Strip 480 -- First Seen: 2010-07-09
Escape From Terra is updated with new pages every Monday through Friday.

QV on a short break

QUANTUM VIVE is taking a break for a few weeks, as we prepare for Part 2 of the Novo Palermo story, and also for a Kickstarter campaign for Part 1, which will start in September.

In the meantime, Not-Safe.Space will continue, as a murder mystery begins and the relationship between Eithne and Diana develops in unexpected directions.

Not-Safe.Space is a NSFW strip but more than half the pages are SFW so I've set those to *not* require a Patreon membership. Readers should be able to follow the story without seeing the NSFW pages. If I've done this right.

Kickstarter successful and closed

The Kickstarter campaign for Not-Safe.Space Chapter 3 concluded successfully on April 21, and Scott extended the time allowed for late pledges until May 19.

Books have been ordered from the printer and Scott will be spending the next week or so setting up and sending the PDF files to those who asked for them.

(There are still six of you who have not responded to the survey asking for e-mail and snail-mail addresses, he'll do the best he can.)

Thanks to all for supporting this Kickstarter!

The Transcript For This Page

Panel 1
Long-range shot of 243 Ida, with its tiny moon, Dactyl, off to one side (see the Wikipedia page on 243 Ida). The two bodies are labeled '243 Ida' and 'Dactyl.'

Caption: The planetoid 243 Ida has its own moon, named Dactyl, first discovered in 1993 by the Galileo spacecraft.

Caption: Dactyl is rotationally locked to its orbital period around Ida, so one side of Dactyl always faces Ida.

Panel 2
The brothers flying across space in their shuttle-craft. The shuttle-craft is very light-weight, open to space. It should look something like a WW2-era Jeep with a truncated front-end, a larger back-end, no wheels, and a small fusion engine on the back. Four landing struts surround the fusion engine There is cargo space immediately behind the pair of acceleration seats (think barcaloungers).
Caption: After their first day spent setting up their gear at the mining site on Ida, Bert and Ernie flew back to their ship parked on Dactyl for a comfortable night's rest.

Panel 3
Medium shot of the surface of Dactyl. We see a cave-like opening, and inside, Little Toot sits parked.
Caption: The Guzmán brothers found the cave-like structure on Dactyl's Ida-facing surface the perfect place to park their ship, Little Toot.
Caption: It provided shelter from radiation and meteors, and the dramatic and ever-changing view of Ida was a welcome aesthetic bonus.

Panel 4
Now we see the brothers in their shuttle rocketing away from Dactyl, towards Ida again.

Caption: In the Belt, 'day' and 'daytime' are arbitrary concepts. Like most Belters, the brothers synched to Martian VMT (Valles Marineris Time).

Caption: So 33 centimes (a bit more than eight Terran hours) later, the brothers returned to the mine site.