Strip 623 -- First Seen: 2011-01-26
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
A Skyhook crawler-flier is in flight mode. We see it from behind, approaching Ares City, a jumble of domes and towers covering a 200-square-km section along the northern RIM of the massive Ius Chasma region of Valles Marineris. The Gassend Elevator Ground Station is at the far end of the city, , with the 1.5-km tall Red Planet Needle just the other side of the Station. Just north of the city, farther from the Chasm, we can see a 5-km-long landing strip that is part of Ares City Aerospaceport. Domed farming areas fan outward from the city east, west and north.
Some elevator tubes run from the buildings at the rim of the chasm down the steep slope towards the chasm floor, where there are some industrial buildings.

Caption: The trip down to the end of the Skyhook and subsequent flight to the Ares City Aerospaceport was spectacular, but otherwise uneventful.
Panel 2
Large panel. We see Babbette and Reggie from behind, taking in the splendor of above-ground
Ares City. Gleaming, round-sided towers rise underneath a series of massive, interconnected domes. Some larger towers can be seen rising through the domes and hundreds of meters into the sky above. Tallest of all is the Red Planet Needle.
Babbette: Before Carlos, the boys and I got to the belt, we spent a few days waiting for passage from Mars.
Babbette: It wasn't much more than a frontier settlement – primitive, inflated structures and men walking around in bulky, dirty environment suits.
Babbette: Now, it's something out of the Wizard of Oz.