is precise and short-lived along Pluto's outbound orbit; there will be only one launch opportunity for the Extractor. Disengaged from Pluto, the Extractor fleet will accelerate along its course to optimum velocity through integrated thrust of multiple thermonuclear burst-propulsion systems or other, more advanced propulsion systems, that are or become available for the Task.

The Interplanetary Era's second millennium was tumultuous. The harsh austerity imposed by the increased deficits in metals, minerals and other industrial materials and their subst.i.tutes created one set of problems; human cloning augmented with genetic engineering and their societal and cultural effects, especially beyond the Asteroids, created others. Human survival in scores of widely scattered and unaffiliated s.p.a.ce colonies, loosely called "tank towns," encouraged scientific and social experiments that altered traditional cultures as well as human physiological and psychological characteristics.

c.u.mulative genetic and accelerated evolutionary alterations to the human body along with the effects of unique, often hostile, environments plus sheer distance from the familiar transformed humans-in-s.p.a.ce into something else. The unifying forces that had survived the Great Migration withered. In time, the once shared interests of peoples, and allegiances to a home planet, sundered.

Varied and increased rates of change opened doors to pretenders among a colony's populace.

Opportunists promoted a mult.i.tude of causes, usually self-serving. Antic.i.p.ating advantages to themselves, they combined forces and became influential advocates for disengagement from political, cultural and judicial dominance by the totally foreign open sky government of Earth, billions of kilometers distant.

Disengagement, the opportunists agitated, was long overdue; Earth inhabitants would never really understand what life in deep s.p.a.ce was about.

The crisis came in the middle centuries.

Bureaucrats representing the central government on Earth were isolated from the affairs of the colonies they administered. The indigenous populace ignored their authority, their credentials were challenged, and they were invited to return to their home planet -- with no options.

The central government on Earth, weakened by shortages and distracted by agitators at home and in s.p.a.ce, was neither vigilant nor prepared.

Early in the second millennium of the Interplanetary Era, several colonies in the Outer Region declared their independence of the original United Planetary System and of each other. Other colonies and outposts joined and within a decade, all had proclaimed themselves as newly const.i.tuted nation-states. Each reserved exclusive rights to negotiate with other nation-states of the Region.

New agreements were implemented on matters of common interest, such as credits, industry, a judicial system, trade and commerce, science and technology, s.p.a.ce traffic control, education and cultural exchange, and creation and management of infrastructure and management of life-support resources within their territories and jurisdictions.

The Outer Region's proclamations panicked the central government.

On the one hand, Earth ethicists argued, were the rights of the inhabitants of the s.p.a.ce colonies. As members of distant societies they had modified their bodies, their environment and their cultures, therefore, they had a right to seek their own destiny unfettered by well-intentioned, but obviously impotent laws that originated on Earth.

The advocates of this philosophy emphasized the Outer Region's right to their own physical, technological and cultural development. As unique civilizations, evolving at an unprecedented rapid pace, they were already radically different from the humankind that had remained on distant Earth.

On the other hand, claimed others, the system-wide scarcity of natural sources vital to the survival of the species was a shared crisis. The crisis could be solved, if at all, only through the most concerted application of humankind's intellectual and collective genius. In one context, they were indeed unique civilizations: robust, sophisticated and divergent, nevertheless, instinctively taking nourishment from a common fealty to humankind's ultimate destiny among the stars. Humankind would be far stronger and effective together, they argued, than it would be, divided within a common species.

The debate raged across the System. The separatists won.

Earth's General a.s.sembly acceded to the demands for self-determination. The new status of the outer and inner regions was confirmed in The Treaties on the Separation of Jurisdictions for the Planets and Satellites of the Inner Region and the Independent Nations of the Outer Region.

The outer periphery of the Asteroid Belt became the boundary. The United Planetary System was dissolved and reconst.i.tuted as the United Inner Planetary System (UIPS). The natural and artificial colonies that orbited the planets and satellites of the Outer Region, or the central sun, retained their original ident.i.ties (Ganymede, t.i.tan, Callisto, etc.), and Pluto added "Planet" to its name to distinguish itself from planetary satellites. The former colonies beyond the Belt formed a loose federation: Independent Nations of the Outer Region (INOR).

The United Inner Planetary System insisted that Planet Pluto and its contiguous s.p.a.ce remain within the UIPS Slingshot Special Zone of Operations until the Extractor and the Collector were both safely away from Pluto's jurisdiction, as judged by the UIPS. The Plutonian government refused. The other INOR nations, immersed in their own problems, were indifferent. The issue was left to the UIPS and Planet Pluto to resolve.

The UIPS continued, without prior consultation with INOR and Planet Pluto, to construct and operate Slingshot logistics sites and facilities on Pluto's surface, in contiguous s.p.a.ce, and within and along the Planet Pluto orbit. The UIPS, interpreting traditions and treaties that had evolved from Earth's ancient Laws of the Seas and s.p.a.ce, exercised and defended free and unenc.u.mbered travel and pa.s.sage by its citizens and vessels in deep s.p.a.ce and throughout the INOR jurisdictions.

The UIPS took steps to ensure the security of Slingshot construction and logistics support sites and s.p.a.ce-ways.

The Slingshot Advance Cadre arrived in the Neptune-Pluto orbit-crossing sectors toward the end of the Interplanetary Era, before the breakup of the old United Planetary System. Colonizing Pluto and constructing s.p.a.ce kits that would be transformed into surface habitat and supply depots began centuries earlier when Planet Pluto was barely past aphelion but within economical range of deep s.p.a.ce transports. The cadre's vessels carried and towed communications gear, specialized construction rigs, platforms and infrastructure kits which had been fabricated or a.s.sembled in the industrial tank towns above Luna, Venus and Mars, and by cooperating governments of satellites in the outer region.

The Cadre's primary mission was to establish a base of operations on Pluto. The program called for the planet to support a colony of fifty thousand specialists and construction workers -- and their families -- for the a.s.sembly, construction and testing phases, plus ten thousand transients and temporary residents. The latter would comprise 'rest and relaxation' visitors, liaison and special missions staff from a nearby logistics depot and the construction sites, and agricultural and food processing workers from Planet Pluto's moon Charon. Also expected were cargo handlers and ship's personnel from transports entering and departing Pluto from-and-to points throughout the system.

About eighty percent of Pluto's permanent adult population would work on the two terminals.

The specialized professions for the initial phase ranged from scientists and engineers to artisans, skilled and semi-skilled workers in all of the disciplines and industrial skills required to construct and operate a complex station in s.p.a.ce and service and maintain a permanent habitat and population on Pluto's surface.

Children would be born on Pluto, natural or cloned.

They, as well as the general population, would be cared for and supported by a host of administrative, health care, educational, recreational, life support and community services.

The Cadre's mission was in phases. The first task of the initial phase was to land on Pluto's surface, seek out stable surfaces or create them by fusing subsurface strata to sufficient depth for support of ma.s.sive structures.

Gravity enhancement surface panels and their energy sources would be installed wherever enclosed communities or special purpose structures were to be constructed. A detachment of the Cadre would land on Charon, Planet Pluto's moonlet, and fuse and seal sections of the moonlet's surface and subsurface same as on Pluto.

On the solidified, stabilized surfaces of Pluto and Charon the Cadre would erect a tank town dome. The dome would have a ten-kilometer radius on Planet Pluto and a one-kilometer radius on Charon.

Construction would proceed concurrently on surface and subsurface utility and life support facilities essential to human habitation. When enclosed areas were shirtsleeve ready for occupancy, the Cadre would erect essential life support, residential and recreational facilities. These would be followed by technical, communications and transport networks for Slingshot scientists, industrial technicians, and staff, followed by enclosed living areas for the remainder of the general populace that would train and do the work during the subsequent phases.

The tanktown on Planet Pluto would be named Coldfield; its counterpart on Charon would be Lamplight.

An On-site Project Management Team (OPMT) directed the Advance Cadre. The OPMT formed the nucleus of upper level managers, scientists and engineers, and other experts charged with organizing and guiding the functional task groups. The functional staffs would bring into being the on-site technical and administrative support facilities, install and operate its equipment, and govern the communities within which the populace worked and resided.

The OPMT was organized into three groups: Group One: Planet Pluto; Group Two: Charon, and Group Three: Logistics Depot. Each Group had its mission:

Group One (Planet Pluto) Mission

Five kilometers from Coldfield, construct and operate a simplified fusion-based energy generating and power transmission system to provide sufficient output to support all antic.i.p.ated power and network requirements of the planet;

Beneath and adjacent the Coldfield dome, construct, organize and operate encapsulated surface and subsurface laboratories, manufacturing and overhaul plants, s.p.a.ce and surface transport and traffic routes and controls, surface roadways, utility and communications systems, landing and mooring facilities, energy hubs for gravity enhancement grids, and other essential utilities and facilities;