Page 10 - Click on page above to goto the next page. -- First Seen: 2009-09-18

This is a preview of: Phoebus Krumm

The Transcript For This Page

Three Panels

PANEL ONE (upper half of page)

Another montage in three 'exposures'.

At the far right, Demondion-Echeverria and Krumm have underwear,
and their hair streams wetly behind them as they _stride_ from the
elevator toward the front door, attended on the fly by one of the
girls.

In the middle 'exposure', they continue an unbroken stride, but
now they have pants and boots. One of the girls is offering them
shirts.

In the third 'exposure', Maytag holds their coats and the door is
opened as they strap on their personal _thrustibles_, something no
gentleman of this place and time would imagine going into public
without.

Imagine an object about the size and shape of a bar of Dial soap,
worn flat and lengthwise on the arm just below the elbow. It is held
on by a strap nearly as wide as the object (which contains most of the
mechanism of the thrustible) is long. The object is slightly curved to
fit the arm and slightly curved on top to maintain an even thickness.
There are a few buttons on top, like a telephone keypad.

From the bar of 'soap' imagine a rod or dowel (actually, the
entire device is 'metallo-plastic' and the finer specimens are highly
engraved) about 3/16' in diameter, slightly flattened, and running
parallel to the upper forearm. This is the fiberconductive 'barrel',
held to the wrist with a strap, but continuing long enough to jut out
about an inch beyond the first (largest) set of knuckles, above the
first and middle fingers.

Where the rod passes over the 'crotch' between the first and
middle fingers, a thin perpendicular extension passes down between the
fingers, and ends where it meets the 'yoke', a palm-spanning object
about the thickness and width of a tongue depressor, but shorter. It
curves slightly to fit the underside of the hand. Its front edge
functions as a 'grip safety' and there is a trigger button at the
thumb end of the object.

Show what you can in this panel, we'll see more soon.

Demondion-Echeverria straps his thrustible onto his left arm.
Krumm carries an outsized model on _each_ of his arms.

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PANEL TWO (lower lefthand quarter of page)

They slip on their coats, so that the terminal lenses of their
thrustibles just peep out beyond their lace cuffs. One of the men has
his palm turned up so we can see the yoke. Perhaps there's some
instrumentation on the underside showing charge state and collimation
diameter.

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PANEL THREE (lower right quarter of page)

They stride out the door and into the street, where a chauffered
vehicle awaits. It's a bit like a dory-sized boat, floats two feet
above the street, and has a dome-shaped #-field over it. We'll need to
discuss how to illustrate this, and in some detail, as #-fields will
become very important later in the story.

In the foreground, the narrator climbs on a modernistic device
resembling a powered unicycle, but without a wheel.

Narrative: 'I was ready for the Ambassador and the Baker when they
finally emerged.'