Then again, he mused, he had never seriously thought of a skunk as attractive before.Then again, he mused, he had never seriously thought of a skunk as attractive before. "Belarie', kids. How are you both this morning?" Nickolai and Jofuran turned to find her parents standing behind them. "Fine!" Jofuran replied, stepping over and hugging her father close. "Good to see you, Dad. How're you?" "Fine, fine. You two seem to be doing well." "Better," Jofuran admitted. "Are you two going to watch the air show? It's supposed to be good. And there's a rumor that Oren and Shardik will do 'Breakdown.'" "They say that every year, Dad. But we'll probably go and see it anyway." "What's an 'air show?'" Nickolai asked. "Demonstration of aerodynamic techniques; lots of atmospheric-only craft flying around, usually hand-built, quite often combustion powered. "Oh," Nickolai said. "Explains why we don't have them on Earth." "Yes," Morrail mused. "Your planet has such a terrible history of abuse and pollution. We started with fusion power; the use of combustion as a power source is strictly an amateur affair. We don't have much concern, and where we do quite often we have controls in place." The air show was impressive, Nickolai had to admit. Jofuran was already yawning as they made their way back to the tour rendezvous as previously agreed. "Tired?" Nickolai asked. "Sort of," she admitted, smiling. "I had a wonderful day." "That was the most insane display I've ever seen. Deliberately throwing a completely non-gravitic aircraft out of control like that. Spinning along the short axis out of an aerodynmic vehicle." "That's why it's called aerobatic flying," she said. "Hey, would you like to see my house?" "You have... Oh, your folk's house." "Yeah. It's in the Arcology." "I thought the Arcology was an emergency thing, for wartime." "It is, but there are permanent residents, and a lot of Pendorian citizens who make their careers off-world keep their residencies here, more as a place for their stuff and such. Come on," she said. He followed her along a hallway to another SDisk (still not at all used to these things), and they were teleported to another hallway. |