Escape From Terra - by Sandy Sandfort, Scott Bieser and Lee Oaks! - Big Head Press, publishing Thoughtful Stories since 2002

Strip 62

Panel 1
Very large panel. A complicated-looking machine, large enough to fit in an imaginary box 6 meters long and 4 meters wide and high, is “floating” in a large, dark cavern (dark because the walls are mostly iron and nickel), and firing a twin high-power laser beams into the far section of the cavern. This digging machine is also a spacecraft, and we can see its currently-inactive thrusters on the end opposite the lasers (Actually this “cavern” is a bowl-shape carved into one of the mega-boulders, with one side open to space, but we don’t see that here.)

The laser impact-point is white-hot, liquid metal streams away from it. Those streams are being collected by five smaller machines (each about 3 meters across). Long, thick tubes lead from the smaller machines to a much larger container vessel (20x10x10meters) positioned behind the digging machine

In a part of the cavern away from where the lasers are firing, we can see a glass-and-metal panel embedded in the cavern wall, though which our characters are watching the goings-on.

Lorna (from inside the view port): In this section, one of our cutter ships is mining metal ore.

Lorna (2): The laser liquefies the metal ore so it can be collected by the gatherers and deposited in the container vessel.

Panel 2
Looking in through the viewing port at Lorna and company. They are holding onto unseen handrails around the perimeter of the viewing glass. Guy and F and Lorna are oriented more or less “vertically” in the panel, but Bert is turned around at an odd angle opposite them. Fiorella is asking Lorna a question. Lorna smiles as she responds.

Fiorella: How do the gatherers work? You can’t “vacuum” up something when you’re already in a vacuum.

Lorna: An astute question. The gatherers get most of the dust via magnetic induction. From time to time, we stop the lasers and sweep sticky-membranes through the cavern to gather up non-ferrous bits that escape the gatherers.

Strip 62 - Click on page above to goto the next page. -- First Seen: 2008-12-09
Escape From Terra is updated with new pages every Monday through Friday.

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The Transcript For This Page

Strip 62

Panel 1
Very large panel. A complicated-looking machine, large enough to fit in an imaginary box 6 meters long and 4 meters wide and high, is “floating” in a large, dark cavern (dark because the walls are mostly iron and nickel), and firing a twin high-power laser beams into the far section of the cavern. This digging machine is also a spacecraft, and we can see its currently-inactive thrusters on the end opposite the lasers (Actually this “cavern” is a bowl-shape carved into one of the mega-boulders, with one side open to space, but we don’t see that here.)

The laser impact-point is white-hot, liquid metal streams away from it. Those streams are being collected by five smaller machines (each about 3 meters across). Long, thick tubes lead from the smaller machines to a much larger container vessel (20x10x10meters) positioned behind the digging machine

In a part of the cavern away from where the lasers are firing, we can see a glass-and-metal panel embedded in the cavern wall, though which our characters are watching the goings-on.

Lorna (from inside the view port): In this section, one of our cutter ships is mining metal ore.

Lorna (2): The laser liquefies the metal ore so it can be collected by the gatherers and deposited in the container vessel.

Panel 2
Looking in through the viewing port at Lorna and company. They are holding onto unseen handrails around the perimeter of the viewing glass. Guy and F and Lorna are oriented more or less “vertically” in the panel, but Bert is turned around at an odd angle opposite them. Fiorella is asking Lorna a question. Lorna smiles as she responds.

Fiorella: How do the gatherers work? You can’t “vacuum” up something when you’re already in a vacuum.

Lorna: An astute question. The gatherers get most of the dust via magnetic induction. From time to time, we stop the lasers and sweep sticky-membranes through the cavern to gather up non-ferrous bits that escape the gatherers.