Latest blog post: Redraw of chapter 1 is happening (2024-05-11)
Author's comment:
Yeah, I have no idea either.
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Comments (15)
I guess that's why its implied Val, Mark and Dan is going to end up "off-world".
Aka "political asylum" in other words for their own personal safety.
Bicycling ?? No that would look pretty daft....No....Horse-rustling! Yes...that´s the proper space-adventure Raharr way. Just leap upon any old nag from some field along the road and off he goes.
🎶🎶 RAWHIDE 🎶🎶
Maybe his long legs will drag on the ground but still. His tail can work as a whip to make the terrified Terran grass-eater quadruped go somewhat faster.
Hmmm. I scanned the archive and note that we haven't yet seen any sign of agriculture so far - no fields, no livestock, no buildings that suggest they're part of a farmstead, no agricultural engines, no hay bales, muckhills or other kind of "storage" a farmer would do under an open sky, not even a single (electric) fence around an otherwise empty meadow; just streets and (other kinds of) buildings vs. untouched meadows and forests. Not even a dirt track anywhere, as if nobody there would ever even think of stepping off the asphalt! Good luck finding a rodeo pardner there ...
(Minor correction: There's been one instance of people getting their boots and tires dirty offroad, of course: At Dan's Campground And Crash Site™ in chapter one plus pages 56-59. Took them two weeks to finally make that place presentable.)
Until this comment, I thought you meant on the "Dawn". X)
I specifically skipped the pages where I knew the greenery shown happens to be the gardens(?) of the fleet's flagship. Why, should I go easter egg hunting there?
(Seeing a Bening scene aboard the Dawn while there's no agriculture anywhere in Protagonistan would be quite the folly ... )
You haven't considered that Gharr can probably RUN pretty fast with those legs! Cross-country? No Problem!
Hmmm, dunno ... in terms of length, the legs of humans and Raharr don't seem to be that far apart, and while humans are the result of evolving as endurance hunters on land, the Raharr IIUC grew into that same behavioral niche in a mixed aquatic/arboreal environment ...
(In a more practical test of the theory, it didn't seem that the soldiers were very much surprised by Neas speed in her attempted escape.)
What kind of a xenobiologist would he be if he couldn't run away quickly???
The kind that gets assigned a military detachment as soon as they have actual fieldwork to do?
Oh, the "Shoot first and ask questions later" guys? ANOTHER reason to run away quickly!!!
Alright, Gharr, so ... what now?
You being OK with presenting yourself to the Protagonistani authorities is one thing, but Dan et. al. nonetheless have to fear repercussions for having hidden you from them. They cannot drive you to the site, nor lend you the registered vehicle to drive there yourself, and I don't think there'll be a bus line to the secret military site, not to speak of the reaction the bus/taxi driver would have to the sight of you, blanket or not ... and IIRC the distance between the sites of interest is in the several-10s-of-km range, which makes walking a tad time-consuming ...
... how compatible is your physiology with ye olde bicycle from ye dusty back of ye garden shed ... ?
Its hard to imagine a more valuable place for a xenobiologist to be than a newly discovered planet with sentient life as well.
BUT If the mission's secret purpose was to track down the "Ghosts" and they've found traces here, I could imagine the fleet may well hang around longer as they investigate the lead.
Wow, a moment of clarity for Dan. I think he just realized that Gharr is a real person sitting there in the car with him, someone with professional obligations and other real people that he needs to return to, instead of some fantasy creature from his dreams. That's good.
Gharr may also be selling himself short somewhat, still feeling responsible for the deaths of the shuttle crew. He knows what he did was reckless at best, and he probably knows he can't hide that from Zane, nor can he hide from whatever punishment is coming to him for it. Maybe he expects that punishment will be poetic justice: the denial of his own dream to lead the "uplifting" of a newfound intelligent species.
... I call BS on Gharr; if finding life on a planet is as rare as it has been made to sound, there's no way that his presence on the mission (as it continues elsewhere) is predictably more "valuable" than him staying on Earth. And besides, if it were not that rare, the fleet would have taken more xenobiologists along than just him, himself and yours truly.
Hmmm so making the car skid across lanes does not leave tire marks but a one-eighty at maneuvering pace does ...
Makes me wonder what the true goals of the fleet are. If it isn't the Star Trek "to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before." style mission that's just way further out than normal, then this little excursion to Earth has so far proven to be a costly distraction.
I think they would have to leave the entire fleet in the sol system to properly handle Earth, and they would need a lot more than one xenobiologist to study its diverse life portfolio (albeit rapidly declining portfolio).
Fjords are just weird vehicles, they're lucky it didn't turn into a Fjound On Road Dead.