SLOW TRAIN FROM ARCTURUS – snippet 50:
"We're not going to find him, if the Force can't," said Lani, dispirited, when they paused in a quiet corridor. "I think we need to split up. At least that way we can cover more ground, and if I'm caught, you won't be implicated."
STORM FROM THE SHADOWS – snippet 29:
"Me?" This time Honor's surprise was evident, and Michelle nodded.
"You. I got the impression the original suggestion to include you may have come from Thomas Theisman, but I'm not sure about that. Pritchart did assure me, however, that neither she nor anyone in her administration had anything to do with your attempted assassination. And you can believe however much of that you want to."
STORM FROM THE SHADOWS – snippet 28:
Despite her own genuine concern, Michelle's lips twitched. Unlike her, Honor Alexander-Harrington had spent the better part of fifty T-years training in coup de vitesse. Even without the hidden pulser Michelle knew her father had built into Honor's artificial left hand, Honor wouldn't find it particularly difficult to fend off any bare-handed assault Michelle might launch.
SLOW TRAIN TO ARCTURUS – snippet 49:
Chapter 21
"Surface area, not volume, is the key to many biological processes. By layering the inside of a habitat we increase—at approximately four meters per layer—the surface area from roughly 5500 hectares to X. By using vertical surfaces too—by growing plants on the growth medium on the walls we increase that growing area—assuming tightest possible corridors—at about 3 meters to X. Now that's just not practical and you lose too much space to interstitial support and piping and so on. So the optimum corridor width is about ten meters. Of course that's optimum for materials use. For practicalities and aesthetics—which may be even more important than we realize on longer trips—we need some wider and higher areas. It's a series of trade-offs. It's going to make the inside of theses structures into a maze. The biggest maze ever built. More easy to get lost in than any jungle. Capable of carrying—physically—if not sustaining, several million people."
Transcript of Prof. Lucas Teich's presentation to the Interstellar Colonization and Exploration Society, on the bio-environmental factors in the proposed habitats for the Slowtrain Project. From: A CONCISE HISTORY OF HUMAN SPACE COLONIZATION. P233, Chipattari, H, and Shah, G.D. (Ed) ___________________________________________________________________
"He's in jail. I have heard that they want to castrate him. Neuter him," explained Amber.
1635: THE DREESON INCIDENT – snippet 23:
PART III
October 1634
Innumerable force of spirits armed
Chapter 13
Fulda
“There’s not a place to stay anywhere in Fulda.” Simon Jones’ voice was very glum. “One of those ‘no room at the inn’ situations. We should have thought ahead. It’s been in all the papers, after all. Henry Dreeson’s little motorcade arrived early this afternoon. All the bright lights and would-be bright lights of Buchenland County have crammed themselves into town.”
SLOW TRAIN TO ARCTURUS – snippet 48:
He had a knife in his hand, and a look of triumph in his eyes. However, the most censorious woman in the Matriarchy might have forgiven him. Howard's knife was an old rounded buttering knife—and the reason for his triumph was finding that its tip fitted the slot on the top of the shaft. They had the part. What they didn't have was any tools. The little ring of metal the online manual had described as a circlip had been hell to remove. It had taken the near destruction of her tweezers to finally send it whizzing across the yard. Then they'd had to hunt for it.
STORM FROM THE SHADOWS – snippet 27:
Both hands fell from the salute, and Michelle stepped past the BBOD, trying not to limp too noticeably as she found herself face-to-face with the tall, almond-eyed woman in the uniform of a full admiral and the cream and gray treecat riding on her shoulder.
1635: THE DREESON INCIDENT – snippet 22:
It got to be sort of a habit for Bryant. He certainly didn’t want to eat lunch with all of the people who had come for the training conference. He was bad enough having to spend the rest of the day with them, listening to mostly German, even if it was peppered full of English words about firefighting equipment, without trying to talk it when he was trying to relax a bit.
SLOW TRAIN TO ARCTURUS – snippet 47
Chapter 20
"Engineering and Robotics—especially with microbots doing maintenance—have increased mechanical safety beyond the real need for redundancy. We still build it in. What we haven't been able to do much about is the fragility of bio-systems, and the ability of humans to mess with them. We need multiple redundancy here. We can get that partly with size and species diversity, and party by simply having a number of habitats, strung together. This will also give us a crack at avoiding the other area of which is never considered for redundancy—social systems. Humans are even more likely to destroy their own habitat than engineering disasters are."
Transcript of Dr. W. Andrea Asiago's address to the new-formed Interstellar Colonization and Exploration society, considered by many to be the germinal point of the Slowtrain Project. From: A CONCISE HISTORY OF HUMAN SPACE COLONIZATION. P233, Chipattari, H, and Shah, G.D. (Ed)
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Howard was relieved to be discharged from the hospital, even if Lani still had that Jersey bull look in her eye. "The local elevator banks are out. I'd forgotten that," she said, as they came to the closed doors a few yards from the hospital gates. "We'll have to take a taxi down to the public transport-system and those cost…"
STORM FROM THE SHADOWS – snippet 26:
"Skipper, we've got an unscheduled hyper footprint at six million kilometers!"
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