landscape

[isthisart]

Linya avoids haring off to do things much while Miles's arms are unusable. Once he can feed himself comfortably enough to prefer to do so, though, she makes plans with Ekaterin to go with her and little Nikki on a hike in some nice woods of mixed-origin fauna. She packs a picnic and takes the lightflyer and flies out to pick up the relevant subset of Vorsoissons.

Comments

[isthisart]

"Do you want to go to other planets, Nikki?"

[first_loyalty]

"Yeah!"

"Maybe someday we will," says Ekaterin.

[isthisart]

"I think Komarr's nice. Everybody there lives in arcologies."

[first_loyalty]

"What's an arcology?" inquires Nikki.

[isthisart]

"It's a big dome that keeps the air inside. Komarr doesn't have nice air on the rest of it."

[first_loyalty]

"Is it like vacuum?" he wonders. "Or is it smelly air?"

[isthisart]

"It's not vacuum, and I don't know how it smells. It doesn't have enough oxygen in it."

[first_loyalty]

"So people can't breathe it," Ekaterin clarifies.

"Oh! That's weird," says Nikki. "Why does Komarr have bad fake air?"

[isthisart]

"Well, it started out that way, and people are working on making it have good real air instead, but it's taking a long time."

[first_loyalty]

"Why's it take so long?" he asks. "Can't they just get it from somewhere that has lots?"

[isthisart]

"Most of the places that have air want to keep it all for themselves. Even if they didn't, you'd need so many ships to hold all the air that you'd need to cover up a whole planet. Ships are pretty small compared to planets."

[first_loyalty]

"I guess so," he concedes.

[isthisart]

"So they're figuring out how to make it at home, out of the fake air, with algae and stuff like that."

[first_loyalty]

"What's an algae?" he asks next.

[isthisart]

"It's a little plant that lives in large groups. Some of it looks like green, wet hair."

[first_loyalty]

"That sounds weird," says Nikki.

[isthisart]

"It's kind of weird. But it's good at making oxygen for the air."

[first_loyalty]

"So people can breathe it?" he asks, in the interests of clarification.

[isthisart]

"Yup. Algae is helpful like that. All plants are, but algae grows quick and it's less picky about some things than some other plants are."

[first_loyalty]

"What are plants picky about?"

"Lots of things," says Ekaterin.

"Yeah but what?"

[isthisart]

"For one thing, Komarr doesn't get very much sunshine, and plants love sunshine," supplies Linya.

[first_loyalty]

"Oh. Why doesn't Komarr get sunshine?" asks Nikki.

[isthisart]

"Its sun is far away. It has a mirror to help it get more sun, but that only helps a little."

[first_loyalty]

"A mirror?" he asks.

[isthisart]

"Yep! A big space mirror to reflect the sun at the planet."