The United Inner Planetary System insisted that Planet Pluto and its contiguous space remain within the UIPS Slingshot Special Zone of Operations until the Extractor and the Collector were both safely away from Pluto's jurisdiction, as judged by the UIPS. The Plutonian government refused. The other INOR nations, immersed in their own problems, were indifferent. The issue was left to the UIPS and Planet Pluto to resolve. The UIPS continued, without prior consultation with INOR and Planet Pluto, to construct and operate Slingshot logistics sites and facilities on Pluto's surface, in contiguous space, and within and along the Planet Pluto orbit. The UIPS, interpreting traditions and treaties that had evolved from Earth's ancient Laws of the Seas and Space, exercised and defended free and unencumbered travel and passage by its citizens and vessels in deep space and throughout the INOR jurisdictions. The UIPS took steps to ensure the security of Slingshot construction and logistics support sites and space-ways. ## The Slingshot Advance Cadre arrived in the Neptune-Pluto orbit-crossing sectors toward the end of the Interplanetary Era, before the breakup of the old United Planetary System. Colonizing Pluto and constructing space kits that would be transformed into surface habitat and supply depots began centuries earlier when Planet Pluto was barely past aphelion but within economical range of deep space transports. The cadre's vessels carried and towed communications gear, specialized construction rigs, platforms and infrastructure kits which had been fabricated or assembled in the industrial tank towns above Luna, Venus and Mars, and by cooperating governments of satellites in the outer region. The Cadre's primary mission was to establish a base of operations on Pluto. The program called for the planet to support a colony of fifty thousand specialists and construction workers -- and their families -- for the assembly, construction and testing phases, plus ten thousand transients and temporary residents. The latter would comprise 'rest and relaxation' visitors, liaison and special missions staff from a nearby logistics depot and the construction sites, and agricultural and food processing workers from Planet Pluto's moon Charon. Also expected were cargo handlers and ship's personnel from transports entering and departing Pluto from-and-to points throughout the system. About eighty percent of Pluto's permanent adult population would work on the two terminals. The specialized professions for the initial phase ranged from scientists and engineers to artisans, skilled and semi-skilled workers in all of the disciplines and industrial skills required to construct and operate a complex station in space and service and maintain a permanent habitat and population on Pluto's surface.