Strip 620 -- First Seen: 2011-01-21
Escape From Terra is updated with new pages every Monday through Friday.

What Comes Next

The war is over, but This Means War has a ways to go. Novo Paolo/Bubbleopolis is still in a nebula/stellar nursery, no one knows what happened to the planet Sharen (center of the Intergalactic Council), and the status of the now-surrendered Invaders is yet to be resolved. What will they do when they learn their homeworld is basically destroyed? Will Alyss and Li be re-united? How about Diana (the real one) and Otto?

These questions will be resolved in the next few weeks, before This Means War part 3 wraps in late May.

After that, I plan to go BACK in time about 400 years, to when Alyss and Li left their home in the Sol System to colonize a new world on the far side of the galaxy. As one might expect, hijinks ensue. New subtitle yet to be determined, start date sometime in around the start of July. Stay tuned!

A Little House Cleaning

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The Transcript For This Page

Panel 1
About Phobos: there is almost (but not quite) no gravity here, even compared with Ceres. People move about with the assistance of hand-rails running everywhere. Chairs are all equipped with toe-holds and arms that rotate over the occupant's laps, holding them in place. (sort of like the bridge chairs on the movie version of the U.S.S. Enterprise).
Establishing shot of the Spaceport Museum. It is a broad space – about 50 meters long, 40 meters wide, with an arched, transparent ceiling 20 meters above. Visitors move about from exhibit to exhibit with hand-rails running along both sides of the aisles. The exhibits themselves contain interesting-looking rocks, models of older-model spaceships (including the Viking 1 orbiter and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and the Russian Fobos Grunt), a model of a much more modest-looking Spaceport in its early days, etc.
A large majority of the visitors are young adult women. We can see Babbette and Reggie looking at one of the nearby exhibits.
Caption: Another burner, the Sadie Hawkins, had arrived at the spaceport just ahead of the Delta Free, so its passengers had first dibs on the Skyhook crawlers.
Caption: Babbette and Reggie accepted the delay philosophically and used the time to visit the Stickney Spaceport Museum.

Panel 2
Babbette and Reggie in a spaceport restaurant. Through one of the large windows we can see the Skyhook arrival and departure promenade. The Skyhook carbon nano-tube ribbon, about 3 meters wide, starts on the 'ground' and extends up through the ceiling. A broad, wedge-shaped, elevated corridor with an airlock at the narrow end extends up to the landing point for the crawler-flyer, which isn't currently present. Beyond the promenade we can see some of the crater rim, and above it, space.
Babbette and Reggie are 'seated' at a table. At other tables, we can see that most of the other guests are female. Reggie is looking at them curiously. Tables have 'Gecko' surfaces but food and drinks are conveyed in containers with transparent, dome-like tops on them. The drinks have straws, the domes on the food-plates are 'smart-skin' membranes that one can stick utensils through to pull food out but otherwise keep the food on the plates.
Caption: Afterwards, they decided to have a meal in one of the restaurants overlooking the Skyhook landing and departure promenade.
Reggie: I must be losing my touch.

Panel 3
Reggie and Babbette.
Reggie: I just now realized that all of the passengers on the first vehicle down were women.
Reggie: It looks like most of those who will being going with us are women, too. I wonder why.

Panel 4
Medium shot of Babbette, lifting a spoonful of mashed potatoes towards her mouth.
Babbette: The crew is all female, too.
Babbette: The ship's name, Sadie Hawkins, doesn't give you a clue?

Panel 5
Medium c/u of Reggie, sipping his drink through a straw from a dome-lidded glass. He looks puzzled.
Reggie: Is that the daughter of Steven Hawkins – or is it Hawkings?

Panel 6
Babbette explodes in a spasm of laughter, launching a mouthful of mashed potatoes, which would have hit Reggie if he hadn't quickly ducked, so it sails past him. In the micro-gravity, the potatoes fly in a straight line.
Babbette: BWAAA-HA-HA-HA!!
Reggie: Woah!