Special:Badtitle/NS100:Roadtrip

A game User:Angel is planning to run at some point (On 2011-Aug-23, next Tuesday, if I can find players). The player characters must cover a large distance, fast, to get the shielding they need to protect <address>[Callifrey/Corian's Library]</address> from a solar flare.

Prologue

The stars filled the sky, sparkling like frost on black velvet. Callifrey was close to the centre of its galaxy, so the myriad lights were enough to ensure there was never true darkness, even with the sun hidden behind another asteroid. Once, Gil had marvelled at the sheer number of stars sprinkled across the sky, but now he'd lived in the belt long enough to make it no more than background. He carefully checked his breathing mask, a reflex as automatic as breathing itself now, and braced himself against a battered plasticrete wall, tugging as hard as he could on a thick elastic cable. One last check, and he pulled his feet in close, allowing the cable's tension to throw him through a ragged hole in the wall.

Most settled asteroid fields had some kind of mass transit system; but Callifrey was a place for makeshifters and scavengers. Here, once you got used to it, a length of some material could be just as quick as a shuttle for speeding someone across the interplanetary vacuum, and for just a fraction of the cost. The next asteroid was Tolkor's Drift, only a dozen miles away, and the cable gave travellers like Gil enough momentum to get there in just a couple of minutes.

Already, one of the stars was growing larger, revealing itself as something much closer, and much smaller, than it might have appeared. The sunlight glinted off a white surface, dazzling any attempt at recognition until Gil got much closer. If you didn't know about this belt, you'd probably assume the asteroid was a lump of rock, but true rocks were quite rare in Callifrey. The white shape slowly resolved itself into a train carriage, its front end smashed by some long-ago collision. It bore the white and blue livery of the Callifrey Secondor Passenger Transit Service, now covered by a faint tracery of dark green Stratophage vines, plants hardy enough to survive in vacuum. The damaged parts of the train had been sprayed with a liberal coat of emergency hull sealant, quick setting plastic and voidcoat, forming a rigid bubble to keep the air in. At the other end, the train had been welded to what first appeared to be a half-dozen ground caravans and bubble tents. After a second, the incredulous double-take revealed that the first appearance was actually correct.

All over this strange amalgam of vehicles, scaffolding and other wreckage had been welded on to make pylons stretching into space in all directions. Between these, wires were strung to make a net the size of a sports stadium, with webs of stratophage growing across it all to provide the artificial asteroid with its food crops. Building materials were never scarce in the belt; the rich planet Secondor would jettison their scrap metal into space, finding it more convenient to buy in new shuttles, pylons, trains or whatever than to repair something that had been damaged. It had become a matter of pride on the big planet that they had virtually no market for second-hand goods of any kind; and that suited the scavengers and salvagemen of Callifrey fine.

Gil wasn't thinking much about the nature of their strange world, though, as he slammed into the network of ropes and wires that were his neighbours' food source. He had much more important things to do today, and as soon as he'd recovered his breath he began to climb down a pylon that had once held telecoms wires on the big planet.

One of the caravans had a crude intercom system; something that could have been a child's wired walkie-talkie was powered by a dynamo connected to a pulley and chain. Gil looked at the contrivance, impressed by the ingenuity that removed the need for external power, and gave the cord a yank. The little communications device buzzed into life and he leaned over to speak. "Hey, its Gil Carrol. Hope you can help me, I heard you were making a trip to the Library today, and my boy's taken ill. Could I trouble you folks to pick up his medicines?"

Quotefile

(When worrying about the damage from cosmic radiation) Paint it all white. Doesn't that reflect?

(Is anyone here a midwife?) Sleight-of-Hand, pickpocket the baby.

Danyelle: I just don't like being poked with flags