Star Trek: Bendross

Episode 08 Luddites

(Fall 2072)

By

Jay P. Hailey

And

The Bendross Players

 

Luddites dressed in roughly woven clothes waved signs at the space crews on the space station's main promenade.

Hamilton looked at them with disdain. "Do you believe these morons?"

"They're entitled to their opinions." Kerenski said, serenely unconcerned.

Hamilton grunted and approached one of the Protestors.

"End the rape and pillage of space!" The protestor yelled. He was a thin man with long hair and an odd smell about him

"How did you get up here?" Hamilton asked the protestor.

The protestor blinked. "I took the commercial shuttle, how else?"

Hamilton snorted derisively and turn back towards the berth where the Bendross III was docked.

"Listen!" The protestor ran to catch up with him. "Mankind is spreading his filth and environmental damage every where he goes! It's time we stopped our destructive ways and returned to a form of living more in harmony with nature. Look at these pictures of the Moon and Mars!" The protestor offered printouts of the images.

Hamilton looked. "Yeah. Armstrong City and Lowell Dome. So?"

"Look at them! They've covered the natural beauty and unspoiled wilderness of these places with trash, litter and all these vehicle tracks!" The young man sounded outraged.

"What natural beauty? They're rocks." Hamilton replied.

"What natural beauty? That landscape had survived for billions of years untouched. Pristine. Now we've come a long and changed all that."

"Look, what's so sacrosanct about where a rock came to rest?"

"Because it's *Natural*." The Luddite said. "Our colonies on the planets ruin all that and now we're exporting our destructive ways to the stars."

"I was just there a few weeks ago. Luna is a rock. Just a great big rock. Nothing special or unusual about it. It doesn't matter if we put stuff or trash or salvaged machinery out there. It's just sitting on rock and sand. You can't contaminate it. It's nothing. Just rocks."

"The Moon was never intended to be our dump! It's unnatural!" The Luddite yelled.

"Intended by who?" Hamilton asked,

"By the gods and goddesses. By Nature. By the Universe itself!" The Luddite said.

"Yeah and if man was meant to fly he'd have been born with wings." Hamilton sneered.

"That's totally different! Space is a vacuum for a reason! Space is a hostile environment for a reason! It's a message from Nature for us to stay home! To stay on the Earth where we belong!"

"Yeah, okay, Sparky. Keep working on that thinking thing. You'll get there eventually." Hamilton turned and walked towards the Berth.

"Ignore the messages that Nature is sending you at your own peril!"

Hamilton rolled his eyes. It wasn't the Luddite with the sign and the loud mouth that you had to worry about. The quiet ones with the bombs were the ones you had to worry about.

-*-

The Bendross III was an adaptation of one of the largest and most successful cargo ships of its day. A long, thin, cylindrical main hull supported two cargo pods on either side. Aft it had a set of large fuel tanks and the fusion drive motors. Forward the main control cabin, sensors and navigational deflectors as well as a very large laser canon, for removing dangers to navigation in the ship's path both conventional and unconventional.

The Bendross III had four cargo pods; each carefully designed to land once and then be converted to living spaces and an incredible array of tools, devices and raw materials for the colonists.

The main navigational deflector was even more complex than usual. Aft there were an extra set of tanks and engines. Like space ships of the last century the Bendross III was a multi staged ship. The star drive section had the CDP drives and enough fuel and duration for one voyage, plus a little bit of margin. When the Bendross III arrived in system the star drive module would be jettisoned and the fully fueled and functional Bendross III would be free to maneuver around its new home system.

The third stage of colonist training was under way. Due to budget cuts and problems with labor relations, The Bendross corporation was training the colonists to finish the construction on the Bendross III themselves.

-*-

Hamilton genuinely enjoyed the feeling of flying in Zero g. Not all the colonists could. However, Hamilton found it relaxing once he got used to it. He was flying a work pod that, if anything cost more than his old WWIII eras fighter plane. The work pod was a robotic vehicle that was essentially a small transparent aluminum bubble with a heavy set of maneuvering thrusters and a plethora of robotic arms all over it.

The view was astounding. Almost 360 degrees. The pod was only safe to use in the immediate vicinity of Orbit City. The station maintained a large magnetic field all over the area. At least that was show Hamilton saw it. Eric Stillwell assured him that the new radiation shields were not exactly magnetic fields and were actually outgrowths of the same sorts of theories that made the CDP drives possible.

Hamilton shrugged and said "Yeah, Whatever." And kept working.

Hamilton turned out to be a routine and slow space welder with his pod, but he felt sure that with enough practice, even if the Colony thing never panned out, and he could get a job with Orbit City as a space construction worker.

He was now flying a routine inspection pass of the Bendross III with Rudy in a similar pod nearby.

Something caught Hamilton's eye. "Uh oh!" He thought. The slowed the pod to a stop relative to the big ship and then rotated so that he was facing the hull. Quickly he twiddled his headlights to focus on the hull. Sure enough, there was some the small and regularly shaped object on the hull.

"Uh, This is Pod Bendross 15 to Orbit City control." Hamilton said. "I am reading a foreign object on the Bendross III, about frame 15, section 4."

"Acknowledged, Pod Bendross 15. Examine and advise." The Orbit City controller.

"Affirmative." Hamilton said. His radio voice was typical fighter pilot, clear, calm, almost blasé about the whole thing, no matter what was happening.

Hamilton tapped his controls lightly and the pod drifted forward.

"It's about twelve inches around." Hamilton reported. "With a circular feature in the middle. It slopes to the edge. It appears to be about eight inches through the middle five or six inches at the sides..."

Hamilton tapped the controls again and came to a halt about five feet away from the hull of the colony ship. He stared at the object. There seems to be a display on the object. I am going to extend a claw for a closer look."

Hamilton told the computer to keep his place relative to the ship and then activated one of the pod's robot arms. It slid forward and unfolded. The lights on the control panel went green.

Hamilton extended the working head closer to the object and then turned on the camera attached to it. Usually this camera was to allow close inspection of the object being worked on.

The object ha a read out that read 29:28:05 And was counting down in minutes. About 29 minutes left. Before what? "Let me guess." Hamilton thought to himself wryly.

"Orbit City, I am reading a count down on this device. I suspect some sort of bomb." Hamilton said.

"Roger, Bendross Pod 15, a suspected bomb. Station Security is on it's way to your location. Please do not attempt to defuse the bomb yourself." The Orbit City controller said.

Hamilton played the arm and camera over the object a little more. All at once a symbol become clear to him on the surface of the object. Hamilton felt his eyes bug out and his face drain of blood.

"Control this is Pod 15." Hamilton said in his deadpan pilot's voice. "Correction. Make that a nuke. I repeat, I am calling this a nuclear bomb."

To Be Continued

 

 Disclaimer: Paramount owns all things Trek. I claim original characters and situations in this story for me.