The Universe — or Nothing

by Meyer Moldeven

Chapter FORTY-SIX

SOLAR LEADERS REACH ACCORD
TRANS-SOLAR NEWS SERVICE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
FLASH: SYSTEM-WIDE
Filed at Solar Conference Site

The meeting of the Solar System's Heads of State is a success. President Camari of the UIPS opened the proceedings with a brief speech. Ignoring past differences, he emphasized common interests, interdependence of peoples and nations, and benefits through collective efforts to meet the needs of the dispersed communities of humankind.

"The singular authority of the old United Planetary System," Camari said, "had no need for means to resolve issues among separate nation-states. That is no longer true. We must provide for interregional and international deliberations and decision-making. Furthermore, our diminished reserves of metals, minerals and other essential substances, on the one hand, and the benefits of an operational Slingshot, on the other, creates new challenges of common concern and more options in the search for solutions. Unless we accelerate our collaboration to resolve the resources crisis our civilizations may well erupt once more toward potential disasters such as the one we are here trying to escape."

Following President Camari's opening remarks, the conference was addressed by INOR Chiefs of State. Each expressed the aspirations of his or her people and their capabilities toward attainment. All agreed that their meeting was timely, that the problems were mutual, and that the agenda be addressed without delay.

The exchanges were intense as the conferees sought a balance between inalienable rights and solemn obligations. Many issues were extremely complex: What are an inhabited planet's or satellite's jurisdictional limits within territorial and contiguous space? What are the rights and obligations of one Region's military and commercial vessels and citizens when inside the lawful boundaries of another? What is the definition of "innocent passage" in the context of a multi-national Solar Community? How are our dynamic and constantly changing interplanetary and interregional space lanes to be maintained? Who will pay for such services? Questions posed in one context were injected into others or phrased to highlight a wide range of diverse interests and nuances.

Discussions among the primary conferees were, at times, suspended for caucuses of Heads of States orbiting a central planet with their advisors. Ad hoc committees were set up to explore options in depth, or at minimum, to provide clarity and context to the issue. The meeting rooms along the periphery of the assembly hall filled with specialists who argued loudly, in whispers, and at length.

Often, additional data was needed from Seats of Government. The spunnel communications channels were loaded with traffic, and archives throughout the system opened, many for the first time in millennia. The Conference Disk's computers absorbed facts and expert opinions and spewed distillations of new conclusions.

Slowly, positions clarified and consensus took form.

A draft Declaration of Principles emerged from the back rooms. It dealt with only a few of many problems that needed immediate attention, leaving a broad array of issues open for further review.

After hours of debate the Draft Declaration of
Principles was approved by the Leaders of the Solar
Community. (See Appendix.)

All agreed that the First UIPS-INOR Conference augured well for the future of humankind.

Epilogue

The networks of mass attractors that tethered the Extractor to Planet Pluto disengaged nine Earth centuries after construction began. Pluto contributed its orbital momentum to the launch. In time the integrated drives of the most advanced propulsion thrusters took on the full load, and the dream of humankind was on its way to the Alpha Centauri star system, on schedule.

Scientists and technicians on The Solar System's Slingshot Control Center maintained constant real-time oversight of the Extractor's subsystems and structures through spunnel monitors. A convoy of robot deflectors and screens cleared the Extractor fleet's path of meteoroids, sand and rock swarms and space debris. Hundreds of logistics robots crammed the station's cavernous bays, self-sustaining and programmed to activate sub-systems on schedule, deploy robotic specialists and service the machine during its voyage, and in perpetuity thereafter.

Maximum acceleration for almost two Earth decades increased the fleet's velocity to five percent speed-of-light, which it maintained for more than a Solar System Standard Century. Deceleration and vector adjustments took another three decades. Alignment to major concentrations of potential sources, selection of a 'first phase' work site, calibration of instrumentation and activating its spunnel channels and monitors required still more.

Back along the Solar rim, the Collector remained linked to Planet Pluto for two decades following the Extractor's departure. Its schedule along Pluto's orbit provided sufficient time for the Collector's transit to its permanent station along the rim, to track the Extractor's position via spunnel to refine details for integrated operations, and for positioning and calibrating the thousands of networks that coordinate the solar and interstellar arrays.

The citizens of the Solar community tuned in to witness the release of the Interstellar Spunnel Signal from the hand of the President of the newly formed United Nations of the Solar System. It would be the final signal to synchronize and activate the collective controls of the Extractor and Collector.

The President keyed the Signal.

##

Remote spunnel nodes and boosters along the route from the Solar System to Alpha Centauri monitored the Signal and the response. Rings of laser arrays along the edge of the Extractor's hopper flashed alive and focused their beams on a large, slowly tumbling planetoid hundreds of kilometers across its minor dimension.

Sensors, analyzers, siphons and beam-guides paralleled the lasers' signals along an incandescent column of plasma from the dissolving planetoid into the Extractor's processes and, when ready, into the hopper. The truncated apex of the Extractor's teleport gate cone glowed red, then violet, and thirty meters of its length disappeared into its new hyperspace home.

The invisible nozzle hurled a concentration of elemental substance across hyperspace to its sister station four and a half light-years distant.

The first sign of incoming was a churning, expanding mass of violet bubbles around the apex of the Collector. Shifting colors as it cooled and solidified, the mass transformed into a huge brown globe. The globe separated from the nozzle and drifted off, replaced by another mushrooming bubbling mass at the nozzle's tip.

A fleet of robot tugs clamped mag-beams on the free-floating globes and hauled them off. Another fleet of giant space tugs moved into position for the next gift of crude but treasured substance teleported across interstellar space from a distant star.

The cornucopia was in flow and humankind's first outbound and inbound highways to the greater universe were complete and working.

Afterwords

An overview of the times prepared by Level 2 students, Luna Middle School, based on records and commentaries in the official archives of The Interstellar Mining and Teleport System. (Reference: Index, Capsule V67 The Interstellar Historian, Third Millennium, Interstellar Era.)

In the centuries that followed humankind's giant leap to Luna, scientists, engineers and scholars in almost all of Planet Earth's disciplines probed ever deeper into space. Explorers studied and charted the surfaces, depths and atmospheres of each of the Solar System's bodies, and scrutinized the dynamics and constituents of space matter out to the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud. They ventured into the void beyond Pluto's aphelion for hundreds of millions of kilometers — although not yet the stars.

The first landing on Luna in Year 1969 of the then Common Era was judged to be among humankind's grandest achievements. At the Luna landing's Tercentenary a universal calendar was ordained to commemorate the Event as New Year's Day, Year 0, formally beginning humankind's Interplanetary Era.

By then, populated Moon and Mars bases were well established. Construction cadres had ventured into and beyond the Asteroids. Their experiences, surface and strata tests and studies influenced the selection of sites for mining operations and strategic outposts along the space frontiers. Advance construction battalions built basic habitat and, having attained 'shirt sleeve' environments, conceptualized, planned, gathered local materials, and designed and built infrastructure and industries that, in time, blossomed into enormous encapsulated cities, social orders, cultural adjustments and civilizations.

Explorers became teachers and mentors. Initially in Earth orbit, later in lunar space and on Luna itself, they guided settlers in developing new lifestyles and colonizing skills, and showed them how to wrest and refine usable elements and minerals from nearby sources. They devised and tested methodologies to convert crude space matter into forms with which to create and integrate structures, and manufacture and operate machines and networks that would sustain surface and contiguous space and inter-satellite and interplanetary navigation and logistics systems.

The emigrants procreated and populated their cities in the void. Their disparate ancestries blended through a natural vitality that accelerated human evolution so as to survive in a radically new environment. In so doing, they turned away from traditional conventions still deeply ingrained in their common species. Adjusting over time to the novel experience of space, they conceived new ways or adapted their ancient qualities and prospered in wholly enclosed artificial worlds. Organ modifications, genetic engineering and cloning gave impetus to human transformation.

Instinctively, humankind-in-space prepared for an eventual voyage to the stars.

At the close of the first interplanetary millennium that shaped and launched The Great Migration to Space the original emigrants' progeny had become an indigenous population. Five centuries into the Interplanetary Era's second millennium the Solar System included more than five hundred populated colonies and outposts, and twice that number of robot stations for interplanetary and inter-satellite navigation, communication relay, and space rescue. Populated by humans and their robots, colonies extended from the voids above Mercury and Venus through the Asteroids, the satellites of the gas planets, to Planet Pluto.

As colonies multiplied and spread across the vast interplanetary realm the solar community became impatient with time consumed in normal point-to-point space communications and transport. The excessive transmission and portage time was especially irritating in communications, shipment of priority cargo, and human travel across distances from bodies orbiting along on opposite sides of the Sun. Hyperspace technology solved the problem.

"Spunnels" in the public's jargon, came into being, the term compressed from the phrase "hyperspace tunnels," a universal phenomenon once suspected and eventually confirmed. In the centuries preceding The Great Migration the phenomenon had been generally referred to as a wormhole, an archaic and irrelevant expression, even in those ancient times.

Spunnel networks reduced transmission time between the most widely separated points in the system from hours to real-time. Successful in communications, scientists and engineers concentrated on the technological leap from spunnel communications to spunnel teleportation, a capability urgently and clearly essential to move humans, machines, and raw materials across interplanetary distances.

The flood of emigrants to space colonies and outposts exceeded tens of thousands each year over several centuries, leaving behind a still over-crowded Earth that had long since cried 'enough'. Among the migrants were artisans and technicians, minimally to highly-skilled administrators, sociologists, teachers, scientists and engineers and, scattered among them, contemporary philosophers who preached the metaphysical. Together, they represented all of Earth's peoples and a cross-section of their cultures.

Technology, however, imposed constraints. The insatiable appetite for metals, minerals, rare earths and other nonrenewable substances increased inexorably. They remained the foundation for the Solar System's industries, driven by the constant clamor of indulgent lifestyles. Fully aware that vital minerals and other substances were beyond replenishment from within the Solar System, the solar community nevertheless squandered its rapidly diminishing resources.

In time, reserves of nonrenewable resources dropped from residue to gleanings. Recycling, salvage, ever-deeper mine shafts and tunnels, repeated sweeps of the Earth's sea beds and planetary and satellites' crusts, trenches, beds and craters offered insufficient returns. Scouring the Asteroid Belt, sifting the Kuiper-Oort regions, and intense competitions for substitutes provided inadequate and merely temporary relief. The solar community's population, on Earth and in space, had exploded to more than fourteen billion people. The search for substances to support humankind's needs ranged throughout; there were no more sources, nor were there sanctuaries.

Certainly, there would not be enough for voyages to the stars.

##

At long last, humankind confronted its reality. Net yields from nonrenewable reserves, residues and substitutes had dwindled until exhaustion was certain and a timeline predictable. The choice among grim options could no longer be postponed. In the end, there were two:

— Remain in place, ration, recycle and redistribute minerals, metals, ores and other usable substances and substitutes with Draconian discipline, and take the consequences, or

— Chance the most awesome venture in humankind's long history: reach out to a distant star and tear from it the raw matter that would preserve and perpetuate the grandeur of the human experience.

The second option would be the ultimate gamble: winning would bring the cornucopia sought throughout the ages. Failure, even at an early stage, would dissipate what little reserves remained. Vitality drained, humankind would slip back into the pits and the mud from which it had so laboriously climbed.

The decision was to reach for the stars.

##

The Interstellar Mining and Teleport Program

The Objective: To draw from Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system, 4.35 light-years distant, its minerals, metals, elements and whatever useful substances could be moved across space, and store them nearby in the Solar System, accessible to all humankind.

The Task: Increase the Solar System's spunnel range, capability and capacity to teleport matter across interstellar space in a continuous flow and in sufficient quantities to satisfy the purpose of the Objective;

Construct and dispatch an advance fleet of drone scouts to the Alpha Centauri star system at the earliest possible time to survey, analyze and report via spunnel on the availability, locations and accessibility of resources specified generally in the Objective;

Concurrently, design, construct and position an interstellar spunnel portage system consisting of two terminals, each of which would include an integral, fully self-sufficient facility for command-and-control, self-service and repair, logistical and other operations essential to its unique mission. Designate the terminal at 'star' 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 classifies, 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 mass 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 analyses 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, analyzes, 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 constituents, loads the mass 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, classifies and ejects the mass 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 space 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 orbital 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 substitutes 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 space colonies, loosely called "tank towns," encouraged scientific and social experiments that altered traditional cultures as well as human physiological and psychological characteristics.

Cumulative 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-space 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 multitude of causes, usually self-serving. Anticipating 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 space 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 space, 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 constituted 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, space 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 space 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 Assembly 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 reconstituted 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 identities (Ganymede, Titan, 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 space 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 space, 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 Space, exercised and defended free and unencumbered travel and passage by its citizens and vessels in deep space and throughout the INOR jurisdictions.

The UIPS took steps to ensure the security of Slingshot construction and logistics support sites and space-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 space 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 space transports. The cadre's vessels carried and towed communications gear, specialized construction rigs, platforms and infrastructure kits which had been fabricated or assembled 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 assembly, 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 space 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 massive 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 anticipated 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, space 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;

Establish and administer institutions for law enforcement, public health, education and other community affairs.

Group Two (Charon) Mission

Convert Lamplight into a food-growing and processing plant capable of feeding the entire Plutonian permanent and transit populations, and on-site personnel at the Logistics Depot and the Terminals Construction Site. Encapsulate Lamplight in an impermeable radiation-resistant plastic membrane and introduce and maintain constant temperature and air-moisture and other agriculture-supportive atmosphere and environment that meets prevailing deep space colony or equal standards;

Constructively use Charon's and Pluto's water ice and substances generated as waste and by-products of human habitation throughout the Pluto and near space sectors. Conduct research and develop drip, hydroponics and other agricultural systems, protein synthesis and manufacture, and ship to Coldfield, the Slingshot work site and the Logistics Depot high-quality foodstuffs suitable for storage and consumption. Charon operations are to be fully automated and robotically maintained.

In support of the Charon agricultural mission, Planet Pluto, the Slingshot Logistics Depot, the Terminals' construction site, and ships moored or in transit within the Special Zone constitute an integrated ecological entity. All organics and all mineral and chemical plant growth stimulants, such as discarded or excess food and fluids, bio-waste, usable industrial and community waste, and cadavers are committed to processing as fertilizers or for specialized application to the creation of foodstuffs. Organic waste and cadaver parts unsuitable for constructive purposes (fertilizer) on Charon will be fully sterilized and reduced as close as practicable to zero residue.

Group Three (Logistics Depot) Mission

Construct a space station to specification above Coldfield and designate it 'Slingshot Logistics Depot'. Arrange for the depot to serve for central receiving, warehousing and shipping center for materiel committed to the Slingshot Terminals, and for processing materiel through all active Planet Pluto surface and sub-surface technical and servicing facilities;

Provide the Depot with facilities and train its personnel for emergency backup in manufacturing and servicing capabilities redundant to those on the planet;

Create a highest level technical capability to synthesize materials, and manufacture, fabricate, test and calibrate those precision parts, tools and accessories which are best made in the micro-gravity and pollution-free conditions of deep space and/or safely distant from Pluto's and Charon's surfaces and their gravitational influences;

Augment the Depot's security with a gated force field that fully encapsulates and protects the Depot and all vessels engaged in loading and off-loading personnel and materiel; patrols contiguous space and keeps the Logistics Depot and UIPS citizens and property self-sufficient and safe from disease, harassment and harm;

Install on the Logistics Depot and at the Terminals Construction Sites independent communications, cargo, living organism teleport centers, each capable of receiving and dispatching authorized cargoes, passengers, dispatches and communications via conventional, spunnel, and specified non-conventional channels.

##

The Terminals Construction Site is the focal point of UIPS operations. The Construction Site's mission is to research, design, fabricate, test, assemble and, ultimately, launch, position at destinations and operate, monitor and maintain the Slingshot Extractor and Collector terminals en route and at their destinations.

##

The planning did not anticipate the dissolution of the United Planetary System, the creation of independent and estranged Regions in their place, and a hostile government on Pluto.

Military forces had been non-existent for more than fifteen hundred years when the colonies of the Outer Region seceded from the United Planetary System. Weapons of mass destruction had had no purpose since the birth of the first World Federation in the fourth century of the Interplanetary Era.

In place of an organized military, the succeeding World Federation had created an Interplanetary Constabulary to protect lives and property, investigate crimes, control traffic, and maintain general order. Their charter extended to all planets, satellites, colonies, outposts, stations, and all places throughout the void into which humankind had ventured.

The mission of the Constabulary remained unchanged during political reorganizations within the first World Federation and its successors. Its agents ranged the Solar System, and performed their duties quietly and efficiently. Few dared challenge their authority. When challenges did occur, they were not for long.

War, and the effects of war on people and things were forgotten.

It was inconceivable, in those times, that the region beyond the Asteroids would become politically and culturally alienated from the unified community that humankind had created to guide them into the future. History, the citizens of the world concluded, had demonstrated the impotence of the ancient, long-discarded array of adversarial nation-states and come-by-chance leaders to govern an intellectually advanced species.

No one expected a return to the old, long-discarded ways.

When separation of the Inner and Outer Regions became inevitable, scholars in both Regions explored the possible and the probable relationships that might develop under the new order. The studies predicted that politically independent nation-states would create multilateral alignments and conflicting societies, lifestyles and philosophies.

They took into account evolving technological and industrial capabilities, prevailing energy and declining reserves of industrial metals, minerals, and other usable substances and related them to the Solar System's demographic trends and resources predictions. When the United Planetary System dissolved, the successor UIPS felt it had no choice but to continue the Slingshot program.

The conclusions of humankind's most distinguished scientists and philosophers suggested that two independent orders in space would bring with them a heightened likelihood of social and technological dislocations and disruptions. There would be interregional and, within INOR, international competition that would increase the rate of depletion in resources. There would be a multitude of disputes, often intentionally misinterpreted, to resolve territorial and jurisdictional differences that were already caught up in and molded by the dynamics of orbiting planets, and their satellites and connecting space-ways.

The effects on Slingshot could be catastrophic. Its security was paramount. Immediately following separation of the two Regions the President of the new UIPS directed the creation of a powerful Military Space Force.

The UIPS searched the ancient archives of Earth's military history and designed weapons of defense and offense. Ships of war and their supporting systems were brought back into being, and spunnel gateways expanded to accommodate them. A militant phoenix rose from its ancient ashes.

The Military Space Force was charged with patrolling the space-ways beyond the Asteroids to protect UIPS vital interests. Their responsibilities included protecting the lives of UIPS citizens and private and government property throughout INOR wherever they happened to be, in space or on the surfaces of planets and satellites.

The role and intent of the UIPS military was explained to all INOR governments. "The Military Space Force," proclaimed the President of the UIPS, "would remain until INOR's member Nations were sufficiently stabilized to participate in ensuring peaceful coexistence and passage along space-ways and at moorings throughout the Outer Region, and separately and collectively agree to participate in and support the Slingshot Program."

INOR, as a Federation, interpreted the formation of the UIPS Military Space Force and the President's proclamation on its role as contemptuous of their social and political maturity. The outcome was predictable.

Local INOR Defense Forces were hastily organized and equipped. Dozens of ships of war were built and many space transports were converted into armed vessels. Each INOR government, using self-defense as justification, established controlled corridors extending hundreds of thousands of kilometers into its contiguous space, often far beyond their legitimate jurisdictions. Passengers and crews of foreign space transports, passenger liners, and utility and pleasure craft, whatever their points of foreign origin or destination, required visas, local pilots, and armed escorts upon arrivals and departures. Suspicions festered on all sides.

It was an era of international and interregional political tensions and harassment, and military, technological and industrial sabotage and espionage. The history of Earth's ancients had returned to haunt the solar community.

The rate of depletion in the Solar Community's reserves of vital but nonrenewable substances rose rapidly.

Appendix

Principles of Governance Among Nations in Space

An article by the Associate General Counsel for the Smithsonian Institution reported in THE FUTURIST, page 60, May-June 1990 (Common Era) that the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum had speculated on a Declaration of First Principles for the Governance of Outer Space Societies. The project's participants represented a broad array of disciplines and interests, including engineering, biomedicine, law, economics, psychology, bioethics, and philosophy. Rather than attempting to frame an actual constitution for space societies, which normally would be reserved for sovereign governments. The document would be a reference for interested government entities responsible for space policy, and to define the fundamental rights and freedoms of those who might some day migrate to space.

I wrote to the article's author, told him I was working on this story and included a draft of 'core principles' I had drafted. I asked for more information on the Smithsonian's study. The author's reply included a copy of the Declaration and permission to quote from it. It follows:

Astrolaw: Carrying Human Rights into Outer Space

On the occasion of the Bicentennial of the Constitution of the United States of America and in commemoration and furtherance of its values, we the undersigned petitioners,

Bearing witness to the exploration and inevitable settlement of outer space;

Recognizing the universal longing for life, liberty, equality, peace and security;

Expressing our unshakable belief in the dignity of the individual;

Placing our trust in societies that guarantee their members full protection of the law, due process and equal protection under the law;

Reaffirm our faith in fundamental freedoms;

Mindful, as were our nation's founders, of the self-evident truth that we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights;

Recognizing the responsibility of a government to protect the rights of the governed to exist and evolve;

Do assert and declare in this petition the intrinsic value of a set of First Principles for the Governance of Outer Space Societies and, at the beginning of this third century of nationhood under our Constitution, resolutely urge all people of the United Sates of America to acknowledge, accept and apply such First Principles as hereinafter set forth.