Page 62 -- First Seen: 2010-01-18

This is a preview of: Phoebus Krumm

The Transcript For This Page

PANEL ONE (upper third)

Be reminded that Skye is a ringed planet, and that, even during
the day, the ring is often visible, just as the Moon is here.

Remember too, on her walk with Krumm, Bretta should be fully
equipped, with dual thrustibles, crossbow and quarrels, and Bowie
knife.

During their walk together, Bretta and Krumm will see many aspects
of Skyan agriculture, some of them familiar, some of them quite
unfamiliar.

The general setting of the Islay Holdings is a vast, circular,
alpine area, possibly an ancient meteor crater two hundred klommes in
diameter. It is ringed by jagged mountains (in which guerilla actions
were based during the Hanoverian conquest of an earlier human colonial
remnants. Almost to their tops, the mountains are covered with the
famous Skyan everblue forests. Timber from Skye is highly valued
elsewhere for many qualities, including decorative use.

The more or less flat floor of the great valley is covered mostly
with long native grasses, which are harvested to feed domesticated
animals, most of them native to moonringed Skye (horses and cattle,
imported by the First Wave colonists, died out hundreds of years ago).
The are various bushes featuring colorful berries that are picked and
exported, along with some native wild teas.

Here and there, in low-lying areas, ''shrooms' are found and
harvested. Some, as in the meadow immediately before the Holdings, are
of ordinary size, but extraordinary flavor. But here and there, small
forests of native fungi are tended and harvested for their culinary
and pharmaceutical properties. Some of these plants reach 12 to 15
'measures' into the air, but otherwise resemble some of the more
exotic mushrooms of Old Earth.

They'll see lakes and ponds, every one of them circular -- the
moon-ring is not especially stable.

In this panel, Bretta and Krumm cross the meadow before the
Holdings, where peasants bend to pick mushrooms and berries from the
ankle-high grass. There are men and women and happy children scattered
throughout these scenes.

Bretta: 'What brings you to moonringed Skye, old friend?'

Krumm: 'Old business and bad news.'

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PANEL TWO (upper righthand quarter of page)

At the edge of the meadow away from the Holdings, they approach
some woods. In the meadow, peasants are raking and forking hay onto an
antigravity conveyance, pulled by two of the three-legged draft
animals.

Krumm: 'The Jendyne are building a warship four times the firepower of
of any vessel ever built. They will test her, then build a fleet.'

Bretta: 'And your involvement in all this?'

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PANEL THREE (lower lefthand quarter of page)

In the woods, they walk a path between giant everblues, many with
enormous shelf mushrooms which peasants are trimming with long poles,
and attending in other ways, one or two held in the air by antigravity
suspensors.

Krumm: 'The Ceo has tasked me with cutting her out and destroying
her.'

Bretta: 'I see. And we know of this ship because ... ?'

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PANEL FOUR

More woods. With the help of what looks like furry three-legged
starfish the size of a medium dog, peasants are digging something like
giant, beachball-sized truffles from among the tree roots.

Krumm: 'Frantisek thought we should know. So did the Ceo's aunt, who
also sent word.'

Bretta: 'Anastasia Wheeler, the Coordinated Arm's ... Coordinator.'


PANEL FIVE

As they continue in the forest, they encounter groves of giant
mushrooms (some as tall as a two-story building). The first lot are
simply big ordinary capped mushrooms. Peasants are brushing the gills
on their undersides with long-poled brooms to harvest spores.

Krumm: 'Whence the bad news arises. I'd have you on this enterprise in
any case, but there is a ... a special urgency.'

Bretta: 'Urgency? When have I ever heard the Baker talk like this
before?'