(urth) Travelin' Jahlee

[thalassocrat at nym.hush.com]

On Sun, 14 Aug 2005 20:45:04 -0700 James Wynn 
<thewynns at earthlink.net> wrote:
>I missed this start of this interesting thread, so I'll just stick 

>my toe in
>as I see an opening.
>
>>When he comes back to life, he orders everybody out almost
>>immediately. I don't think he was alive whe the Whorl entered
>>orbit. I think if he had been, he would have started chucking
>>people out right away. Most likely, his family killed him as the
>>Whorl approached the Short Sun system, to stop him from doing 
>this.
>
>*Pas* didn't do it "immediately". Silk and Auk did. It seems it 
>took awhile
>for before Pas went to extremes to drive people out. And then it 
>was because
>the Whorl was clearly suffering from an overpopulation of Cargo 
>(running out
>of water and such). Anyway if the prep work had already been done, 

>it was
>necessary to re-do it after Pas' resurrection. It would be 
>understandable
>that Pas' family waited for the last possible moment to rub him 
>out rather
>than as soon as they entered orbit.

It was surely Pas doing the shoving, from the start. Tartaros 
reveals to Auk that unless they get at least one lander away, Pas 
is going to start kicking butt.

I'm not sure that it makes more sense for Echidna et al to wait 
until "the last minute" before offing Pas. In other posts in this 
thread, I've given reasons why I think it makes sense to assume 
that it happened before. Taking that one step further, maybe the 
Whorl has just entered orbit as LS begins. It could explain why the 
renewed theomachy begins at just this point; Pas has bided his time 
waiting for the moment when his Plan can go into effect. 

Maybe something like this: About 45-50 years out from the SS 
system, Pas commences some kind of early insertion manouevre 
(perhaps starting to decelerate). Until then, he hasn't given his 
family any specifics on the destination; now they realize the 
journey is coming to an end, and begin to plot. After 15 or so 
years, they are ready to pounce. They best Pas, but before he 
succumbs he cuts the main control cable, so they won't be able to 
divert the Whorl - whatever he has done before this is enough for a 
successful insertion. Thinking Pas truly dead, Echidna et al don't 
really mind the Whorl heading for orbit; they just want everybody 
to stay on it & continue to worship them.

Neighbors notice the approach of the Whorl at the beginning of its 
insertion manouevres. Somehow or other they board it & do their 
inhumi thing. (The rough coincidence in the timing of Pas' death 
and Quetzal's elevation is explained by the timing of the insertion 
manouevre, the various parties' responses to it, and the time for 
Pas' brood to perfect their plot & Quetzal to work his way up the 
hierarchy.)

In the not-very-plausible event that the Whorl's landers can travel 
between it and Green while it's traveling at relativistic speeds, 
perhaps the Neighbors enter the Whorl in astral form and induce 
humans to go in landers, returning human-charged inhumi to the 
Whorl. They use their Neighborish mojo to hide this activity from 
Pas and crew. 

In the scenario in which they have their own FTL spacecraft, which 
can plausibly renedezvous & dock with the decelerating Whorl, they 
use this same mojo to hide their own comings & goings with 
primitive & sentient inhumi.