Bip, haven't you heard you aren't supposed to ask a lady her weight?
(...She's about 750 kilos.)
Transcript
Talita: Lucky you. I can lift significantly more than that.
She hops up the ladder on the side of the support jack rail and begins climbing the long extendable staircase connected to the airlock door of the Runaway.
Bip: Oh yeah, you're really into lifting weights, aren't you?
Talita: Well, it's handy in my line of work. ...And it's kinda fun, seeing what I can push myself to do. Though I'm really better at rowing than lifting.
Bip: So how much can you row?
The outer hatch of the airlock opens and Talita walks into the the dim glow of the tube-shaped chamber's illumination bars. A posse of electrician worms is waiting the greet her inside.
Talita: In 1g it's a little over twice my body weight, with all six legs.
Bip: What's your body weight?
Her cheeks bristle up bashfully.
Talita: Oh… er… I can row 1800 kilos.
Bip: Not shabby!
Talita: Um, thanks.
The exterior hatch shuts behind her.
SFX: SHUNK
Talita looks down, startled, as gas starts coming out of the airlock chamber's repressurization vents.
SFX: pssssssssshhh
42 thoughts on “Runaway to the Stars: Page 203”
Arcstone
Did talita just walk under a vile-e-coyote box propped up by a stick?
JoB
But of course. She just confirmed that she won’t be able to move the two-ton cardboard box Bip used. 😛
(Nah, seriously – Bip wants to keep their very existence a secret (page 174) and as far as we know, the Runaway wouldn’t be able to make a fast escape even if it has already received the amount of fuel previously discussed (page 151). Taking a single hostage to keep the Dirtstone Cops at distance after the remaining two accomplices raised the alarm would be pretty much antithetical.)
Vinemaple
I get the feeling Bip is just demonstrating that they’ve restored life support, as a further enticement to convincing the women to Runaway with Bip.
40
I love her suittttt. And just her locomotion in general.
Robin
“Girl are you a hexaped? Because I’m loco for your motion”
kaittzie
I snrk-ed
Lilac
Bip buddy did you just close the door behind her. This is not Trustworthy Behavior
zaratustra
It’s an airlock. Someone’s going to have to trust someone.
HAL9000
look, i know bip’s NOT gonna pull a “Sorry Talita, I’m afraid I can’t do that”, but you gotta admit the dramatic potential is there.
TotallySomebody
I actually started reading that today!!
Origamigryphon
They will pull that stunt at some point: https://www.tumblr.com/jayrockin/632222392656265216/you-know-what-i-have-posted-well-over-100-comic?source=share
Vinemaple
I love that post. But I also noticed Bip had body decoration on their avatar, back then. Kind of similar to what Nabi-Nabu has. Looks cool, but obviously Bip’s avatar is getting drawn too small for that a lot of the time, so it had to go.
blythe
username checks out
Vinemaple
Are we just not going to talk about how cool it looks to see Talita zooming up a set of steeply-pitched Human-size stairs on all sixes? Jay, that locomotion is sick af!
Peter Jensen
I’m a bit surprised that the otherwise safety-conscious Talita isn’t using a fall-prevention measure, like on this page (in which, incidentally, Bip is also buttering up Talita):
https://www.runawaytothestars.com/comic/rtts-page-142/
That height seems no less dangerous and a lot more precarious, with that steep incline and small steps.
Enai
Yeah, now that you mention it I’m getting anxious about her falling, and unlike Talita I’m aware that she probably has plot armour.
Vinemaple
On that page, I’m pretty sure the picture of Talita clipping her harness to point after point on the rail is meant to be a time-lapse. She’s pausing and working at each point. She’s also really high up (although with her mass, she’s more vulnerable to fall damage).
Stairways and ladders are intended to be climbed and descended. If Jovian safety regs are anything like OSHA, one wouldn’t need to clip in unless one was using the stairway as a *working* platform… It would slow everything down too much, if everybody had to use aloft procedures every time they climbed or descended a stairway or ladder, or I think that’s the reasoning, at least.
Sparkax
He’s not about to kidnap her and take her off on a wacky space adventure, is he???
Undercooked Mothman
Bip uses they/them
JoB
With the ship resting horizontally on Dirtball’s surface and its bow pointed towards a vertical wall of the pit it’s hidden in, it’d be a very short space adventure.
(And even if Bip’d use the crane to put the Runaway in a vertical position first, the torch engines’ exhaust would kill everyone in Shikaviil port’s habitat as it takes off. IF it even takes off; the engines are said to provide only 0.2 gees more than Ixion-3’s gravitational pull, which would make it a pretty slow take-off, and I’m not sure that the small maneuvering thrusters are up to the job of keeping the ship upright.)
Claire
If they could do that, they wouldn’t need Gillie, Idrisah, and Talita to begin with.
Greebus
Centaur crew must go crazy. Makes me wonder what centaur Tour de Maks is like.
Kitty
It’s cute that Bip is just sort of chatting her up in a way that seems to be diffusing her bad mood at little. They’re generally pretty smooth about that, but it does feel like they just genuinely like her and want to know about her also.
Vinemaple
I’m genuinely curious: Do you think Bip is intentionally being exactly as annoying as they want, as their way of managing others’ stress and emotions? Or do you disagree that Bip tends to be annoying at all? Or third option?
This theory (you’re far from the only one with it), that Bip is running an extremely deep and subtle Crew Resource Management game, is really fascinating and intriguing to me, but it’s not naturally intuitive to me, and I want to understand the rationale behind it.
0xabad1dea
I bet Talita’s next question is why Bip has bothered getting the atmosphere circulation working.
Varyon
For a ship that’s designed to be pressurized, atmospheric circulation is likely to be part of how components onboard stay cool. I’m reminded of a part of the webcomic Freefall where Florence notes the robot Helix isn’t designed to work in a vacuum. Helix thinks she’s wrong since, as a robot, he doesn’t need to breathe, but then she asks how he prevents overheating, and he realizes his onboard fans would be useless without an atmosphere.
Is that the case here? I could potentially see all the essential components being capable of keeping cool in case of a total loss of atmosphere (wherein the crew would have to be wearing vacuum suits, ideally with good enough filtration to keep them breathing long enough to get somewhere habitable or for help to arrive), after all. I’m guessing, based on Talita’s surprise, that his primary purpose is to make the ship habitable, as he’d rather not fly around alone if he can avoid it.
JoB
For us spacefare-dabblers, removing excess heat from an object in space/vacuum (where both conduction and convection are unavailable, and only (black body) radiation remains as a method of transferring heat) is a Big Problem™.
For those who build ships like the Runaway, shedding heat in space can be done well enough that the torch engines – with an energy output on par with a thermonuclear warhead, only continuous – won’t melt themselves off the structure, much less instantly.
Most of the systems in the Runaway’s pressurized sections are likely involved in (biological) life support somehow. Which means that you can safely cut power to them as soon as explosive decompression happens; anyone not in a space suit yet is never going to need those systems again, and the others at least not until they get back out of them. No power, no heat generated, no need to bleed it off to avoid damage.
That leaves Bips mainframes – said to sit on the top of the toroidal habitat, and thus supposedly within the ship atmosphere – as the one system the crew would want to keep running even in the case of it getting depressurized. Considering that phone-y-Bip and Talita powered them up in a still very much unpressurized Runaway, we have to conclude that the hardware does support that mode of operation.
Kayjack
Well black body radiation isn’t the //only// way. EMU space suits used a liquid sublimation system to vent heat since they couldn’t rely on radiators. Blackbody radiation is just the only Solid state solution.
SuriXiruS
this may be me looking far too much into everything, but does talita’s weight sensitivity come from the fact she’s always probably been a lot heavier than her peers?
or am I being insane again
forest @ swifty's hq
literally came here to say the same thing LOL. ive been there girl. bip probably doesnt realize he’s being maybe a little too direct asking for weight – maybe not realizing weight is something she might be sensitive about?
theplushfrog
I’d also assume that’s why she’s flustered about the question, but also leads me to wonder if Bip used the excuse to ask so they could put her weight into their calculations for on-board passenger weight. Or if they were just interested in how different she is from the centaurs they’ve been used to.
Vinemaple
There may be a little bit of Bip looking at their sensor data and thinking “Holy crap, 900 kilos? How much of that is EVA suit, and how much is… muscle mass?”
Madame Thunderbone
I’d imagine it’s because it’s one more cutting reminder that she’s not human.
Matt
When you’re so strong that 300kg count as a rounding error of “a little more”! Damn!
Common Handle
god Damn talita that’s a lot. I wonder if she had to build her own hexapod-friendly rowing machine. And how that would look, actually
JoB
a) yes, of course, b) like this.
Adrienne
Is that a row machine? I’m hardly a gym rat, but a row machine involves pulling towards the chest and it looks like Talita is pushing away from herself, so it would be a different machine, right?
Nokikissa
The transcript on that page uses the word “rowing” to describe Talita using the machine at least
JoB
Well, the bench is just a rectangular surface, so all that Talita needs to do to pull that handle instead of pushing it is to turn around and point her head the other way. :-3
I’m not fluent in Kraftmaschinisch, either, but judging from the hi-res overview, bench+treadmill(+washers/dryers+lathe) are all the items Talita has in her backyard.
(And I would expect the question of “now is that really rowing?” to devolve into a discussion of “how many oars would a centaur use if they were rowing a centaur-made rowboat, if such a thing even exists, and which limbs would be pressing against a footrest instead?” rather fast. 😉 )
Enai
There’s also the fact that Talitas shoulder joints fold differently from human ones. Maybe she’d actually have to face the direction the boat is going to create maximal force in the water? I don’t row, but I’m reasonably confident the fact that rowers face backwards is a practical rather than an aesthetique(tm) choice.
JoB
> I’m reasonably confident the fact that rowers face backwards
> is a practical rather than an aesthetique(tm) choice.
The typical rowing movement involves the body parts that routinely keep us standing upright – legs and back – pushing while the arms pull (which, I’d guess, they’re at least not worse at than pushing), so yes, it’s about maximizing the force exerted. Forward-facing rowing exists, but apart from the “Rantilla” variant, I’m pretty sure that they’re not suited for that same goal. Paddling works better in a forward-looking stance, because it’s missing the motion-reverting effect of the fixed pivot point.
However, an important point in a human’s max-force rowing motion is that the limbs are held as parallel to the spine as possible, which might not be possible for a centaur with their usual quadrupedal stance (= right angles between limbs and spine).
Common Handle
ahhh I see! I forgot about that panel.