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has met with only moderate success. Eight
Jupiter-orbiting habitats are dedicated nature reserves for rare
original-genotype Earth animals, plants, and insects (for whales see
Atlantis, page 53 ), with many
species reconstructed from stored genetic samples taken in the late
twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. One of the most
successful reconstructions has been the mammoth cloned from frozen
samples found in Siberia.

Mechanical Systems
    Bitek is unable to
accommodate every requirement, especially moving systems which are
subject to constant abrasive use, and in particular transport
mechanisms. Lifts are installed in all the starscrapers after they
have been grown, and large tunnels are included in the internal polyp
land-contour layer for the maglev trains. Cars and powered bikes are
also used in the cavern, but only by service crews and medical
emergency personnel. Cycling is popular, as is microlight flying and
horse riding.

Spaceport
    As one end of the habitat is
devoted to the maw, spaceship activity is concentrated entirely
around the other end. On all post-2220 habitats, the endcap has a
series of broad projecting ledges for voidhawks to land on. These
rings are studded with pedestals which contain nutrient-fluid
transfer mechanisms for the bitek starships; fluid-production organs
are found in the endcap walls.
    All Adamist starships and
reaction-drive craft use a counter-rotating spaceport (none of them
can perform the kind of swoop maneuver necessary to use a ledge),
which extends out from the habitat axis on a long spindle. These are
the same as spaceports on settled asteroids, though larger in scale,
and can be any shape, from simple extensions of the spindle to discs,
globes, and starfish grids. The only thing they have in common is
that they are joined to the habitat by a rotating seal at the axis.

Defense
    As with Confederation
planets and asteroid settlements, starships are not allowed to emerge
within 100,000km of a habitat, and they have designated emergence
zones. In Jupiter’s case, starships are effectively banished
from emerging inside Europa’s orbit. After emergence, docking
authorization and flight-vector management is handled by the habitat
personality, which is linked into strategic-defense platforms via
bitek processor chips.
    All industrial stations are
maintained within the same orbit as the habitats, which simplifies
the job of the strategic-defense platforms. Because Jupiter’s
gravity field makes emergence impossible closer than 100,000km, the
He3cloudscoops are relatively safe from direct attack by emerging
starships; nevertheless, they are protected by beam weapons mounted
on the anchor asteroid. In addition to strategic-defense platforms,
there are fifty armed voidhawks on permanent patrol above Jupiter.
This situation is repeated, though on a much smaller scale, around
every Edenist habitat throughout the Confederation.

Voidhawk Base Habitats
    A slight misnomer, as
voidhawks are rarely based at Saturn. The 268 habitats in orbit
around Saturn serve as an industrial center, nursery, crew-training
academy and retirement home for the hundred families. They orbit
300,000km above Saturn, just outside the rings, and deploy the same
kind of magnetosphere pick-up cables used by Jupiter-orbiting
habitats. The most visible external difference is the lack of
starscrapers; instead people live in polyp residences inside the
cavern. As a consequence, their population is lower than inside their
habitats, with 500,000 residents maximum.
    The industrial stations based at Saturn are primarily involved in
astroengineering; in constructing and maintaining the voidhawk
life-support quarters and cargo bay, as well as building ancillary
craft such as ground-to-orbit flyers. There is also a considerable
armaments division, providing combat wasps for voidhawks on duty with
the Confederation Navy and for habitat defense duties.
    Saturn is not the only gas
giant whose rings provide suitable