   
Antiviral Runaround
-------------------
   
   Situated on the very edge of the Regency/Virus border, the incoming
   traveller can expect Trin-level paranoia. And just as well: if for any
   reason Virus enters the system, the 700 million people of Antra are as
   dead as Dulinor.
   
   Any ship filing a direct flight plan to Antra is immediately pointed
   to the nearest Regency Quarantine Office. In cooperation with the
   Antran government, the RQS keeps a set of specific travel routes and
   jump routines controlling movement within the Antran system, which
   vary from time to time. The computer module of flight routine for the
   specific time that the traders intend to be in the system is directly
   plugged into the various computer systems of the ship by RQS
   personnnel, and an RQS officer is posted to the ship for the week's
   trip.
   
   Before leaving for Antra, the ship is carefully checked out by an RQS
   team, taking a day per 100 tons displacement. Everyone is given a
   complete physical examination: no one with artifical inorganic
   enhancements is permitted to continue on the voyage, on pain of death.
   
   When they first arrive from jump the ship follows its pre-computated
   flight plan to a preselected position and vector in space. The RQS
   officer on board must radio for a RQS cutter to meet them, using a
   special one-time code that only the RQS officer on board knows.
   
   NOTE: Antra is within 100 diameters of its primary star: the ship
   leaves jump space between 155 and 355 light-seconds from Antra,
   depending on orbital mechanics, the skill of the pilot, etc. With the
   pre-computed jump co-ordinates, the ship always leaves jump exactly
   opposite of Antra's position, 355 light-seconds away on the other side
   of the star.
   
   Ships that do not conform to the specific flight plan must immediately
   kill their velocity, and come to a dead halt. The people on board must
   put on their space suits and cross over to the RQS cutter. The ship is
   impounded, and usually considered forfeited to the Antran government
   if free of Virus. If the ship is found to be infected, the crew have
   their personalities reconstructed.
   
   Ships that don't come to a stop, for whatever reason, are destroyed.
   
   The cutter boards the ship and an RQS team carefully looks it over for
   Virus. Since this is a lighter team that the previous base-check, it
   only takes a few hours before the ship is underway again, to a nearby
   (usually under 20 light-seconds) RQS space station.
   
   The RQS station - basically an underarmed naval base, designed to take
   on a flotilla of 100 ships of up to 1,000 disp tons each - AGAIN
   checks out the ship for Virus. After about half a day - regardless of
   the size of the ship, the local crew is large, good, well equipped,
   and fast enough to process it in under 12 hours - the ship, without
   its escort but still with its babysitting RQS officer onboard, finally
   heads for Antra.
   
   The ship will be halted again and inspected 10 light seconds from
   Antra, not by an RQS cutter but by a 1,000-6,000 ton SDB.
   
