The Dome

Prelude:

The Dome; a huge environmental dome of such giant proportions as never before constructed by human beings. The dome provides an atmosphere and protection against cosmic rays for all the citizens of Baldur 12 who choose to live beneath its protective curves (The Largest Buildings in Space 2nd edition:2410).

The structure known simply as "the Dome", is oft considered to be one of the 20 wonders of the know universe. First constructed in the year 2240 by Iron Ore minors prospecting Baldur’s moons, the dome was extended upon by the USP (United System of Planets) in 2299 in order to house the overwhelming number of refugees of the late 22 intergalactic wars. The dome was then further extended upon, when it was taken over by the Corporate Colonial interest Baldur 12 (the current colonies name sake). And while the dome hasn’t been extended since, and is lot smaller than other planetary structures, such as the moon sized space station that acts as the USP’s administrative head quarters, the dome as a planet based environmental structure has no equal. (The Largest Buildings in Space 2nd edition:2410)

"What dwells and gathers in the darkness of night, that even grown men shall take flight from fright" - anonymous.

Keegan’s eyes flicked opened. Something had stirred in the dark. He lay still, heart pounding, blood racing through his veins, as he strained his ears listening for a reoccurrence of the sound. Nothing . He laid back, momentarily satisfied. It must have been all the stress he was under. After all the maintenance of colony’s exterior dome, without which the colony itself would not have been achievable, was his department’s responsibility. Unfortunately in recent years the demands being placed upon the dome were increasing, straining his departments already limited resources. His maintenance teams simply could not be in all places at one time, resulting in localised dome failure and associated deaths. Deaths that he was responsible for. There is no escaping the fact that the colony’s dome simply wasn’t designed to cope with the huge population increases that had been occurring on Baldur 12 in the years since the arrival of humans more than a hundred years before.

Crrk…A distant creaking intruded upon his thoughts. He’d definitely heard something this time. It sounded like a door in another part of the domicile swinging open and closed. There was another sound, closer than before, stealthy footsteps, as though a man was creeping silently along the corridor toward his bed chambers. He wondered who it could be. Perhaps a member of the general public who had lost a family member to a dome failure or an overzealous member of one the bizarre new technophobic religious cults which had began to spring up in surprising numbers around the colony had come to assassinate him while he slept. God knows, he’d been open enough in his belief that science would eventually led to a solution to the current problems and such statements as could not have gone unnoticed amongst zealots of Baldur 12. It wasn’t merely a radical minority that had chosen to reject technology as a result of the dome’s failings, large swathes of the colony’s population had indicated a preference for the divine over the possibility of future technological solutions. Keegan knew that it would take more than religious faith to save the colony from complete and inevitable dome failure. He had found it ironic, that a society forged from the crucible of 23rd century enlightenment, a society made possible by the engineering genius embodied in the colony’s external environment dome.