As some of you noticed, Tiiliitian numerals are base 8, and are written in ascending order. So 8 is written as "01" and 16 is "02" and et cetera.
Transcript
An RC front loader rolls up behind Talita on the empty factory roadway, with an electrician worm perched on its steering wheel.
Bip: So there's enough purified heavy water?
Talita: Yeah, but I don’t know how much we can convert before Mel does geosurvey in 2 weeks. The worksite is gonna be pretty suspicious from satellite photos.
Bip: And running the plant at max capacity would be suspicious in energy use logs…
Talita: Like we even could. This plant hasn't refined deuterium in over a decade.
A birds-eye view of the huge indoor space shows rows of water and gas tanks, machinery, and piping under a semi-cylinder roof. The factory floor has road markers painted on it, but there is also a branch-like structure of narrow catwalks connecting the tops of various structures and the inside walls.
HYDROLYSIS PLANT
- fluid cooling pipes
- water tanks
- electrolyzers
- gas separators
- purifiers and dryers
- compressors
- flight access catwalks
35 thoughts on “Runaway to the Stars: Page 166”
ryttyr
I love the 3D environment.
Hunter
So I imagine this is how they make fuel for the ship.
Light_In_The_Fog
It seems like it, yeah. Deuterium is great fission fuel.
Ruby
So we’re looking at a delay of a couple of weeks. Or at least I would wait for Mel to do the inspection and then get to it.
Or. Mel will be distracted with the new apartments/residents buying Bip some time.
JoB
I think that by “the worksite”, Talita’s referring to the Runaway sitting under open skies, not the hydrolysis plant which is hidden under its roof …
bryn
youre telling me a shrimp drives this truck??
JoB
Show me something you call a “truck” and I’ll tell you what it’d call you either way. 😛
wingedhorror
No, no, the ship’s driving the truck, which is carrying the shrimp, which is also being driven by the ship. And they’re all driving Talita bananas! Haha! *ahem*
Gheesfellow
Correct on all accounts!
Enai
It occurs to me that this facility must’ve been pressurized when it was in use: those catwalks are only accessible by flight. Avians probably are unable to fly in space suits, if even slightly too heavy ordinary clothes give them trouble in that regard. Another problem is the much lower natural atmospheric pressure reducing the lift they can generate with their wings.
.
I wonder if there are more buildings on Dirtball that used to be pressurized and aren’t now.
Havlock
It’s also possible that some or even all of the machinery in here isn’t rated for a no or low atmo environment, so which case it’d make sense for the building to still be pressurized but the atmo inside wouldn’t be cycling through air scrubbers and the like to save on upkeep so it’d be unfit to breathe, which would explain why Talita is wearing her space suit in here.
eden
avians can’t fly in their spacesuits, ibthink I remember eaten say they’re basically like human suits but the wing parts are braced in a mesh
the Inmara
Huh. We read “flight access catwalks” differently. Not that they were accessible only by flight, but that they allow access to something called “a flight” or “the flight”, and just assumed it was a vocabulary word we weren’t familiar with related to the processing plant.
Like, when you poor a set of samples of beers in a brewpub, sometimes it’s called “a flight of beer”.
In this case, we’d kind of assume it was that the catwalks are passing above the processing plant. They give you access to an angle and altitude that otherwise would only be accessible by flight.
They could easily have stairs or a lift that’s not visible in the illustration.
the Inmara
There’s also, you know, a flight of stairs.
JoB
> those catwalks are only accessible by flight
·
I wondered about access by flight for a moment, too, especially seeing that they’re labeled “flight access catwalks”, but it turns out that you can get everywhere just walking: From the ground to the central walkway the two (and a half?) protagonists are on by the wide white ramp branching off between them, from there to the other central one, the one above the water tanks, and the compressors (e.g., if Talita were to take a right/left/right turn at the next intersection, respectively), from the other central one to the “cooling pipes” walkway or over the compressors (to the gas storage tanks, I suppose) by its other perpendicular ramps, or back to the ground by the steep ramps running parallel to it.
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Long walks, for sure, but if they were meant for avian take-off and landing, they’d have parts with the railing removed to facilitate that, wouldn’t they?
·
(And if the place had been remodeled with humans in mind, there’d be ladders for shortcuts. And (more¹) elevators.)
¹ assuming that the thing at the remote end of the “gas separators” walkway is an elevator shaft
JoB
I can’t quite make sense of the script-bearing “slab” on the platform they’re headed to. It looks … severely damaged. Any chance that getting the plant operational again is not just a matter of addressing its ageing?
Enai
It looks like a damaged tarp or something to me. Not necessarily a sign the whatsit it sits on top of is kaputt.
.
On the other hand, if Dirtball doesn’t have a magnetic field to protect it from getting bombarded with ions, the visible damage to the equipment may be the least of the problems. Depending on the shielding against the solar wind, at least the electronics may be in bad shape.
JoB
> Depending on the shielding against the solar wind, …
·
The installations are – if narrowly – on the dark side of Dirtball’s (unmoving, because tidal lock) terminator. That means that there’s some stretch of surface shielding them from the sun. (A magnetic field could actually be counterproductive, if it bends the ions’ trajectory so as to follow the surface’s curvature …)
·
However, more importantly, the same problem would have affected both this plant and the habitat all the way back when the entire presence was an avian mining operation, so it’s fair to assume that it has has been dealt with somehow long since.
·
(… or are avians and their electronics immune to radiation because their home planet happens to be an oversized microwave oven, an Oklo lookalike or somesuch?? 8-* )
Enai
I was thinking more along the lines of some sort of active shielding (like a local magnetic field for instance) that’s been deactivated along with the fuel plant. But good point about it being on the dark side of Dirtball. I’d forgotten that Ixion’s tidally locked to its star.
Looks like the plant may be in surprisingly good shape for its age and state of disuse then. Unless the temps got in and played a rousing game of “chuck scrap metal around for no good reason”.
JoB
> Unless the temps got in
·
“Have at thee!!”
[punctures a 30-or-so-meters-high tank at floor level that happens to be almost full]
Greebus
I love that Talita has her little hand on her hip lol
notanocelot
I still love the little detail of the avian handrails barely reaching talita’s ankles in height.
Redacted
Rtts True Ending; Talita trips over the railing and dies
JoB
Hmmm, good point: She did use her FAS on the walkways above the Runaway, even though the railings there are much more appropriate for her size than the ones here. She may not want to use it on the extra wide walkway she’s on right now, but why didn’t she bring it nonetheless, just in case?
Richard
This Is extremely awesome
Fallingfeather
I love the 3D models you made! Do you have a special filter to “convert” them to the comic’s art style, or do you manually draw over them?
Jay Eaton
Clip Studio has a “convert to linework” function that can be used on models and screenshots, but the result usually needs a lot of touching up to look not awful. So functionally, both.
Bruce Mickelson
Your technology artwork is amazing. The vehicle tires alone must have been a lot of work, and the roboworm on top of the steering wheel is the cherry on top!
Adrienne
This page must have taken ages 💀 Congratulations on never having to draw it again, it was worth it
Amanda/OwlBear
roboworm on the steering wheel!
Enai
Yeah! Isn’t it adorable? I wonder why Bip does that. Do they expect having to repair some fiddly electronics on the spot? Or maybe they want to be able to look at parts of the refinery the multi-purpose vehicle can’t get to…
Rubicon Art
They’re just a rascal
The Opossum Witch
Agreed, I wouldn’t be surprised if Bip did it for fun and cause it looked silly
JoB
> Isn’t it adorable? I wonder why Bip does that.
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Make sure that Talita won’t be able to hide from them in a pipe duct or somesuch, either? 😛
HAL9000
any pipe duct that could fit talita could probably fit the full frontloader too…
(i jest, i jest. half a frontloader perhaps)