Twenty seconds away from touchdown, the coloney ship, Mercer's Dream, slowly drops through Titon's dense atmosphere. Shrieking winds of nitrogen, methane, and other hydrocarbons hammer at the ship. The speed of the descent abruptly slows, then halts, as the giant craft hovers to find the best purchase upon the surface, then drops the last half meter and comes to rest as a cloud of hydrocarbons billow up around it. The ship will never move again. It's mission is to create another permanent settlement on Titan. The Mercer's Dream is the third settlement ship to land on Titan and the second colony site located on Xandu, the largest feature upon the moon's surface. The two rear middle sections of the ship are rocket fuel storage and engines. The front middle section contains storage and manufacturing. After the landing is completed and the fuel exhausted, the engines will be striped out and recycled into needed building materials, while the empty tanks are converted into storage facilities. Each of the six outer sections is ten stories of residential apartments, medical facilities, shopping, and recreational facilities. The result is an instant prefabricated town for the 2,000 plus souls aboard the ship. The first priority will be the building of additional mining, manufacturing, and local resources processing equipment. In time, Mercer's Dream will become the nucleolus of a much larger city. ************************** I kept making terrains from black and white pictures of x-rayed portions of Titan's surfaces, but because of the murky atmosphere and the fact that no geologic feature on Titan has--to date--been any higher than 300 feet, it was hard to really detect them when I rendered the terrains. Finally, decided to go the photo route with Cyclorama. Typical: I tend to do things the hardest way first, then settle for something easier. Credits: Bryce 5.5, PSP 5. Background: Cyclorama. Background Photo: Actual photo of Titan taken during the decent of the European Space Agency's Huygens probe. Colony Ship: One of 39 neat spacecraft created by richard jeferies (Avalon), but textured by me, using his RJ001-SF-TEXTURES and a couple of metal textures by Jonathan Allen. Atmosphere: Created by me. Thanks so much for dropping by. Any encouraging or constructive remarks will be appreciated. Jeremy