The Quarry

[Rage Menelas]

[font=Lucida Sans Unicode]Ryan was having an absolute blast! He had spent some memorable times at renown vacation spots back on Earth... Maui, St. Thomas, Vegas... but Urtyre certainly took top honors in that regard!

The aft section that he had viewed from space was actually the colony itself. If you can imagine a ring band about sixty miles wide and some five thousand in circumference, you would be picturing the basic structure. One end narrowed into the funnel that lead to the spaceport, while the other was ostensibly open to the glorious trio of stars that fed sunlight into the colony. Ostensibly, for there was actually a thick transparent surface covering that end, which was blacked-out once every eighteen hours. This cast the colony into darkness for eight hours once a day. (The transition was even graduated so that there appeared to be a definitive dusk and dawn period.)

The inhabitants lived on the inside of this spinning hollow band in what Ryan would have called bedroom communities. These were all located against the far lip, closest to the suns. On the inner side, closer to the funnel was an amazing variety of sights and facilities. These ranged from nature parks to amusement parks, gaming facilities to museums, restaurants to entertainment clubs... Ryan felt like a nineteen-year-old sailor on liberty again! His boss was highly generous with the credits, giving the apprentice plenty with which to enjoy himself and he put them to good use.

The parks were decked out in the flora and fauna of alien worlds, representative of the vast diversity making up the federation. The people, while all humanoid, were another diverse feature of Urtyre. And he got to know most of the twenty-six recognized races of Ka'Ossafetti – many of them quite handsome! (He was particularly fond of the Jeraiseans. They were a dark, golden-hued people with sparkling eyes that reminded Ryan of garnets and lustrous flaming red hair naturally streaked with platinum. Their ladies were the most beautiful of any he had ever seen, although looking was as far as he went.) Eight days after they had landed, however, his good time came to an abrupt end. Quang came out of his coma.

Mr. Liu woke up and then Mr. Liu got up, promptly breaking a medical assistant's nose for trying to prohibit it. The infirmary notified Charlie of the trouble and the two of them headed that direction immediately, effectively bringing to an ugly end a lovely time...