Subject: (urth) Re: Ballistic Tables

From: Robert Borski <rborski at coredcs.com>
Date: Tue, 02 Jun 1998 02:09:05 +0000

My dear mantis, re your NRA-type questions about the ballistics table and
Marsch not needing it:

Yes, he is a good shot. Once he makes adjustments--as Dr. Deadeye notes, in
talking about the alien sun, "the sun-shimmer reinfor[ces] the deceptive
and fantastic quality extension has in the green landscape under this black
sky." 

This is why, when he shoots at the "tire-tiger" (actually VRT's
'myopi-ized' abo catgirl), his bullet goes high, but then  "everything
snapped back into perspective; my 'scrub trees' were bushes, and the
distance at which I had thought at least 250 yards was less than a third of
that."

Victor, being native, probably wouldn't need to make the same
adjustments--provided he'd just keep his eyes open.

In other words the tables are devised to help Marsch draw a bead through
alien ether on dinner a deux for him and his little would-be exo-catamite.

BUT there is this additional mystery. Marsch/VRT brings the book with the
flyleaf-scrawled ballistics tables--A FIELD GUIDE TO THE ANIMALS OF SAINTE
ANNE-- with him to Sainte Croix, despite the still prohibitively high cost
of doing so (the cost is specifically mentioned). Why? If anybody is *not*
going to need a guidebook about Annese fauna, it's Victor--so why does he
have it and why does he bring it? To make him appear more genuinely
non-familiar with the animals of his world and help him pass as relocated
Terran Dr. JV Marsch? Dunno.

Also no closer to solving the bronzed viscera-guts-for-tots puzzle, but
still thinking...

Robert Borski  

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