The children were duly gathered into the bunker-like concrete structure that some were calling "Town Hall" while Nancy and Peggy went to work on the sensor suite. As most of the suite had been automated through the central computer network, the vast majority of its operation was handled through voice commands to Geordi, the engineering AI, and through a touch control that had been deliberately designed to be as simple as possible.
"Wow," Nancy whispered.
"Yeah," Peggy concurred. "More company coming. Lots more." Her arms twitched; Kat and Helen, standing immediately behind her, both saw this and had simultaneous images of Peggy leaping up and impossibly trying to mop and scrub the entire 250 acres of the ship before anyone else could get on board. Without looking at each other they each laid a hand on Peggy's shoulders, in case they had to hold her down and talk her out of a cleaning binge.
"How many?" Attila called from where he roughhoused with Rushin and the other dogs. None of the animals had taken the launch well -- the cats had fled to the tops of the tallest pieces of furniture they could find as soon as the dome had started unfolding and were still there, while the dogs had howled until someone had thought to close the door of the drive room in the basement. Even now, the dogs were whining and nervous, and Attila was hoping to distract them with a little play.
"Everyone, I think," Nancy said.
"Fuck," Attila with surprisingly little emotion.
Nancy snorted and dragged her finger along the large portrait-orientation touchscreen, pulling the sensor viewpoint along with it. The image was synthetic, a false-perspective super-fisheye generated by stitching together the images generated by dozens of stationary cameras grown into the hull during the building process. At any one time, it showed a wedge of space 90 degrees wide, and stretching from the top of the ship to its bottom, although the vertical swatch could be shifted if the image needed to center on objects near the poles.
It was one of four such screens which all stood next to each other and normally provided an integrated full-spherical display. At times like this, though, they could be operated and pointed independently, as Peggy and Nancy were doing. Overlays in various hues highlighted and annotated objects and ships in nearby space.
The displays were a riot of color. As Nancy and Peggy swept nearby space around them with their scans, there didn't seem to be a single section from which at least one ship wasn't coming, or already matching their velocity. "I'd say we've attracted some attention," John chuckled as he watched from over Nancy's shoulder.
"You know," Nancy mused as she zoomed the display in on one fencraft that looked like it had been a fishing trawler in an earlier life, "It just occurred to me that we could have managed this launch with a little more... I don't know, professionalism? I mean, we didn't even turn on the sensors or anything, we just went up. That's okay if you're flying a Volvo or something, but we're big!"
"We didn't need to," Alison pointed out. "We weren't under any regular air traffic corridors, and we passed though the usual altitudes for commercial flights so fast that a plane would've had to've been right on top of us for there to be any danger. And anything else that might've wandered across us would have picked us up on radar way before they needed to do anything about it."
Nancy shook her head. "I'm just saying, we launched way too casually. Yeah, nothing bad happened, but we should have been careful right from the start."
"Oh, well." Peggy's tone combined fatalism and snark, enough of both to merit an annoyed glance from her sister-in-law.
Attila rose from where he'd played with the dogs, fingering the belt buckle that held a hidden knife. "If you guys are going to fight, then I'm goin' outside for a smoke. You know where to find me if you need me."
"I wish he wouldn't do that," Peggy muttered grumpily after he'd left. "It's going to stink up the air in the ship and set off my allergies."
"Peggy!" Helen snapped.
Over Peggy's head Kat shot Helen a look that said "have patience", then squeezed Peggy's shoulder. "Peggy, we've been through this before," she said gently. "We've got more than twelve billion cubic feet of air. Attila's cigarettes aren't going to foul that so you'd notice any time soon, even if we didn't have a life support system filtering and refreshing it."
"I still don't like it," Peggy muttered.
Kat sent that "patience" look Helen's way again.
* * *
"Attention unidentified... uh giant space marble... This is the Inelegant Truth, can you guys hear me? Blink once for yes." Another male voice, this one relatively unaccented, blared out of the radio.
I chuckled as that hail was followed by what amounted to a comedy routine. Wow, these guys sounded almost as slipshod as us.
I steered my current golf cart with one hand (Damn, I should've had Grace leave the one that drives itself, I mentally groused) and held the walkie-talkie up to my ear. I was driving breakneck across raw terrain to get to the southern garage, since our first two batches of visitors had pretty much filled up the east garage, and the jouncing around was getting on my nerves. Not to mention the battering my ear was getting from the walkie-talkie.
Add to To-do list: clear direct roads between all three airlocks. I frowned. Also add to To-do list: find out if there's anywhere we can get asphalt in Fenspace. Or a bulldozer.
When the exchange from the Inelegant Truth had ended with a second heartfelt "Dammit!", I chuckled to myself and debated whether or not I should respond with, "Hey there, large rusting hulk of a crabber, what's up?"
I decided against being that much of a smartass, though. "Ahoy, Inelegant Truth. This is the SV Grover's Corners. I blink in your general direction."
That got me a torrent of laughter in multiple voices, both male and female. The same male speaker as before then said, "I guess we deserved that. Do I have the privilege of speaking to the captain?"
I dodged the cart around a stump and pulled up short at the southern garage. "Um, not really, but I'm about as close as you're going to get."
"...As close as we're going to get?"
"Yeah," I said, hopping out of the cart and heading for the airlock door. "We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week. But all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified by a simple majority..."
They were laughing again. This was good. I grinned to myself as I dogged the door and hit the exhaust cycle.
"Seriously, Truth, we didn't get around to appointing a captain before we lifted, and as it so happens I'm the only one with a radio. So you're stuck with me."
"Fair enough," he said, a little static roughening up his voice. "So, Mr. Not-Appearing-In-The-Captain's-Chair, would you good folks be up for some more company?"
"Well," I drew out the syllable as I hit the little green-lit button that triggered the garage door opener, "we're a little cramped with everybody who's already here, but I think we could squeeze you in somewhere. I've just opened our southern docking bay, but if you're really flying a rusted old crabber, you're bigger than we can handle, and you'll have to come in via a shuttle."
"Understood, Grover's Corners, we'll be there in a few minutes."
I plopped back down into the cart. "Coolness. See you then. Grover's Corners out." Then I looked down at the cart and the three empty seats. Damn, I thought, trying to count voices from memory. I hope there aren't too many of them. I studied the walkie-talkie for a moment. Wish I could call to have someone bring more carts again. I sighed. Add to To-do list: Get in-ship cell phone service up and running pronto.
Yes, my beloved Peggy is a little bit neurotic about a few things. Her allergies are real (tobacco smoke and cats are the two big ones) although just how severe they actually are is unclear to me; although she's had some bad reactions -- including one nearly-disastrous one caused by an attempted program of desensitization by an allergist -- in general I've noticed that the severity of her "usual" attacks tends to be inversely proportional to how distracted or involved with something else she is at the time.
Knowing how she thinks, I don't believe it is too improbable that she would (consciously or not) reason "(ship = indoors) + smoking = bad allergic reaction" and react accordingly.
-- Bob
---------
The Internet Is For Norns.
"Wow," Nancy whispered.
"Yeah," Peggy concurred. "More company coming. Lots more." Her arms twitched; Kat and Helen, standing immediately behind her, both saw this and had simultaneous images of Peggy leaping up and impossibly trying to mop and scrub the entire 250 acres of the ship before anyone else could get on board. Without looking at each other they each laid a hand on Peggy's shoulders, in case they had to hold her down and talk her out of a cleaning binge.
"How many?" Attila called from where he roughhoused with Rushin and the other dogs. None of the animals had taken the launch well -- the cats had fled to the tops of the tallest pieces of furniture they could find as soon as the dome had started unfolding and were still there, while the dogs had howled until someone had thought to close the door of the drive room in the basement. Even now, the dogs were whining and nervous, and Attila was hoping to distract them with a little play.
"Everyone, I think," Nancy said.
"Fuck," Attila with surprisingly little emotion.
Nancy snorted and dragged her finger along the large portrait-orientation touchscreen, pulling the sensor viewpoint along with it. The image was synthetic, a false-perspective super-fisheye generated by stitching together the images generated by dozens of stationary cameras grown into the hull during the building process. At any one time, it showed a wedge of space 90 degrees wide, and stretching from the top of the ship to its bottom, although the vertical swatch could be shifted if the image needed to center on objects near the poles.
It was one of four such screens which all stood next to each other and normally provided an integrated full-spherical display. At times like this, though, they could be operated and pointed independently, as Peggy and Nancy were doing. Overlays in various hues highlighted and annotated objects and ships in nearby space.
The displays were a riot of color. As Nancy and Peggy swept nearby space around them with their scans, there didn't seem to be a single section from which at least one ship wasn't coming, or already matching their velocity. "I'd say we've attracted some attention," John chuckled as he watched from over Nancy's shoulder.
"You know," Nancy mused as she zoomed the display in on one fencraft that looked like it had been a fishing trawler in an earlier life, "It just occurred to me that we could have managed this launch with a little more... I don't know, professionalism? I mean, we didn't even turn on the sensors or anything, we just went up. That's okay if you're flying a Volvo or something, but we're big!"
"We didn't need to," Alison pointed out. "We weren't under any regular air traffic corridors, and we passed though the usual altitudes for commercial flights so fast that a plane would've had to've been right on top of us for there to be any danger. And anything else that might've wandered across us would have picked us up on radar way before they needed to do anything about it."
Nancy shook her head. "I'm just saying, we launched way too casually. Yeah, nothing bad happened, but we should have been careful right from the start."
"Oh, well." Peggy's tone combined fatalism and snark, enough of both to merit an annoyed glance from her sister-in-law.
Attila rose from where he'd played with the dogs, fingering the belt buckle that held a hidden knife. "If you guys are going to fight, then I'm goin' outside for a smoke. You know where to find me if you need me."
"I wish he wouldn't do that," Peggy muttered grumpily after he'd left. "It's going to stink up the air in the ship and set off my allergies."
"Peggy!" Helen snapped.
Over Peggy's head Kat shot Helen a look that said "have patience", then squeezed Peggy's shoulder. "Peggy, we've been through this before," she said gently. "We've got more than twelve billion cubic feet of air. Attila's cigarettes aren't going to foul that so you'd notice any time soon, even if we didn't have a life support system filtering and refreshing it."
"I still don't like it," Peggy muttered.
Kat sent that "patience" look Helen's way again.
* * *
"Attention unidentified... uh giant space marble... This is the Inelegant Truth, can you guys hear me? Blink once for yes." Another male voice, this one relatively unaccented, blared out of the radio.
I chuckled as that hail was followed by what amounted to a comedy routine. Wow, these guys sounded almost as slipshod as us.
I steered my current golf cart with one hand (Damn, I should've had Grace leave the one that drives itself, I mentally groused) and held the walkie-talkie up to my ear. I was driving breakneck across raw terrain to get to the southern garage, since our first two batches of visitors had pretty much filled up the east garage, and the jouncing around was getting on my nerves. Not to mention the battering my ear was getting from the walkie-talkie.
Add to To-do list: clear direct roads between all three airlocks. I frowned. Also add to To-do list: find out if there's anywhere we can get asphalt in Fenspace. Or a bulldozer.
When the exchange from the Inelegant Truth had ended with a second heartfelt "Dammit!", I chuckled to myself and debated whether or not I should respond with, "Hey there, large rusting hulk of a crabber, what's up?"
I decided against being that much of a smartass, though. "Ahoy, Inelegant Truth. This is the SV Grover's Corners. I blink in your general direction."
That got me a torrent of laughter in multiple voices, both male and female. The same male speaker as before then said, "I guess we deserved that. Do I have the privilege of speaking to the captain?"
I dodged the cart around a stump and pulled up short at the southern garage. "Um, not really, but I'm about as close as you're going to get."
"...As close as we're going to get?"
"Yeah," I said, hopping out of the cart and heading for the airlock door. "We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week. But all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified by a simple majority..."
They were laughing again. This was good. I grinned to myself as I dogged the door and hit the exhaust cycle.
"Seriously, Truth, we didn't get around to appointing a captain before we lifted, and as it so happens I'm the only one with a radio. So you're stuck with me."
"Fair enough," he said, a little static roughening up his voice. "So, Mr. Not-Appearing-In-The-Captain's-Chair, would you good folks be up for some more company?"
"Well," I drew out the syllable as I hit the little green-lit button that triggered the garage door opener, "we're a little cramped with everybody who's already here, but I think we could squeeze you in somewhere. I've just opened our southern docking bay, but if you're really flying a rusted old crabber, you're bigger than we can handle, and you'll have to come in via a shuttle."
"Understood, Grover's Corners, we'll be there in a few minutes."
I plopped back down into the cart. "Coolness. See you then. Grover's Corners out." Then I looked down at the cart and the three empty seats. Damn, I thought, trying to count voices from memory. I hope there aren't too many of them. I studied the walkie-talkie for a moment. Wish I could call to have someone bring more carts again. I sighed. Add to To-do list: Get in-ship cell phone service up and running pronto.
Yes, my beloved Peggy is a little bit neurotic about a few things. Her allergies are real (tobacco smoke and cats are the two big ones) although just how severe they actually are is unclear to me; although she's had some bad reactions -- including one nearly-disastrous one caused by an attempted program of desensitization by an allergist -- in general I've noticed that the severity of her "usual" attacks tends to be inversely proportional to how distracted or involved with something else she is at the time.
Knowing how she thinks, I don't believe it is too improbable that she would (consciously or not) reason "(ship = indoors) + smoking = bad allergic reaction" and react accordingly.
-- Bob
---------
The Internet Is For Norns.