This image has the unique distinction of being the one that took *the* longest to render. At 3.5 days, it was only 38% complete, at which point I cancelled it and removed the explosion, which I then added in by hand. Assembled and rendered in Bryce 5.5, post-work added in PSP9. ===================== In the early 24th century, peace failed to reign throughout the galaxy. The great powers of the four quadrants bickered and argued and poked each other in the ribs on a relatively regular basis, just to see each other squirm. Relatively evenly matched and separate by vast distances, none of the major powers wanted a major war. Bad for business, it was, what with all the disruptions and dislocations and destruction of property that interstellar wars usually caused. Of course, that didn't stop the various acts of sabotage and espionage and the occasional assassination; that wasn't war, that was merely business as usual. But then a new threat arose. The Space Borne Porticulate: a deadly decease, by all accounts, one that had no cure, could not be filtered out by the teleport devices commonly used at the time and was easily carried across the stars by infected ships' crews and passengers. With an incubation period of one standard year and no symptoms appearing for at least three, it was virtually impossible to detect until half a decade after a planet's been infected. It was coming, and it was coming soon. When the threat became understood, all the major powers banded together to fight this scourge. They may not have liked one another, but neither wanted to commit suicide and they therefore brought their prodigious medical capability to bear on the problem. Trillions upon trillions of credits were spent developing and testing the various vaccines that each power hoped would be the magic bullet before their citizens began falling ill. As yet, no evidence of the decease had appeared, but it was only a matter of time. Unknown alien ships, and even known private ships that couldn't account for their whereabouts, were destroyed wherever they were found, and if they thought their small size should allow them to run circles around the large, lumbering capital ships, they didn't count on improvements to the tractor beam technology. Grabbed by the tractor, a small ship was basically helpless, and it was an easy matter to destroy it. It was therefore unfortunate that the name, Space Bourne Porticulate, was a mis-translation of an alien text which itself was a bad translation of a late 23rd century Earth pornographer's mission statement which vowed to spread human porn far and wide across the Universe, until non could resist its temptation.