Prestor

Great triangular heat exchangers shed a thin mist into space as they dissipate the heat from the atomic engines.

"We want our children to grow in environment including the natural birth parents, we demand that the curriculum be divested of the twentieth century propaganda, that we are allowed to read the Greco-Roman classics, that we be allowed to examine all twentieth and twenty first data in its original form."

"Sounds like some type intolerance movement to me," muttered a clone speaker.

"Well at least we know what we are dealing with" answered to original speaker to his third clone

"And the right to examine our biological tree dating from before the first cloning."

Measures were decided upon. The food from the agricultural and the dairy complexes would not be distributed to the universities. There would be no feed from the university communications complex to the other habitats.

"Wouldn’t that be kind of hard to enforce asked a bald headed administrator?"

"I don’t see why not," answered the supreme administrator, we have ample case law, and you will find it under the ‘Mad Cow Disease’ section of the Space Station Convention. We have the right to contain any spread of psychological dysfunction if it has the capacity to harm the general population."

As the standoff continued the rift deepened, a stalemate developing into open rebellion. Stations on the outer rim ceased to obey the central executive. Soon the various stations amalgamated into a core rebel unit taking in food production and manufacturing complexes. This encompassed the military as SSTO (single stage to orbit) craft left their parent units in order to sport the black cross and the red crossbow insignia of the rebels. With the defection of the first battle cruiser war was declared by the central executive as the rebels now had the ability to roam the entire three million miles of territory encompassed by the armada.

Strangely enough the vanguard battle cruisers continued to destroy dangerous meteorites and other planetary debris, and the exploration probes continued to explore for likely planetary systems as the armada plunged through the galaxy.

The central executive was loath to attack the university complexes for reasons not of a humanitarian nature but of a strategic one. It was supposed that the destruction of a complex would only alienate those who were still loyal to the central executive. An offer was made to the rebels of safe passage to one of the newly emerging clusters of habitats assuming a similar orbit. This was rejected, the students asking for the transfer of all the universities to the orbit of the rebels. This in turn was rejected by the central executive as being too much of a drain upon the loyalists. A compromise solution is worked out allowing the students to place just one of the university complexes into the rebel orbit.

The white cylindrical objects enter into Orbit. After many revolutions the braking process begins. The skin of the vehicle turns black and then red and then white. It slows in the atmosphere . A bright orange chute pops out of the nose section jerking the cylinder to the upright position swinging it backwards and forewords in the deep purple haze. Wispy clouds form below. The cylinder passes through the clouds into the clear blue. There is a green canopy of trees. The onboard TV camera picks out a small clearing. The retrorockets fire a short burst. The cylinder on its parachute swings in the direction of the clearing .Men stream out of the bush, their heads turned upwards.

It lands and is dragged along the ground by a brisk wind. Men run after it grabbing on to the chute, eventually bringing it to a stop. A ladder is placed against the side and a man ascends. He pops a hatch, reaches inside and extracts a silver crate. Inside are stacked small gleaming cylinders. Very slowly the cylinders are transferred to a small aluminum box kept at a temperature of eighty-four point eight. The DNA is cloned.

Babies stacked in the hundreds cry as they await the liquid from the feeding tubes to descend from the overhead gantry. Bodily functions are washed away with warm soapy water.