Chapter 36

Ram Xindral, representing the UIPS, met with INOR’s advance team on Guardian Station 16 to plan protocols and logistics for the upcoming convocation. Planet Pluto had not sent an emissary.

Agreements were quickly concluded and the diplomatic cadre took over to prepare an agenda for the meeting’s substance.

Spunnel channels flashed coded messages to home governments in the Outer Region, reported on problems encountered and the options available. Instructions flashed back, rarely agreeing with offered solutions, more often insisting on new approaches that in turn became the subjects of lengthy discourse. When an issue was considered sufficiently clarified for the convocation and reported to the seats of UIPS and INOR Governments, it was almost invariably reopened as an extension of still another issue. This went on and on.

Eventually, an agenda of sorts was fashioned to guide the discussions. It limited itself to an agreement, in principle, which identified the paramount issues of urgent and general concern. The preliminaries over, the advance teams departed for home.

A fleet of UIPS transports escorted by Space Guard entered the Great Space that separated the Guardian and Jovian orbits. Hauled along by a network of mag-beams converging from a score of space tugs came the Conference Disk, two hectometers in diameter and a decameter thick at its hub.

At the agreed upon coordinates the Disk slowed and stabilized. The escorts drew back, clustered and waited.

Docking slips scalloped the Disk’s rim, each with its own hoists, articulated and flex-umbilicals, power junctions, and docking, launch and maintenance support facilities. Emergency, fire-fighting, rescue, and med-evac craft dotted the upper and lower surfaces. Anchored, they were ready to service spacecraft or launch instantly to where they might be needed.

Ram and his UIPS technicians, administrators and security specialists boarded the Disk from a utility transport. A INOR team entered through another portal. Members of each team serving a Chief of State inspected the suites assigned to their nation’s conferees, made changes to meet personal or cultural needs and, when satisfied, installed the scheduled occupant’s accouterments and trappings of Office.

Engineers and technicians swarmed throughout the berths and mooring docks, inspecting and testing equipment and procedures to accommodate their Leader’s vessel, and for routine support and emergencies should such arise. They conducted or observed ship handling tests and space rescue capabilities. Finally, the administrators and technicians agreed the facility was ready. The Joint UIPS-INOR Security Team sealed the Disk’s portals and posted their guards in armed capsules around the rim and on the Disk’s gently curved surfaces.

They waited.