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Strip 625 -- First Seen: 2011-01-28
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The Transcript For This Page
Panel 1
Large panel: An interior view of one of the larger lava tubes, which is almost 60 meters wide and about 50 meters high. Along the sides are various structures of odd shapes and sizes built along the walls. Artificial lights are spaced along the upper surface. At some point we can see an intersection with a smaller tube, around 25 meters wide by 20 meters tall. In the center of the tube floor there is a moderate amount pedestrian and vehicular traffic.
Caption: As impressive as was above-ground Ares City, the caverns of Mars, the old lava tubes beneath it, were more fascinating.
Caption: The Martian lava tubes are similar to those in Hawaii, Idaho, Australia, and elsewhere on Terra, but much longer, taller, and wider. Successive lava flows created hundreds of these interconnected tubes covering scores of square kilometers
Caption: Main tubes are typically 30 to 60 meters wide and nearly as tall. Secondary tubes range from 1 to 30 meters in diameter.
Caption: After the first low-tech inflatable structures, lava tubes became the second – and still primary – home for most of the Martian population.
Panel 2
An exterior view of the Red Planet Needle, a 1.5-kilometer tall tower standing at the rim of Ius Chasma, next to the Gassend Ground Station. Model the Needle on the Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles – same footprint but many times taller. The Gassend Ground Station is a more modest structure, barely 15 meters high, spread about 100 meters along the edge of the Chasma, and extending maybe 50 meters north of the rim on the upper Martian surface. (Although since we're looking up at the Needle and the Station from inside the Chasma, we can't see how far the Station extends northward.
We can see a few elevator tubes extending down from the Station toward the industrial section in the Chasma, and one very small, thin track extending from the base of the Needle and plunging straight down into the Chasma (more about this later).
Caption: The towers were recent innovations that reflected the enormous advances in Martians' wealth and standard of living.
Caption: Reggie and Babbette had taken a suite on the 320th floor of the Red Planet Needle, an arcology adjacent to Gassend Ground Station.
Panel 3
Inside the suite, Reggie and Babbette are side-by-side in their hotel room (which is luxurious but not nearly as palatial as the Delta-Free owner's suite), gazing out a broad window affording them a spectacular view of Ares City and Valles Marineris beyond.
Reggie: My dear, I wish we had more time to explore Mars.
Reggie: For one thing, we could have visited the Nya Darra Adam Khel enclave. Its Pashtun artisans hand-make beautiful firearms from planetoid nickel-iron.
Panel 4
Looking back through the window in on Babbette and Reggie
Babbette: I would have liked to visit Lenin's Hammer, the communist collective. It was one of the first Martian settlements.
Babbette: I'd like to know how they sidestepped the laws of economics.
Panel 5
Reggie places an arm around Babbette's shoulder.
Reggie: We'll visit the gunnies, the commies, and everything else, next time we visit Mars, I promise.
Reggie: Right now, though, we have a couple of decadays of intense rejuv, almost all of it in an induced coma.
Panel 6
Babbette looks up at Reggie with a mischievous grin. Reggie suddenly looks uncomfortable.
Babbette: Okay, but before we go 'under the knife,' I want to ride the Martian Meteor roller coaster.
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